Archived Faculty Learning Communities 2016 – 2019

Below you can find more information on previous Faculty Learning Communities. For more information on Faculty Learning Communities please visit this page.

Transfer of Learning
Crit the Crit
Learning in the First Year
Learning Through Narrative
Transfer of Learning

Current Facilitators

Past members/leadership

Members of the Transfer of Learning FLC celebrate the arrival of a new member of the family

 What did we research? The Transfer FLC considered how the Pratt curriculum might be optimized in order to foster transfer of learning between all facets of the undergraduate art and design majors. We were particularly interested in how learning might be transferred between studio and general education courses, and between the foundation year and subsequent years of study at Pratt. We began our research by considering what pathways of transfer might exist between the teaching activities of all members of our FLC. We then expanded this exploration of transfer pathways by engaging thirty-five of our colleagues in Transfer Sessions, open-ended discussions centered on the kinds of learning that we hope transfers into and out of the projects we ask students to complete.  

Chris Jensen, Brian Brooks, Keena Suh, and Chris Wynter of the Transfer FLC (not pictured: Allegra Marino Shmulevsky)

 Why does this topic matter? After three years of focusing on transfer of learning, we came to believe that when it comes to education, “transfer is everything”. Our students learn a great variety of vocabulary, skills, concepts, and ways of working while in our diverse courses. But the value of that learning really depends on what students do with that learning next, first in the remainder of their Pratt education and ultimately in their future personal and professional lives. We discovered that while most faculty members have very little sense of what students learn in other areas of their study, once informed our colleagues are capable of making profound connections between their very different ways of teaching. While we have just begun this process, connecting faculty by illuminating the potential connections between what we teach could profoundly change the way our students experience our curriculum. Ultimately, the goal of the Pratt art and design curriculum should be to allow students to make these connections, seeing how different parts of their education are connected by the potential to transfer learning.

Workshop participants share the kind of learning they hope transfers into and out of their classrooms at the 2018 Pratt Teaching & Learning Conference

 How could it help our colleagues? We hope that the Transfer Sessions have already begun to help our colleagues to see both the potential for transfer of learning in our existing curriculum and the power in designing our learning experiences to foster transfer. To culminate our work we will be building up a database of transferable learning discovered during the Transfer Sessions. Through academic publication, we hope to make our analysis of this database available to not only our Pratt colleagues but also to colleagues at other educational institutions. The better we can understand the potential for transfer of learning within our curriculum, the better we can design learning experiences for our students that make their education feel like a coherent whole. 
Transfer of Learning FLC Scholarship: 

   Click to view 2017-18 project overview…
Crit the Crit

Current Facilitators

Past members/leadership

Facilitators

Members

 

What did we research?

The Crit the Crit Faculty Learning Community explored studio-based critique typologies and methodologies used at Pratt. The FLC explored faculty considerations of quality that inform the crit, the pedagogical approach in different fields, and the various methods used to perform critiques in different fields. The inquiry questions include: Do the fields of art, design, architecture, and creative writing had produced a distinctive approach to critique? How do we discuss a tradition of critique that has been inherited and understood in different disciplines? Which typologies of critiques are more employed for both formative and summative assessment? What types of scaffolding are necessary over students’ educational  experience of critique to support and sustain learning? What types of skills, attitudes and approaches are desirable in the participants of a critique?

 

Why does this topic matter?

All our students in all disciplines engage in some form of feedback -providing and receiving feedback through a critique session is a fundamental part of any creative endeavor. It is regularly practiced both in academia and professional industries and is considered a vital part of the development of a creative piece.

In art and design education critique sessions take place at focal moments during the evolution of student projects across the semester and perform different functions during the years of a path to graduation.

Understanding critique is paramount for SoTL. Critique lies at the nexus between student academic performance and well-being. It is the primary vehicle for assessment in education and is a high impact learning process. During critique, students are able to construct meaning in substantial and positive ways that contribute to work process, work product and personal development.

 

How could it help our colleagues?

The FLC helped bring new awareness and understanding to a practice so engrained in art and design education that is simultaneously taken for granted as a compulsory requirement in education and held as sacrosanct – above scrutiny and revision.  The FLC provided a safe space to share ideas about critique and techniques as practiced and observed. The dialog contributed greatly to the intellectual discourse about creative practices on campus and inspired faculty to bring new techniques into their classrooms. The results of this approach produced an anatomy of critique techniques and methods in the form of an analytical matrix and a planned, illustrated catalogue of practices to be shared across the institution.

Conference presentations:

 

 Click to view 2017-18 project overview…

Learning in the First Year

Current Facilitators

 

Past members/leadership

 

What did we research?

 

First year teaching and learning poses particular challenges. First year students negotiate separation, transition, and incorporation in all aspects of their life on campus and this reality must be both considered and managed in the classroom if effective teaching and learning is to occur. Members of the community came ready to talk about and dismantle/reassemble the ideas of many classroom practices such as scaffolded learning, establishing significant and useful reflective practices, how to launch learning in a student-centered classrooms, and Bloom’s as a conversation model in the classroom. The FLC worked on identifying horizontal learning outcomes across programs in the first year, including Foundation, Art History, and Writing. The FLC found that a common goal for all programs is promoting a learning environment where students understand and appreciate that learning is a process that includes metacognition and multiple perspectives. The Learning in the First Year FLC considers the following inquiry questions: What classroom strategies promote learning how to learn? Students in this age group are developing the capacity of abstract thinking, how can we effectively promote students’ integration of skills and concepts? How do we see this represented trans-departmentally? In our own classroom practice?

 

Why does this topic matter?

Through our FLC’s conversations, what we’ve come to realize is twofold. As classroom teachers, we see time and again that our students have a lot of work to do in managing their incoming expectations to the realities of their coursework.

 

How could it help our colleagues?

As colleagues, we see that a lot of the work we do in our courses is reflected across departments. Placing together several theories on thinking processes, we’ve seen the parallels that, to us, represent distinct avenues for collaboration and coming-together across several departments.

Some questions that have grown from this process:

 

Learning in the First Year FLC Scholarship:

 

 

 Click to view 2017-18 project overview…

Learning Through Narrative

2017-18 Project Overview

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