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Modules and Related
Materials l
Creating an ARQ Program at Your Institution
These
materials are for use only by institutions that subscribe to
The TLT Group, to participants in TLT Group workshops that
feature this particular material, and
to invited guests. The TLT Group is a non-profit whose
existence is made possible by subscription and registration
fees. if you or your institution are not yet among
our subscribers,
we invite you to
join us, use these materials, help us
continue to improve them, and, through your subscription,
help us develop new materials! If you have
questions about your rights to use, adapt or share these
materials, please ask us (info @ tltgroup.org).
Goals
"Scholarship of Teaching and Learning" (SoTL)
is intentional, formal research by faculty in order
to improve teaching and learning in their own courses and
programs; and, if the inquiry is productive, in order to help their colleagues improve
teaching and learning as well.
However:
- Many faculty have little spare time
- Most faculty have little prior training in
SoTL
- An initial set of experiences with a high
likelihood of producing useful findings,
- A SoTL strategy that can be incrementally
expanded over time.
The ARQ program provides faculty and the staff who
support them with:
- Materials for organizing
brief (5-20 minute), peer-led workshops that can be held
in department meetings, at brownbags, online, etc.
- SoTL tools (e.g., surveys and feedback forms; advice
on interpreting and using findings) that can be used
quickly, with high probability of useful findings, and
low risk of embarrassment or complete failure.
(That's our intention; we need your help to tweak these
materials to make sure that this is really true!)
- Advice for the local leaders about how to develop a
program that gradually does engage a significant
fraction of the faculty in SoTL. (Here too we need your
advice to continually improve these materials.)
Each package of ARQ materials is organized around a
simple research tool and an easy-to-use plan for gathering
information from students and using those findings to figure
out how to improve the course:
ARQ and CATs (Classroom Assessment Techniques)
SoTL is not the only term that can be used to describe
this work. It's also an example of Classroom (or Course) Assessment Techniques
(CATs), a concept developed by J. Patricia Cross and Thomas
Angelo. CATs are easy-to-use techniques for gathering
student feedback, usually during interaction with students,
in order to improve learning. Most CATs are low threshold:
easy to use, low risk, free or low cost. Here is a
good,
quick introduction to CATs. 'Action research' and
'formative evaluation' are also accurate ways to describe
what ARQ is designed to help academic staff do.
Creating an ARQ Program at Your Institution
ARQ materials and training are free for
TLT Group
subscribing institutions. (To learn about institutional subscriptions and which
institutions already
subscribe, click here.)
(NEW!)
One way to decide whether and how to use ARQ
materials is to ask faculty what they need, perhaps using
a survey like this one. This particular survey is
available to Network and Comprehensive Collection
institutions in the
Flashlight Online folder of ARQ materials.
Program Evaluation: For some initial thoughts on
how to evaluate whether ARQ is having an impact on your
institution, click here.
Alias for this page: http://bit.ly/ARQ-index
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