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Modules and Related
Materials l
Creating an ARQ Program at Your Institution l
Mailing List
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
We define "Scholarship of Teaching and Learning" (SoTL)
as intentional, formal inquiry by faculty members
about their own courses, designed to help them improve their
own courses and, if the inquiry turns out to be
exceptionally successful, to help their colleagues improve
their own courses as well. (There are other
accepted definitions, too; SoTL can be a confusor.)
The goal of the ARQ program is to help faculty members,
graduate students, and other instructors to
engage in SoTL by offering support that fits their needs and
constraints:
- 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 local 'champions' of SoTL and
assessment 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. (Here too we need your
advice to continually improve these materials.)
ARQ materials are organized around research tools:
- Some materials can be used 'as is'; others require a
minute or two of modification by the faculty member.
- Most ARQ materials involve the use of surveys or
feedback forms. This is not the only methodology
employed by SoTL, but a) it's especially suitable for
faculty starting out because it's easy yet not something
that many faculty have tried yet, b) the Flashlight
Online web-based survey service makes it possible for
our program and for local leaders to provide faculty
with the tools on their own desktops, making it even
easier to get started, c) for faculty who do not use
Flashlight Online, the forms can be used with other
survey systems.
- A number of ARQ materials are to help faculty gather
feedback about technology use in their courses (e.g.,
online discussion, PowerPoint slides). Because uses of
technology change rapidly, this is a realm where
uncertainty is likely to be high, and where SoTL may
produce especially rewarding findings.
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.)
Program Evaluation: For some initial thoughts on
how to evaluate whether ARQ is having an impact on your
institution, click here.
Preparing and Certifying ARQ facilitators: If you
and your colleagues would like to be certified as an ARQ
program leader, please let us know. The TLT Group
can offer online workshops to train and certify people
at subscribing institutions who are interested in leading
ARQ workshops (and contributing materials to
ARQ). These online 'train the trainer' sessions are free for
staff at subscribing institutions. We pick a module, use it, and then spend some time
critiquing it and discussing how to use it and how it can be
improved. Participants also discuss how the ARQ program
itself can be improved. To see when the next ARQ workshops
will be,
email us,
and/or sign up for the
Flashlight mailing list.
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