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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
The goal of the ARQ program is to help faculty members,
graduate students, and other instructors to
learn new ways to collect feedback from their own students,
feedback they can use to figure out how
to improve teaching and learning activities in their own courses.
ARQ workshop modules are brief (5-20 minutes each) and can
easily be facilitated by peers. Feedback like this is invaluable for at least two reasons:
a) to help instructors improve teaching and learning 'on the
fly,' and b) to engage students in the course by treating
them as expert consultants (and they are experts - they know
better than the instructor what they themselves have seen
and done, and what they think about it.).
Many ARQ modules focus on
teaching/learning activities that are supported with
computers. For example,
- If you use online discussion but are frustrated at
low participation rates,
use an anonymous survey to ask your students what is slowing
or blocking their participation. For more on this ARQ
module, click here.
ARQ modules are so brief that workshops can be inserted
as agenda items in departmental faculty meetings, or made
the topic of a series of brownbag lunches, or provide
content for a series of brief online workshops. Institutions
could also offer a series of ARQ modules, one after another,
in conventional institutes and workshops. They include short
video clips, stored online, so that participants can study
and review techniques, learn from experts, and hear from
colleagues who have already taken the workshop and used what
they learned in their own courses.
Many ARQ modules help faculty learn how to use
Flashlight Online survey questions and tools.
However, if you would
prefer to use other survey engines to ask students questions
anonymously and if your institution is an active TLT Group
subscriber, you may copy and adapt these surveys.
ARQ and CATs (Classroom Assessment Techniques)
Classroom (or Course) Assessment Techniques
(CATs), a concept developed by J. Patricia Cross and Thomas
Angelo, 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. The techniques you can
learn with ARQ workshop materials are CATs.
Most ARQ CATs focus on improving teaching techniques and
materials (e.g., feedback to help faculty figure out how to
improve online discussion ; other CATs, in contrast, usually
focus on student learning itself (e.g., muddy points
questions, 5 minute papers). Here is a
good,
quick introduction to CATs.
Creating an ARQ Program at Your Institution
ARQ workshops are initially led by local facilitators,
e.g., staff from an assessment program, a teaching center,
the library, information technology, distance learning, or
other administrative units, or by faculty colleagues. The
TLT Group offers periodic online training for these
facilitators. The materials and training are free for
TLT Group
subscribing institutions.
Click here to see a list of ARQ
modules, current, under development, and projected.
To learn about institutional subscriptions and which
institutions already
subscribe, click here.
Preparing and Certifying ARQ facilitators: The TLT Group
periodically offers online workshops to train and certify people
at subscribing institutions who are interested in leading
local ARQ workshops (and perhaps 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.
Program Evaluation: For some initial thoughts on
how to evaluate whether ARQ is having an impact on your
institution, click here.
"Brief Hybrid Workshops"
ARQ modules are examples of Brief Hybrid Workshops.
The goal of this TLT Group program is to teach participants
how to create workshops that are
accessible, easy and inexpensive: workshops for faculty
development and workshops for students. As the word
"hybrid," suggests, the use of online materials helps keep
the face-to-face sessions extraordinarily short. If you're interested in
developing your own 'brief hybrid workshops' like those in
ARQ, watch for TLT Group mailings about online workshops and regional workshops, or
contact our office to organize such a
workshop in your area.
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