LEARN Center Workshops 2017-2018

Don't Cheat at Chapter 14- Copy Our Notes on How to
Investigate Academic Misconduct

Wednesday, April 25th
12:00-1:00 PM, Lunch is Included
University Center 259 B
Lunch is included

Are you a faculty or staff member who currently instructs any graded course offered by UWW? If yes, it is important for you to know how to navigate the UWS Chapter 14 academic misconduct process efficiently. Attend this workshop if you’d like to brush up on your academic misconduct investigation skills, receive up-to-date process checklists and letter templates, or want to ask specific questions about the academic misconduct process.

Participants will learn:

• Learn how to use the UWS Chapter 14 academic misconduct process to efficiently and accurately adjudicate accusations of cheating, plagiarism, unauthorized collaboration, falsification of information or data, and other types of academic misconduct.
• Learn how to approach and communicate with a student when they suspect a student has engaged in academic misconduct. Additionally, attendees will learn how to ask specific questions to determine if academic misconduct took place, and what types of notes they’ll need to take to move forward.
• Learn how to appropriately document an accusation of misconduct, and how to write the accompanying letters that are delivered to the student and kept on file with the University. Attendees will receive letter template(s), flow charts, and an outline of how to complete an academic misconduct investigation start-to-finish that will ensure the due-process rights of the student are met.

Presentations by:
Tim Fredrickson

Wednesday, April 25th
12:00-1:00 p.m.
University Center Room 259 B

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Button Pushing 101:
Tips and Tools for Addressing Student Behaviors

Wednesday, April 18
12:00-1:00 PM
University Center 259 B
Lunch is included

This presentation will give you a better understanding of how to manage student behaviors that you find frustrating and annoying. If you've had a student in your classroom who managed to consistently get under your skin or exhibited behaviors that were not only frustrating to you, but also your students, then this presentation is for you. We will be covering a number of different scenarios aimed at helping you identify what types of behaviors push your buttons and talk about ways to address those situations effectively.

Participants will learn:

• How to structure a learning environment that addresses student behaviors on a consistent basis
• What to do when student behaviors escalate
• An understanding of the types of behaviors that "push your buttons"

Presentations by:
Andrew Browning
CARE Team Case Manager
Dean of Students Office

Wednesday, April 18
12:00-1:00 PM
University Center Room 259 B
Lunch is included

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Group work in the classroom:
How can you make it work for you?

Thursday, April 5th
12:30-2:00 PM, Lunch is included
University Center 259 B
Register by March 29

Are you intrigued by the possibility of having your students engage in collaborative learning? Perhaps you're aware of the large body of educational research that tells us that collaborative learning and group work can increase student learning. At the same time, translating this research into functional groups in the classroom can seem daunting. This panel discussion will offer several viewpoints on a number of issues that instructors often encounter when utilizing group work, including designing group projects, how to form groups, how to deal with negative group dynamics, and how to assess the products of group work and the interaction itself.

Participants will learn:

• Strategies for effective group formation
• Perspectives on ways to facilitate group development and cohesion
• Tips on how to fairly assess group work

Presentations by:
Ted Gimbel, Political Science
Kristen Crossgrove, Biological Sciences
Carol Scovotti, Marketing

Thursday, April 5th
12:30-2:00 p.m. Lunch is included
University Center Room 259 B

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Lessons Learned and Progress to Come

Wednesday, March 7
12:30-1:30 p.m. Lunch is included
University Center Room 259A
Register by February 28

As Community Based Learning Fellows this past year, the presenters had the opportunity to learn about the best practices of designing and leading a community based learning (CBL) course. After a summer of planning, they piloted their newly modified courses during the fall semester. During this workshop, they will provide an overview of the planning process and their courses, along with sharing some “lessons learned” from the initial implementation. Specifically, the workshop will cover ideas for setting up functional partnerships, blending course content with the CBL projects, and creating CBL assessments. There will be time available for a discussion of available resources, upcoming CBL events on campus, and any other questions from attendees about planning and implementation.

Participants will learn:

• Ideas for reflections and assessments for CBL projects.
• Examples of necessary forms and logistical planning for creating lasting community partnerships.
• Tips for integrating course content with CBL projects.

Presentations by:
Jonah Ralston, Political Science
Jim Schnaedter, Management
Heather Pelzel, Biological Sciences

Wednesday, March 7
12:30-1:30 p.m. Lunch is included
University Center Room 259A

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Mentoring Undergraduate Research:
Bridging the Gap between Expections and Reality

Thursday, February 22
Noon-1:00 p.m. Lunch is included
University Center Room 259 A
Register by February 19

We will discuss the differing expectations and perceptions of the undergraduate research experience for mentors and mentees, and how the use of a Mentor/Mentee contract can increase transparency on both sides. Example contracts that could be adopted by faculty at UW-Whitewater will be provided. A panel will facilitate discussion of common concerns of mentors and how to address them. The panelists are all from STEM backgrounds, but the concepts discussed are not specific to STEM- all are welcome!

Participants will learn:

• Some common trends in how the expectations of mentors and mentees differ when conducting undergraduate research.
• What a mentor/mentee contract is.
• How a mentor/mentee contract can be used to help bridge the gap between expectations and reality in the undergraduate research experience.

Presentations by:
Steven Girard, Assistant Professor, Chemistry
Brian O'Neill, Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences
Ozgur Yavuzcetin, Assistant Professor, Physics

Thursday, February 22
Noon-1:00 p.m. Lunch is included
University Center Room 259 A

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Building Student Engagement From Day 1 

Often, the first day of class is seen as a stand-alone event where professors go through the syllabus and take attendance with no connection to the content of the course. The syllabus and the first day of class, however, set the tone and expectations for the rest of the semester. During the morning session of the workshop, presenters will share evidence-based strategies for creating a more learner-centered syllabus and tips for engaging students from the first day. After a lunch discussion, participants will revise their syllabi and/or first day activities and share their materials for small group feedback.

Participants will:

• Revise syllabi/activities to enhance student engagement.
• Implement their changes during the Spring 2018 semester and report back on their implementation.
• Be eligible for a $100 stipend after implementation of their proposed modifications and submission of a short report on that implementation. 

Presentations by:
Barbara Beaver, Professor of Psychology and Director, LEARN Center
Carolyn Morgan, Professor of Psychology and ACUE Fellow
Heather Pelzel, Associate Professor of Biology and LEARN Center Fellow

Register by January 9, 2018

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Grit and Growth Mindset: Why Some Environments Motivate People to Become Excellent

Today, it’s more important than ever to be a learner: that is, to be able to teach yourself new skills, using your connections to experts or resources you find, for example, online. But most people have grown up in an educational system that valued knowers, people who have memorized facts or skills.

• How can you create an environment that fosters the grit needed to be a self-directed learner?
• How can you shake people out of the outdated model of education so they can adapt their skills and knowledge to the modern and quickly changing economy?

This workshop will focus on linking Dr. Yeager's timely message to many of the student success initiatives active at UW-Whitewater. Participants are encouraged to select one of the campus initiatives below as their affinity group for the workshop.

As a part of the registration process, please email the LEARN Center with your choice of the campus initiative you prefer to work with during this workshop:

Academic Innovation
Discuss and share innovative assignments that build student persistence and grit. Let's pool our ideas and discuss already proven pedagogies and specific assignments that engage students as valued learners and that build an environment where we all try "hard things" and "support a learning mindset" - whether in your courses or programs.

LEAP
The Liberal Education & America's Promise (LEAP) initiative from the Association of American Colleges and Universities has become interwoven into the institutional culture at UW-W to promote and advance student success. Participants in this group will use components of the LEAP initiative to examine avenues for the enactment of a growth mindset centered on the importance of learning outcomes, the pursuit of excellence, equity, and the value of high-impact education at practices.

ePortfolio
A student's time at UW-W is much more than one-off courses and grades--it's about the integrative experience. The UW-W Integrative Learning ePortfolio Initiative aims to prepare students to make connections among their academic (New Student Seminar, General Education, Programs/Majors), co-curricular, extracurricular, and other life experiences during their time at UW-W in order to articulate their story as an educated citizen and market-ready professional, whatever their career path.

STEM
STEM (Sciene, Technology, Engineering, & Math) transformation seeks to support student persistence to degrees in biology, chemistry, computer science, environmental science, mathematics, and physics. Join us to explore how you might contribute your teaching skills to that pursuit.

RFY - Mentoring
Join members of the Reimagining-the-First-Year project to explore many ways faculty and staff can support students and learning at the UW-W. Our overall goal is to foster a mentoring culture at UW-W.​

RFY - Curriculum Redesign
The overall goal of the Curriculum and Pedagogy Task Force of the RFY project is to enable more students - including low income, underrepresented minority and first generation students - to experience academic success in their first-year and gateway courses. Our work to date has focused on data gathering and analysis, professional development for instructors in first-year and gateway courses, and targeted curricular changes.

Improve Academic Advising
Academic advising has improved in many ways across campus, yet student feedback indicates areas where further improvements can be made. Advising leaders across campus are working on additional ways to "improve the student engagement, experience, and satisfaction with academic advising to provide a more comprehensive approach consistent with our campus LEAP initiative."

Other

Register by August 22, 2017

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Student Engagement: Challenges in the 21st Century 

Mazer (2013)[i] notes that student engagement and interest can lead to higher levels of student satisfaction, success, and retention. As important as engagement may be to student success in college, today’s students have a multitude of issues competing for their attention (e.g., families, jobs, financial concerns, social media etc.). As these concerns do not disappear when a student enters (or logs into) a class, cultivating student engagement can be a significant challenge to instructors trying to help students learn course material. The Learning Technology Center and LEARN Center are pleased to co-sponsor a 3-part workshop series focused on student engagement, based on issues identified by faculty in recent instructor support surveys. This series will focus on current opportunities and challenges relating to student engagement, in both face-to-face and online courses.
By taking part in the Student Engagement Workshops Series, instructors will be able to:

• Examine different research-supported approaches to student engagement
• Compare and contrast different methods of engaging students across different modalities
• Practice using different technologies and techniques to engage students

Student Engagement: Challenges in the 21st Century

What are we actually talking about when we say “student engagement?” How do we even know when students are engaged? This interactive session introduces key concepts relating to student engagement, and lays a framework for discussing engagement in the future sessions. We will discuss challenges to facilitating student engagement; including learning myths, interpretations of nonverbal behaviors, and commonly believed “illusions” of learning and teaching.

[i] Mazer, J. P. (2013). Validity of the student interest and engagement scales: Associations with student learning outcomes. Communication Studies, 64, 125-140. But most people have grown up in an educational system that valued knowers, people who have memorized facts or skills.

Register by September 20, 2017

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Growth Mindset in the Classroom at UW-Whitewater 

At an August seminar and workshop led by Dr. David Yeager, the UW- Whitewater community began a discussion of how to create an environment in the classroom and out that fosters a growth mindset. At this meeting, we will hear from a panel of your UWW peers on how they have begun to incorporate growth mindset ideas and interventions into their courses. Some of the session will be devoted to a discussion on how and when you could use these in your own courses with the opportunity to gather into the campus initiatives groups that were formed during the original workshop (Academic Innovation, LEAP, ePortfolio, STEM Transformation, Reimagining the First Year, and Improving Academic Advising). Those that did not attend the August session are encouraged to attend and learn more about this approach to student development!

Participants will network with others who are using or planning to use growth mindset interventions to facilitate collaborations.

Presentations by:
Jessica Bonjour, Chemistry
Jane Gottlick, Political Science
Jeff Heinrich, Economics

Register by October 13, 2017

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Student Engagement: How Can We Facilitate Self-Regulation and Persistence?: Lessons Learned 

Mazer (2013)[i] notes that student engagement and interest can lead to higher levels of student satisfaction, success, and retention. As important as engagement may be to student success in college, today’s students have a multitude of issues competing for their attention (e.g., families, jobs, financial concerns, social media etc.). As these concerns do not disappear when a student enters (or logs into) a class, cultivating student engagement can be a significant challenge to instructors trying to help students learn course material. The Learning Technology Center and LEARN Center are pleased to co-sponsor a 3-part workshop series focused on student engagement, based on issues identified by faculty in recent instructor support surveys. This series will focus on current opportunities and challenges relating to student engagement, in both face-to-face and online courses.
By taking part in the Student Engagement Workshops Series, instructors will be able to:

• Examine different research-supported approaches to student engagement
• Compare and contrast different methods of engaging students across different modalities
• Practice using different technologies and techniques to engage students

Student Engagement: How Can We Facilitate Self-Regulation and Persistence?: Lessons Learned
Fellow instructors will share their personal experiences and approaches toward engaging students!

[i] Mazer, J. P. (2013). Validity of the student interest and engagement scales: Associations with student learning outcomes. Communication Studies, 64, 125-140. But most people have grown up in an educational system that valued knowers, people who have memorized facts or skills.

Register by October 19, 2017

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Open Forum: Student Sense of Belonging and Faculty/Staff Mentoring

The campus community is invited to an open forum. Leaders from the Reimagining the First Year (RFY) initiative will share findings from campus-wide focus group conversations and surveys conducted last spring. Learn about what others have said and share your thoughts and experiences with mentoring here at UW-Whitewater.

The RFY team is seeking your feedback to help us plan our next steps in fostering a supportive student-centered campus. We look forward to hearing student perspectives and conversations between faculty, staff, and students.

If you have any questions about this forum, please contact Sally Lange at learn@uww.edu or (262) 472-5242.

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Student Engagement: Technologies and Techniques

Mazer (2013)[i] notes that student engagement and interest can lead to higher levels of student satisfaction, success, and retention. As important as engagement may be to student success in college, today’s students have a multitude of issues competing for their attention (e.g., families, jobs, financial concerns, social media etc.). As these concerns do not disappear when a student enters (or logs into) a class, cultivating student engagement can be a significant challenge to instructors trying to help students learn course material. The Learning Technology Center and LEARN Center are pleased to co-sponsor a 3-part workshop series focused on student engagement, based on issues identified by faculty in recent instructor support surveys. This series will focus on current opportunities and challenges relating to student engagement, in both face-to-face and online courses.
By taking part in the Student Engagement Workshops Series, instructors will be able to:

• Examine different research-supported approaches to student engagement
• Compare and contrast different methods of engaging students across different modalities
• Practice using different technologies and techniques to engage students

Student Engagement: Technologies and Techniques
Learn about different technologies and techniques used to engage students, and then apply what you learn!

[i] Mazer, J. P. (2013). Validity of the student interest and engagement scales: Associations with student learning outcomes. Communication Studies, 64, 125-140. But most people have grown up in an educational system that valued knowers, people who have memorized facts or skills.

Register by October 30, 2017

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The Meaning of Learning:
Metacognition and Student Motivation

Get Students to Focus on Learning Instead of Grades:
Metacognition is the Key!

9:00-10:30 a.m. • Timmerman Auditorium (Hyland 1000)

21st Century students come to college with widely varying academic skills, approaches to learning, and motivation levels. Faculty often lament that students are focused on achieving high grades, but are not willing to invest much time or effort in learning. This session will focus on the importance of helping students acquire simple, but effective learning strategies based on cognitive science principles. We will engage in interactive reflection activities that will allow attendees to experience strategies that significantly improve learning while transforming student attitudes about the meaning of learning.

Strategies for Effectively Mentoring 21st Century Students

10:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m. • Timmerman Auditorium (Hyland 1000)

Effective mentoring has long been recognized as important for success in professional and academic environments. However, mentors are seldom provided the training to ensure that the mentoring relationship will be most beneficial to the protégé and to the mentor. This interactive workshop will discuss strategies for effective mentoring of today's students, and will contrast the behaviors of masterful vs misguided mentors. Additionally, techniques for producing proactive vs. problematic protégés will be discussed.

Increasing Student Motivation: Strategies that work

12:30-3:00 p.m. • Upham 145 • Lunch is provided.

Motivating today's students to actively engage in learning activities proves challenging for most faculty. Very often millennial students do not respond as did students in the past to extrinsic motivators such as bonus quizzes and extra credit assignments. However, as James Raffini presents in 150 Ways to Increase Intrinsic Motivation in the Classroom, when the psychoacademic needs of students are met in creative ways, student motivation soars. This presentation will engage faculty in a discussion of addressing student needs for autonomy, competence, relatedness, self-esteem, and enjoyment in order to significantly increase student motivation.

Dr. Saundra Yancy McGuire is the Director Emerita of the Center for Academic Success and retired Assistant Vice Chancellor and Professor of Chemistry at LSU. Prior to joining LSU, she spent eleven years at Cornell University. Her latest book, Teach Students How to Learn: Strategies You Can Incorporate into Any Course to Improve Student Metacognition, Study Skills, and Motivation, was released in October 2015.

She received the 2015 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Lifetime Mentor Award and the 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE) and is an elected Fellow of the ACS, AAAS, and Council of Learning Assistance and Developmental Education Associations (CLADEA). In November 2007 the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring was presented to her in a White House Oval Office Ceremony.

This event is sponsored by the Science Academy Growth Agenda Grant, the LEAP project and the LEARN Center.

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Managing End of Semester Student Crisis Tips and tools for helping students navigate a stressful time of year

At the end of a semester many students experience abnormally elevated levels of stress. This presentation is designed to help you recognize when a student's level of stress might warrant an intervention and how to intervene appropriately and safely.

By taking part in this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Learn to be able to recognize some of the signs and symptoms of students who might be in crisis.
• Learn how to support students, while maintaining healthy boundaries.
• Have a better understanding of when to reach out for consultation/feedback about a student.

Presentations by:
Andrew Browning
CARE Team Case Manager
Dean of Student Office

Register by November 22, 2017

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