ANNUAL CONFERENCE

The nationwide Process Education community will come together for our annual conference from June 27 to June 29, 2010, at St. Louis College of Pharmacy. Have you registered? Please consider sharing a personal best practice in a workshop, paper, or Hall of Innovation poster. Submit a proposal via the conference website. On the website, you can learn more about the program and special events, register, and make plans for lodging. The $300 registration fee can be paid by check or online by credit card.

The registration fee includes: program booklet, appetizers Sunday evening (June 27), lunches (June 28 and 29), a dinner cruise on the Mississippi (June 28), as well as the annual Academy membership fee. Conference hotel: The Parkway Hotel is located one block from the building housing the conference sessions. Secure the special lodging rate using the instructions on the conference website.

Larry Michaelsen, University of Central Missouri
A renowned author and professor of management, Larry Michaelsen pioneered the development of Team-Based Learning with a focus upon the key characteristics of effective team assignments. In the plenary session, as well as the breakout sessions which he will lead, you will be engaged in a series of activities that demonstrate why most problems with learning groups are caused by poorly designed assignments. In addition, four key factors will enable you to design group assignments that:

1) are effective for developing students’ application of critical-thinking skills,

2) promote positive student attitudes about group work,

3) can be graded easily and fairly and,

4) can be used with any level of students and in classes of several hundred students.

Don Saari, University of California, Irvine
A distinguished professor of mathematics and economics, Don Saari will offer a plenary and breakout sessions, which will engage the audience in the application of mathematics in solving serious and complex problems we currently face. Furthermore, he will emphasize techniques for equipping and empowering students to solve problems that we can barely imagine today. In What the Best College Teachers Do, Ken Bain paints a picture of Don Saari’s teaching on the first page of his book. He writes that Saari uses a mixture of humor, storytelling, and questioning so that his calculus students think they invented calculus. As a researcher, Saari combines his two disciplines (mathematics and economics) in a fascinating analysis of real-world problems, ranging from elections and the mysteries of voting to more esoteric problems, such as Newton's N-body problem and the evolution of the universe.

How can problems be solved in real time? During this plenary Dr. Apple will work with a panel of experts to address an issue facing higher education today. The goal will be to make meaningful progress on a solution as the audience observes how a problem solving methodology (Faculty Guidebook 2.2.6: Overview of Problem Solving) is utilized in real time. The session will conclude with assessment reports by the audience, the experts, and facilitator. Attention will be given to the quality of the solution developed as well as the solution process itself.

Academy members can use the Members page of our website (www.processeducation.org) to review notes from Academy functions throughout the year. There you will find, for example, the recent minutes from an ad hoc get together January 10-11, 2010 in St. Louis.

Nine of us reviewed the attractive venue for the summer conference, collaborated on Academy research projects, brainstormed ideas for member communication and outreach, learned about the new I-STAR Foundation, and suggested updates to the Academy's strategic plan. While the minutes aren't a perfect substitute for actually being there, they are the next best thing. The archive also includes monthly board meetings and extends back to the Academy meeting immediately following the 2009 conference.

Process Educators Jim Morgan (Texas A&M), Greg Neff (Purdue University), Barbara Williams, Steve Beyerlein, and Dan Cordon (University of Idaho) are developing a new freshman textbook, building on Foundations of Learning. The original text provides guided inquiry and activities for incoming college students to build transferable learner skills including: problem solving, communication, teamwork, and self-identity. Ultimately, the original text will be augmented in the areas of problem solving, design, and mathematical modeling so that it is better suited for freshman entering Engineering and Engineering Technology fields. To date, particular emphasis has been given to analytical problems (homework style, single answer, number-crunching) as well as open-ended problems (real-world, mixed qualitative/quantitative, multiple answer). A generalized rubric for analytical problem solving has been tested and refined using examples of student work from multiple STEM disciplines. This will be the subject of a hands-on workshop at the 2010 Process Education Conference.

Research collaborators on the reliability study of the Writing Rubric (published in the Faculty Guidebook) conducted a rating exercise at the winter meeting in St. Louis. The results indicated that some of the criteria, as well as other elements of the rubric need additional editing to increase common understanding of the terms and their use by raters. Cy Leise, Tris Utschig, Kathy Burke, and Steve Beyerlein will decide on these changes and then proceed to further piloting before planning a proposal for review by the IRB at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The proposal will involve rating three type of papers by three raters. Approximately 50 papers of each type will be rated in order to have statistically representative samples. We will explore the level of consistency between raters for both specific criteria within the rubric and total scores. By establishing the reliability of this important process education assessment and evaluation tool, it will become possible to use it with confidence for many writing products and contexts.

Karen Anderson and Steve Beyerlein facilitated three hands-on, 75-minute workshops focused on the Faculty Guidebook for more than 80 MATC (Madison Area Technical College) faculty at the Winter 2010 Convocation. The workshops included the use of a revised learning object entitled 'The Faculty Guidebook: A Tool for Continuous Improvement in Teaching and Learning.' Learning outcomes for the MATC workshop are widely applicable to other faculty/staff orientation sessions and include the following:

• Understand the organization of the Faculty Guidebook and be able to link each section with at least two topics of personal interest to you as an educator.

• Appreciate the rationale behind Faculty Guidebook module design as well as know how the use of these modules can help you meet your personal professional development needs.

• Know how to use the on-line search features of the e-Faculty Guidebook to identify 3-6 resources related to an area in which you would like to improve your professional performance.

Over the last three months Joann Horton has worked hard to establish the Institute for Student Transformation and Academic Readiness (I-STAR). This is a non-profit organization, which provides leadership in designing learning environments designed to generate enhanced learning and success for students who are at-risk of not transitioning successfully from high school to college. I-STAR is dedicated to facilitating both the learning and growth of students so that they become self- reliant and confident individuals, thereby improving the quality of their lives. A special focus of I-STAR is the preparation and delivery of Learning to Learn Camps along with associated faculty/staff development. Joann, along with colleagues at Grand Valley State University, Lamar University, North Carolina Central University, Gaston College and the University of Idaho are actively pursuing grant opportunities to study the impact of Learning to Learn Camps. You can learn more about the I-STAR Foundation at: www.i-starfoundation.org.

Did you know that members of the Academy of Process Educators, receive FREE access to Dialogues in Process Education? Dialogues (from Pacific Crest) has received a real facelift and is now easier to use, packed with exciting features. It is still your best bet for engaging in ongoing scholarship in Process Education. The easiest way for Academy members to visit Dialogues is to select it from the Members page on the Academy website. If you're an Academy member, why not take advantage of this wonderful membership benefit today? (And if you're not yet a member, why not join?)