Description:

In this workshop, we will discuss what it takes to transform a university campus into a learning laboratory: an educational environment in which every interaction provides an opportunity to contribute to what we know about how learning happens. In such a learning higher education system, the traditional boundaries between research and practice will dissolve, and it will be possible to study the efficacy of instructional designs within the changing context of classrooms. This idea has been developed in a recent White Paper written for the Ithaka Foundation.

To explore this idea more deeply, we will discuss how such a learning laboratory is being created at the University of Michigan, and explore how it might be realized on your campus. This will include a discussion of data sources and management, privacy and ethical issues, research designs and funding, and the integration of research and teaching in faculty lives. This discussion will give us an opportunity to raise and discuss some of the specific challenges present at Northwestern.

McKay will spend 10-15 minutes describing the idea, then distribute a set of questions to be discussed by groups. These would focus on the situation at Northwestern - What data sources exist? How does the campus control and support access to them? How do students, faculty, staff feel about the idea of using data from everyday practice to support research? What about personalizing education - in what ways do various parties want the educational experience to be responsive to individual students background, interests, and goals? After each group has a chance to discuss these questions, we'll come together at the end for some discussion and a few concluding remarks about what it would be like to teach and learning in a real "Learning Higher Education System".

We will serve light refreshments at this workshop.

Please free to come to the earlier session on April 6th with Dr. McKay (12:00-1:00 pm) in which he'll introduce the work that his team has done with the development of Ecoach.

Timothy McKay is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Physics, Astronomy, and Education in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan.

He has helped to develop a personlized learning tool that is used at the University of Michigan and is being rolled out at other campuses across the country. He works with the Digital Innovation Greenhouse, an innovation space for exploring the personalization of education, and launching the NSF funded REBUILD project. REBUILD is an interdisciplinary collaboration, fostering the creation of intergenerational research teams including undergrads, grad students, postdocs, and faculty who will apply a scientific, evidence-based approach to teaching and learning in physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology and math.