Past Faculty Learning Communities (2014 - 2015)

2014 - 2015 Faculty Learning Communities



Faculty Learning Communities


Community as Classroom: The Pedagogy and Practicality of Community-based Teaching and Learning

This faculty learning community supports new and engaged scholars in their community-based teaching, learning and research through a community of practice focused on building courses with a service learning (community outreach) focus.  The format for this learning community will include brief presentations by various experienced faculty followed by extended dialogue/review of participant project ideas, concerns, and questions. 

Facilitators: Danielle Lake, Liberal Studies and Patty Stow Bolea, Pew FTLC 


Contemplative Practices in Higher Education: Powerful Methods to Transform Teaching and Learning

Facilitator: Bailey Herrmann, English


Do Babies Matter? Gender and Family in the Ivory Tower

Facilitator: Gretchen Galbraith, History


How to Effectively Facilitate an Online Medical Terminology Course

Facilitator: Julia VanderMolen, Allied Health Sciences


Improving Teaching Effectiveness through Peer Collaboration

This Faculty Learning Community (FLC) will provide GVSU faculty who teach at the Traverse City campus with an opportunity to engage in collaborative conversations about teaching and learning. Based on research in best practices, this FLC will aim to improve faculty teaching effectiveness via looking at student work and/or teacher tasks with structured protocols.  The focus of each meeting opportunity will be based upon questions participants wish to explore further to increase their own learning. Participants will be asked to share specific teaching strategies, challenges, and successes, as well as, provide formative feedback for other group members.  At the completion of this FLC, group members will be asked to submit a brief written reflection of how they plan to incorporate newly learned ideas into their teaching.

Facilitator: Dr. Catherine Meyer-Looze, Education - Leadership & Learning


Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

Facilitator: Christine Rener, Pew FTLC


Mechanisms for Smoothly Incorporating Case Studies into a Lecture Course

Facilitator: Matthew Edick, Biomedical Sciences


Online & Hybrid Instruction

Sponsored by IDeL (Instructional Design for eLearning) and the Pew Faculty Teaching & Learning Center, this workshop will provide a venue for faculty-led dialogue and to share collective expertise regarding online/hybrid instruction at GVSU. Support for new and experienced online/hybrid faculty through dialogue. Explore best practices associated with online/hybrid teaching and learning. Identify emerging technological needs to support online teaching and learning, Share collective expertise across disciplines

Facilitator: Kim Kenward, Instructional Design for eLearning


Strengths-Based Leadership

Facilitator: Kathryn Stieler, Pew FTLC


Strong Start Initiative

The Learning Community will read a text together, share first-year strategies, help disseminate best practices, and help to develop a survey for the entire campus to determine strategies, attitudes, and perspectives on first-year student engagement and retention. There is, of course, a great deal of research on successful strategies for teaching first-year students, and a tremendous amount of creativity and innovation that has taken place on our campus, driven by our faculty, answering to the needs of our students. The goal of the SSI is to collate both local and global solutions to the retention issues that we face and to disseminate that information on our campus and beyond. 

Facilitator: Kurt Ellenberger, Pew FTLC


Teaching Naked: How Moving Technology Out of Your College Classroom Will Improve Student Learning

Facilitator: Christine Rener, Pew FTLC


The Learning Portfolio: Reflective Practice for Improving Student Learning

Facilitator: Regina Smith, Modern Languages & Literatures




Page last modified June 4, 2024