[elaine]

On Fri­day 3/2/12 we worked in groups and planned changes to our Fall syl­labus to in­clude one or more High Im­pact Prac­tices to in­crease stu­dent en­gage­ment and help them learn skills for life not just rote learn­ing one topic in the class­room .
At least that is how I see this – My group con­sisted of very tal­ented Fac­ulty in Ar­chi­tec­ture, Bi­ol­ogy and Damon, a tal­ented fac­ulty mem­ber, who works in The­ater En­ter­tain­ment Dept.( I be­lieve) but his stu­dents seem to have to know draw­ing, en­gi­neer­ing and even some­thing about ma­chines.
I also learned his stu­dents work with Sec­ond Life and I’d like to cre­ate a vir­tual com­mu­nity for my nurs­ing stu­dents to prac­tice cul­tural and other as­pects of nurs­ing that is often dif­fi­cult in a clin­i­cal set­ting. ( so, Da­mon- you will be hear­ing from me, again and again…)
In short, this was pro­duc­tive from so may per­spec­tives- I am amazed at all the skills that stu­dents need to know – some are so dif­fer­ent but the col­lab­o­ra­tive skills and groups learn­ing trans­late from dis­ci­pline to dis­ci­pline.
Damon will change his pro­ject fro an in­di­vid­ual work­ing pro­to­type of some­thing that works to the class vot­ing on the 3 or 4 best pro­jects and tak­ing them from con­cept to com­ple­tion. They will make a video for their port­fo­lios. They stu­dents will have to use group work- dis­cus­sion- plan­ning and con­flict res­o­lu­tion. To get this pro­ject to work.
Bar­bara in ar­chi­tec­ture wants to add high im­pact prac­tices weekly and then add a group pro­ject using our iconic Brook­lyn Bridge.
I was glad to learn that our Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy de­part­ment will be help­ing to pre­pare our nurs­ing stu­dents to work col­lab­o­ra­tively in a group with as­signed roles and where they will have to re­ally think about how they per­formed in the group no just learn to iden­tify the mi­crobe. I am also happy they will be going out and learn­ing about the com­mu­nity they will be serv­ing.
So, I am get­ting ready to re- work/ re­fine my as­sign­ment for Fall 2012 and I am ex­cited to be a part of this group- It is so en­er­giz­ing to hear all of the pro­jects oth­ers are think­ing of. I wish I could take all these classes.
The fac­ulty fel­lows pro­gram makes me happy to be in­cluded in this tal­ented and in­ter­est­ing group.