Retreat Overview

This retreat will give you the opportunity to examine the way you teach a particular course. Perhaps you have been teaching the same course for years and want to modify it to incorporate more of what we know about how people learn. It could be that you are about to teach a new course for the first time. Or maybe you want or need to demonstrate more evidence for student learning in your course.

Over the course of the retreat, we will engage in a series of activities that will help you think about your course from the student learning perspective. You will learn about pedagogical techniques by engaging in them, not just by hearing about them. You will leave the workshop having begun to (re)design your course and with an action plan and resources for continuing the process.

In addition, by taking advantage of the location and retreat aspect of this retreat, you will have time to interact with your colleagues in your disciplines, departments and division. By leveraging the informal time of this workshop, we want you to work toward building partnerships, collaborations and sources of support for building community.

Retreat Goals

By the end of this retreat, participants will be able to:

  • Identify goals and essential questions of their courses
  • Articulate big ideas for student learning
  • Articulate learning targets and design a aligned assessments (success criteria)
  • Design/modify a learning activity based on best practices from research on learning
  • Align learning goals, assessments and instruction
  • Build a community of practice that supports student learning across STEM at WCC

Dates

Tuesday, September 6th, 5:30-8:30pm

Wednesday, September 7th, 8am-5pm

Thursday, September 8th, 8am-5pm

Expectations

In order to achieve the goals of this retreat, participants are expected to:

  • By August 31,
    • Complete the pre-retreat submission, which will generate a web page that you will be working on during the workshop, and
    • Complete a survey about your teaching practices;
  • During the workshop, participate in all sessions, develop and submit an action plan, and complete a workshop evaluation
    • Bring your own laptop on which to work during the retreat
    • Bring any materials you need for your course that you want to modify/develop
  • After the retreat, complete a follow-up survey as requested and submit an activity to the SERC website.

Costs

All costs are covered by the NSF Grant#: 1347711 award abstract and the WCC Foundation

Facilities

The workshop will take place at Semiahmoo Resort: http://www.semiahmoo.com

For More Information

For questions about the workshop, please contact Kaatje Kraft (kkraft AT whatcom.ctc.edu).