What is Lincoln Excellence in Teaching and Learning?

I find myself throwing around terms like “advancing the legacy” and “Lincoln Excellence” every now and then, especially when I’m trying to convince funding agencies that we are deserving of their attention. The word excellence is even part of the title of the office that I serve; The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.

I feel like I have a good grasp on what legacy means; it is the mark that Lincoln has made on the country and world through all its graduates. If we aim to advance the legacy, we simply (or not so simply) keep graduating students that succeed in their disciplines and intentionally work for positive change in their communities and in the world. This can be quantified and measured by the success of our alumni.

Lincoln excellence on the other hand – what is it? Excellence is “the quality of being outstanding or very good” according to Merriam Webster. Are we outstanding in our teaching practices? How do we know? What do we do to be outstanding? Part of me is convinced that we practice excellence in many things that we do in the classroom and beyond. The indirect measure of our excellence is the success of our students past Lincoln. But how can we measure excellence directly? What does excellence in the classroom look like? Is it our ability to engage students and help them learn? How do we know that what we individually consider excellence translates into learning that makes a difference for our students? Does your excellence look similar to my excellence? Are we aiming to educate students that show performance excellence or mastery excellence - the former being the ability to perform well on exams, while the latter includes the ability to use learned material to succeed in life.  Is excellence in a Visual Arts class the same as excellence in a Health Science or Math class? I am intrigued by Lincoln Excellence because I know that we produce outstanding graduates who go on to successfully pursue careers in government, the arts, music, accounting, law, science, medicine etcetera, but if somebody asked me for the recipe for how exactly we do this – and do it well – I would not be able to tell them. Can you?

I would love to read your thoughts on Lincoln Excellence in the classroom and beyond.

How do you practice excellence in your classroom?

Share your thoughts here or in this quick survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PJRY9HW

I will share any survey results in a future blog.

Creating Classroom Community

If your teaching experience is anything like mine, you may have some classrooms where everybody seems to work together and others where it feels like pulling teeth to get a discussion or a group project started. Some classes just seem to click, while others are as much a struggle at the end of the semester as they were in the beginning. Multiple surveys and educational research results that span K through Higher Education indicate that an engaging and welcoming classroom atmosphere, where students know and support each other, promotes learning (references listed below). It makes sense: wouldn’t you rather attend a class when you feel welcome, the professor and students know you, and you feel like you belong?

So what can we do to create a classroom community? Well, there are the obvious little things; learning the students’ names, asking them how they are doing, inquiring about their dorms and the cafeteria, celebrating athletic wins and commiserating over defeats. (If you watched the football game against Cheney last Thursday you may already have practiced commiseration this semester!) Those are all things that may help the students warm up to you, but how do you get them to know and trust each other? Creating a true classroom community takes intention and time on part of the instructor, but it is a time-investment that may be well worth it if you plan to use active learning techniques and group work in your class. In her article titled Love the One Your With: Creating Classroom Community, Cynde Geroge shares a radical approach that worked for her: http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/effective-classroom-management/love-the-one-youre-with-creating-a-classroom-community/

Are you intentional about creating classroom communities in your classes? If you are, what do you do? Please share so that we can learn from each other.

If you are interested in testing out a community-creating activity, join us on Thursday 9/15/16  (LHML 309 at 11:15 am). We will discuss what works and what doesn’t and you will be invited to share some techniques that work for you. If time allows, we will also scratch the surface of differences among creating school communities, classroom communities and learner communities.

Selected references on correlation between classroom community and academic achievement:

Holland, T., & Pithers, R. (2012). Enhancing Classroom Communities and Course Engagement. Learning, 28(27.1), 28-36. Retrieved from http://www.iutconference.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/HollandPithers_Paper_IUT2012.pdf

Reyes, M. R., Brackett, M. A., Rivers, S. E., White, M., & Salovey, P. (2012). Classroom Emotional Climate, Student Engagement, and Academic Achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104(3), 700-712. Retrieved from http://ei.yale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/pub316_Reyes_etal_2012_2.1.13.pdf

Wighting, M., Nisbet, D., & Spaulding, L. S. (2009). Relationships between Sense of Community and Academic Achievement: A Comparison among High School Students. The International Journal of the Humanities, 7(3), 63-72. Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1166&context=educ_fac_pubs​