2018 Transformative Learning Conference
March 8-9, 2018
Downtown Oklahoma City, OK
March 7, 2018, Pre-Conference Institute, Edmond, OK
CLICK HERE to download the 2018 Conference Program
CLICK HERE for the session slides and handouts from the 2018 TL Conference
“Student Engagement & Deep Learning:
Prompting, Measuring, & Documenting”
John Tagg
Changing to Learn"
John Tagg will give a Thursday plenary session on “Learning to Change, Changing to Learn”
and an afternoon workshop on
“Learning from Our Mistakes: Seeking Desirable Difficulties for Ourselves and for Our Students".
Peter Felten
Dr. Felten will give a Friday plenary session on “Partnering with Students for Transformative Learning” and an afternoon workshop on "Viewing Transformative Learning through the Lens of SoTL”
Pre-Conference STLR Institute
“Measuring Beyond-Disciplinary Learning Inside and Outside of the Classroom”
UCO Campus
In 2018 the TL Conference will be offering a pre-conference institute entitled STLR Institute: Measuring Beyond-Disciplinary Learning Inside and Outside of the Classroom, which is designed to assist campus- and system-based teams in conceptualizing, implementing, tracking and assessing students’ beyond-disciplinary learning, skills, and experiences during their time in college.
The institute will be led by UCO’s Center for Excellence in Transformative Teaching & Learning (CETTL). The speakers and facilitators of the sessions will include faculty and staff from UCO who are building and using STLR, as well as faculty/staff from Western Carolina University (North Carolina, USA) and Massey University (New Zealand) who have adapted STLR’s setup for their campuses.
"Western Carolina University adapted STLR into what we call DegreePlus as a way to teach valuable skills that employers need, increase student involvement in campus activities, and improve student learning and engagement. DegreePlus launched Fall 2017, and we’ve been able to take ideas from how UCO deploys STLR and customize them to our needs, mission, branding, and goals for student success."
--- Arthur Salido, Exec Dir for Community and Economic Engagement & Innovation
By the end of the Institute, participants should be able to:
- Communicate to internal and external constituencies what the STLR model process is and does, and why its value-add is compelling
- Share results of successful STLR implementation at multiple institutions in illustration of adaptability to different institutional types and cultures
- Implement at least two proven messaging techniques to obtain faculty buy-in
- Describe multiple accrediting agencies' embrace of STLR (both institutional and programmatic accreditation)
- Prepare an overview of the STLR model, process, tools, & training as adapted to one's home institution
The Institute program is ideal for institutions at various stages of work, and it addresses ambitious goals for improving retention, quality of student learning, and better assessment tracking and practices for both internal and external campus evaluation. We hope you’ll join us!
At the University of Central Oklahoma students receive colored graduation cords in the colors of the tents that constitute the skills and attributes beyond disciplinary learning (i.e., Global & Cultural Competencies; Health & Wellness: Leadership; Research, Creative & Scholarly Activities; and Service Learning & Civic Engagement).
- Center for Excellence in Transformative Teaching & Learning
- Transformative Learning Home
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- Journal of Transformative Learning
- Student Transformative Learning Record (STLR)
- Masonic Endowment Award
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Questions:
Contact jhorn9@uco.edu
cmoore60@uco.edu or
405.974.5570
For Your PCard
Click here to download the signed Pre-Payment Authorization Form
2018 Transformative Learning Conference
Is transformative learning just for students? Or can organizations learn to change in ways that fundamentally alter their capacities for the better? Can a university learn to be a better university, not just incrementally, but in ways that enable whole new kinds of engagement with students? In this session, we will consider the governing values that make up an organizational paradigm, and how to change them. We learn from our mistakes, right? Well, sometimes we do, and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes hard tasks lead us to give up, sometimes to try harder. Do we learn more or better from some kinds of mistakes than from others? Do some kinds of mistakes create cognitive dissonance that leads to deeper learning? Do some create disorienting dilemmas that lead to transformative learning? We will explore the extent to which our students learn from their mistakes, and the extent to which we do. We will seek to discover how we can assess our errors, not to avoid them, but to make them productive.John Tagg
John Tagg is an independent writer and consultant on learning in higher education. His book The Learning Paradigm College (Jossey-Bass, 2003), describes a research-based approach to redesigning higher education in the service of student learning and provides detailed examples of colleges and universities that exemplify the Learning Paradigm. According to Russell Edgerton, President Emeritus of the American Association for Higher Education, “this remarkable book takes the national conversation about taking learning seriously to a new level." He has conducted workshops and made presentations at more than 100 colleges and universities and has published in many higher education periodicals including Change, About Campus, Planning for Higher Education, and The International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. He is professor emeritus of English at Palomar College, where he taught from 1982 until 2009.Thursday, March 8, 2018 Plenary Session
By John Tagg“Learning to Change, Changing to Learn”
John Tagg’s Thursday afternoon workshop
"Learning from Our Mistakes: Seeking Desirable Difficulties for Ourselves and for Our Students"
2018 Transformative Learning Conference
Colleges and universities can and should be life-changing places for students. Higher education offers students the chance to learn deeply and broadly, to hone professional and personal skills, and to wrestle with fundamental questions of meaning, purpose, and identity. The potential for individual transformation is immense, as is the possibility of contributing to changes socially, economically, culturally, scientifically, and politically. Too often, however, students drift through the academy, learning little that lasts and missing a unique opportunity to transform themselves and to develop new capacities to enhance our world. In this interactive session, we will explore how the beliefs that we (faculty and staff) have about learning and expertise shape our educational practices – and how those practices make transformation more, or less, likely for our students. In other words, we will consider how our own assumptions enable or constrain student learning and transformation. This session will draw on interviews and focus groups with hundreds of students, faculty, and staff who were asked to reflect on their own experiences with learning and teaching in higher education. One theme emerging from this research is the nature of the relationships that contribute to transformative learning. Powerful experiences commonly involve a blurring of the traditional roles in higher education institutions; rather than “student” and “professor” equating with novice and expert, during many transformative experiences the two act as partners in the shared task of learning. Building from this research, we will consider practical ways that faculty, staff, and students can become partners in the challenging yet essential work of making higher education a transformative experience for all. Transformative learning can be hard to see as it is happening. The rearview mirror is one helpful tool for spotting it. While we are speeding through our own lives (or witnessing our students zip through college), we can catch glimpses of significant change here or there. The full picture, however, tends to come into focus only when we have covered enough distance to have a clearer perspective. Looking back, we often can see how the pieces fit together. Another way we look for transformation is to try to see patterns and trends among a large sample of individuals. This is how educational research often works. Scholars typically cannot tell us if a certain practice (undergraduate research, service learning, and so on) will lead to transformational learning for a particular student, but they can assure us that in general certain experiences yield specific outcomes. Both the rearview mirror and large-scale research have their uses, but how can individual faculty and staff develop a clear image of transformative learning in their own classrooms and interactions with students? We rarely have the gift of time (“Let me know if 10 years if this helps”) nor do we work with large enough groups of students to effectively identify significant patterns. How can we see what is happening with our students now in ways that can help us challenge and support them in their transformation? In this workshop, we will use the lens of SoTL (the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) as a way to focus our attention on the processes and products of transformative learning. We may not be able to see the big picture on a day-to-day basis in our classrooms or programs, but what can we see more clearly by taking a scholarly view of learning and teaching? The workshop will introduce novices to some practical SoTL methods that can be applied in many disciplines and contexts, and it will encourage more experienced SoTL scholars to hone their ongoing inquiries. At the end of the workshop, participants will have a sketch of a SoTL project they can use to envision their own students’ transformative learning. Peter Felten
Peter Felten is assistant provost for teaching and learning, executive director of the Center for Engaged Learning, and professor of history at Elon University. At Elon, he works with colleagues on institution-wide teaching and learning initiatives, and on the scholarship of teaching and learning. As a scholar, he is particularly interested in learning and teaching, individual and institutional change, and student experiences and agency in higher education. His books include the co-authored volumes: The Undergraduate Experience: Focusing Institutions on What Matters Most (Jossey-Bass, 2016); Transforming Students: Fulfilling the Promise of Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014); Engaging Students as Partners in Learning and Teaching (Jossey-Bass, 2014); Transformative Conversations (Jossey-Bass, 2013); and the co-edited book Intersectionality in Action (Stylus, 2016). He has served as president of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (2016-17) and also of the POD Network (2010-2011), the U.S. professional society for educational developers. He is co-editor of the International Journal for Academic Development and a fellow of the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education.Friday, March 9, 2018 Plenary Session
By Dr. Peter Felten“Partnering with Students for Transformative Learning”
Dr. Felten’s Friday afternoon workshop
"Viewing Transformative Learning through the Lens of SoTL"
2018 Transformative Learning Conference
March 7, 2018 Drawing upon evidence-based research, High-Impact Practices (HIPs), Transformative Learning, and authentic assessment tools, the University of Central Oklahoma’s Student Transformative Learning Record (STLR, http://stlr.uco.edu)* is a non-proprietary model with a proven track record for increasing retention, student academic achievement, and workforce readiness. Other institutions that have adopted and adapted STLR to their missions, cultures, and specific needs are now finding this to be true for them, too, whether they call the process “STLR” on their campuses or name the process something more suited to their branding. This pre-conference institute will gather interested institutional teams to learn about the STLR initiative. CETTL and STLR facilitators will cover: Facilitators from Western Carolina University (North Carolina, USA) and Massey University (New Zealand), who have adapted STLR’s setup for their campuses, will share: --- Arthur Salido, Exec Dir for Community and Economic Engagement & Innovation "Massey University has adapted STLR into Kahurei as a way to allow all our students --- Sarah Leberman, Dean, Academic; Research, Academic and Enterprise Institutional team time will be built into the Institute program to allow participants to conceptualize a plan of implementation or framework at their home institutions. Teams will be able to consult with Institute facilitators about their own plans or models during team time. In addition to STLR Institute staff, UCO STLR faculty, Student Affairs staff, and IT staff will be available for answering questions or suggestions (such as how to get faculty or administrative buy-in; how co-curricular groups, events, and projects work within the framework and document the learning; how the program works in the LMS behind the scenes; etc.) Attendees will present their plans for implementation, or next steps, during the 2018 Transformative Learning Conference, March 8-9 in Oklahoma City, OK.STLR Institute: Measuring Beyond-Disciplinary Learning Inside and Outside of the Classroom
University of Central Oklahoma, Edmond, OK
"Western Carolina University adapted STLR into what we call DegreePlus as a way to teach valuable skills that employers need, increase student involvement in campus activities, and improve student learning and engagement. DegreePlus launched Fall 2017, and we’ve been able to take ideas from how UCO deploys STLR and customize them to our needs, mission, branding, and goals for student success."
to develop themselves in a holistic manner as reflective practitioners, by creating their unique ‘adorned cloak’. Kahurei acknowledges Massey as a Tiriti-led university within Aotearoa New Zealand. Our discovery project launched in Semester 2, 2017, and we’ve been able to take ideas from how UCO deploys STLR and customize them to our needs, mission, branding, and goals for student success."
The Institute is a workshop style format, with hands-on, interactive components, case scenarios, and group work time.
Conference Presentation Slides & Handouts
Tim Ellis - Social Interactions that Produce Deep Holistic Learning for Life Long Transformative Learning Experiences - Slides Tyler Weldon et. al. - Exploring the Embodied Brain for Student Engagement & Deep Learning - Handout 1 & Handout 2 Catherine Peck et. al. - Reflections of a Fitness-Based Intergenerational Experience - Handout John Wood et. al. - How Can we Transform Generation Z - Slides Carrie Snyder-Renfro et. al. - Getting From Here to There: Using Gamification to Build Social Capital and Transformative Learning - Slides Katherine Jones et. al. - Building Midterms IKEA Style: Transforming Learning via DIY Assignments - Handout Kelly Ross et. al. - Designing for Transformative Learning: Your Online Course - Handout Niesha Ziehmke - Elevating Work in the Experiential Learning Pathway at Guttman Community College - Slides Ronald Oscar Bernard - Nurse Educators Teaching Through the Lens of Transformative Learning: A Case Study - Handout Peter Felten - Partnering with Students for Transformative Learning - Slides Cassie Hudson et. al. - Increasing Understanding of Transformative Learning Experiences of Novice Educators Through Critical Reflection - Slides Linda Harris et. al. - Pre-Service Teacher Professional Identity Development Through Campus Leadership - Handout Stephanie Canada-Phillips - Disruption and Disequilibrium in the Classroom: Examples of Theory to Practice in Launching Transformative Learning - Handout & Slides Stacie Southerland et. al. - From Ideas to Action: Tools for Implementing Learning Innovation and Transformation - Handout Tawni Holmes - Using Team Based Learning to Launch Transformative Learning in the Classroom - Handout Peter Felten - Viewing Transformative Learning through the Lens of SoTL - Slides Mark Walvoord - Transformative Learning Basics - Slides Lisa Abney et. al. - Writing Matters: Engaging and Transforming Student Writing and Revision To Encourage Life-long Writers - Slides Niyaf Alkadhem - Launching Transformative Learning in Iraq through UCO Fulbright Experiences - Handout & Slides
100 North University Drive, Edmond, OK 73034 | (405) 974-2000