2014: Explores Inquiry-Guided Learning

May 12-15

Oxford College of Emory University announces the 8th Annual Institute for Pedagogy in the Liberal Arts (IPLA). This year’s program offers both individuals and institutions a unique opportunity to explore inquiry-guided learning (and other pedagogies). Both applications, the institutional and the individual faculty application, are here on this IPLA website.

IPLA 2014 Explores Inquiry-Guided Learning

In 2012, a new publication in the New Directions for Teaching and Learning (NDTL) series by Jossey Bass presented the experiences of a number of institutions and individuals worldwide who had developed inquiry components within their institutions. This year’s IPLA has gathered many of these scholars and a number of others to explore the many ways of engaging students through inquiry assignments, courses, and programs. A very brief definition is here, and we encourage you to view inquiry as an array of approaches that foster gradual student independent inquiry.

What is Inquiry-guided learning?

From Virginia Lee website

Inquiry-guided learning (IGL) refers to an array of classroom practices that promotes student learning through guided and, increasingly, independent investigation of questions and problems for which there are no single answer. Rather than teaching the results of others’ investigations, which students learn passively, instructors assist students in mastering and learning through the process of active investigation itself. This process involves the ability to formulate good questions, identify and collect appropriate evidence, present results systematically, analyze and interpret results, formulate conclusions, and evaluate the worth and importance of those conclusions. It may also involve the ability to identify problems, examine problems, generate possible solutions, and select the best solution with appropriate justification. This process will differ somewhat among different academic disciplines.

Learning in this way promotes other important outcomes as well. It nurtures curiosity, initiative, and risk taking. It promotes critical thinking. It develops students’ responsibility for their own learning and habits of life-long learning. And it fosters intellectual development and maturity: the recognition that ambiguity and uncertainty are inevitable, and in response, we must learn to make reasoned judgments and act in ways consistent with these judgments.

A variety of teaching strategies, used singly or, more often, in combination with one another, is consistent with Inquiry-guided learning: interactive lecture, discussion, group work, case studies, problem-based learning, service learning, simulations, fieldwork, and labs as well as many others.

In fact the only method that is not consistent with IGL is the exclusive use of straight lecturing and the posing of questions for which there is only one correct answer.

IPLA Inspires Creative Pedagogy

A four-day professional-development conference, the Institute for Pedagogy in the Liberal Arts (IPLA) aims to inspire creativity and foster effective teaching in the liberal arts. The format consists of two two-day sessions where participants focus on new ideas to refresh and expand their teaching. Exemplifying Oxford’s emphasis on teaching excellence, the IPLA sessions typically focus on a broad range of topics, including inquiry-based learning, peer instruction, digital humanities, teaching/learning through technology, problem-based learning, case-based learning, methods of assessment, course design, sustainability as a pedagogical project, and a number of other issues and pedagogies used in higher education.

Conceived originally as one type of faculty support for Emory faculty, IPLA has grown to support the vision of Oxford College as a national model of a liberal arts intensive educational experience. Applications to IPLA arrive from faculty in institutions across the US and at times from Europe and Canada.

Session Info

3 Day IPLA for Institutions

This year’s IPLA will offer an additional program feature: a 3-day Institute on Inquiry as a Way of Learning in Colleges and Universities for institutions that wish to institutionalize inquiry-guided learning at the department or university level. Through a Call for Applications with an initial deadline of January 10, 2014, a limited number of institutional teams will be accepted. Leading the Institute are a group of international scholars with special expertise in implementing IGL campus-wide: Billy O’Steen (University of Canterbury, New Zealand); Rachel Spronken-Smith (University of Otago, New Zealand); Philippa Levy (Higher Education Academy, UK); Catherine Swanson (McMaster University, Canada); Virginia Lee (Higher Education Consultant, USA).

4 Day IPLA for Faculty

Note: Applicants select ONE track for Tuesday/Wednesday and another one for Thursday/Friday.

Tuesday/Wednesday

Engaging Students in Research and Inquiry (Mick Healey, University of Gloucestershire, UK and Martin Jenkins, Coventry University, UK)

Our argument is that ‘all undergraduate students in all higher education institutions should experience learning through and about research’ (Healey and Jenkins 2009, 3). Here it is suggested that the key to mainstreaming research and inquiry at undergraduate level is to integrate it into the curriculum. The workshop will: explore the variety of ways in which research and inquiry based learning are undertaken in Bachelor programmes from first year to final year using numerous mini-case studies from different disciplines, departments and institutions in North America, Europe, and Australasia; investigate practical ways of designing research and inquiry based learning into courses; and facilitate participants in designing research and inquiry based learning activities for their courses.

Inquiry-Guided Learning: Building a Comprehensive Assessment Plan (Carolyn Oxenford, Michael Schuchert, and Liane Summerfield, Marymount University)

Using as a framework Marymount University’s experience in assessing its recent undergraduate inquiry-guided learning initiative, participants will identify their unique institutional challenges and context for inquiry-guided learning. Attendees will draft learning and institutional outcomes; review and leverage their existing instruments, data and processes; and identify the need for developing new tools. Participants will leave with a successful, comprehensive assessment plan.

Course Design for Inquiry-Guided Learning (Beverley Taylor and Marjorie Nadler, Miami University)

Targeted towards those who are ready to move from trying out an inquiry guided learning activity in an existing course to designing or a redesigning a course with IGL as one of the fundamental principles, this session will combine course design basics with further exploration of IGL across the disciplines. The interactive workshop will include a brief overview of the IGL program at Miami University, an exploration of a variety of approaches to inquiry-guided learning, and a step by step course design process in which assessment of student learning is foregrounded. Time to work on your course and inquiry activities and consult with the leaders and other participants is built in throughout the workshop, so participants are encouraged to bring syllabi and/or class activity/assignment materials to work on during the workshop.

Inquiry-based Approaches in Undergraduate Science Courses: Learning Science Through Science Process (Ben Wu, Texas A &  M University, and Brenda Harman, Emory University)

Inquiry-based approaches which facilitate the learning of science through science process have been shown to improve conceptual understanding, develop essential competencies, foster a deeper understanding of science, and influence attitudes toward science in general. This interactive workshop will explore a range of inquiry-based learning approaches in undergraduate science education, from guided inquiries to extended authentic inquiries. Participants will have the opportunity to develop or enhance inquiry-based learning modules and well-designed assessments for and of learning in their own courses.

Thursday/Friday

It Begins with a Question: Student Learning and the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SoTL) (Nancy Chick, Vanderbilt University)

Teaching and Learning Through Inquiry (Lee, 2004) serves as a good reminder that deep learning often begins with questions, is driven by curiosity, explores problems, is supported by a community, and may result in multiple answers. So, too, is the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Instead of merely observing our students learning (or not), we can participate in an inquiry-guided teaching that actively asks questions we care about, explores the related problems, relies on the wisdom of our colleagues and our students, and leads to possible answers we share with our peers. In this workshop, participants will begin with a question—and plan a SoTL project.

Bringing an “off-campus” Component to the Undergraduate Curriculum (Michael McQuaide, Emory University)

This session brings into focus the goals, and necessary resources of creating courses that remove students from the physical location of their college campus. The virtues of an off-campus component of a course is the possibility to bring students to the issue. Bringing students to the physical location that allows for first-person experience with both the issue and persons attempting to address the issue. An important goal of an off-campus curriculum is to increase civic competencies, especially the cognitive ability to make important connections between our private and public lives. Every decision that we make, even the most intimate ones, have social consequences. Offering opportunities for undergraduate to participate in issues where the issues emerge allows for a greater and immediate awareness of the dynamics inherent in each field of study. The sessions will focus on the challenges of recruiting, funding, and the logistics of such off-campus experiences.

A Domain of Your Own (Christine Lofline and Jim Brown, Emory University)

Experience how you and your students may build personal, unique and expansive digital domains to publish and archive intellectual work throughout the college career and life beyond. You will register and create a personal and working Internet domain for yourself and utilize various information tools (and discuss appropriate composition concerns) to create an online representation of your multiple scholarly pursuits and work. This track covers technical, design and writing skills and issues.

Teaching International Students: Challenges and Solutions (Meta Larsson and Sharon Cavusgil, Georgia State)

Students from all over the world enroll in increasing numbers in U.S. universities and their varied linguistic and cultural backgrounds pose many challenges for university faculty who often have little or no training in meeting the specific needs of these students. The focus of this session is on strategies for working with non-native English speakers to help them succeed in academic coursework, and suggestions for fostering a mutually rewarding experience.

IGL 3-day Institute for College and Universities  (Tuesday–Thursday, Rooms in College Library)

• Engaging Students in Research and Inquiry
• Inquiry-Guided Learning: Building a Comprehensive Assessment Plan
• Course Design for Inquiry-Guided Learning
• Inquiry-based Approaches in Undergraduate Science Courses: Learning Science Through Science Process

Thursday, May 15–Friday, May 16 (second 4 tracks of IPLA for faculty)

• It Begins with a Question: Student Learning and the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SoTL)
• Bringing an “off-campus” Component to the Undergraduate Curriculum
• A Domain of Your Own
• Teaching International Students: Challenges and Solutions