Inquiry is one of those pedagogies that’s really hard to get. Inquiry is a big deal at McMaster (where I work) yet I’m certain I don’t have a good enough handle on it. Rochelle (who was also at STLHE) has a great post on the topic, including a whole slew of questions around the wisdom of dropping students into an inquiry-based learning environment and expecting them to know what questions to ask when they don’t even know the basics of the topic. I don’t have any answers but I’m in a good place to do some discovery (a few of the librarians I work with are active contributors to inquiry-based curricula), so I plan to take a few colleagues out for coffee and pick their brains. I’ll report back when I have something to add to the discussion. For now, here are my notes from this session (which was a great session that answered many of my preliminary questions).

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History of inquiry @ mcmaster
- 25-ish years old
- is university education the sum total of the courses that we take?
- inquiry as student-identified, student-driven.
- inquiry came in as a rear guard, underground, grassroots kind of movement, then it infused and infiltrated up to the top
- stared in 1979, by 1991 it had spread into Science & Engineering
- by 1997, other faculties bought in
- currently, 38 courses at McMaster have the word “inquiry” in the course title
- how did that diffusion happen? why?

Benefits of the inquiry methodology
- student engagement
- fosters active learning
- student confidence
- student interest
- encourages faculty members to explore these methodologies
- creates lifelong learners
- encourages critical thinking
- enhances student success
- skills-based
- inquiry mirrors the research enterprise and process

What are some of the challenges to the introduction of inquiry into the curriculum? (these came from the audience)
- no obvious payoff to the faculty
- departments would be resistant about diverting resources away from teaching the content
- inquiry is “a fad”
- inquiry takes time away from content. nothing we can do about this. but the fact is, the skills will pay off later for acquiring content
- cost of inquiry: high relative to a large lecture. But when you’re teaching skills, you can’t do it in a room with 300 students. A kin to teaching a language.

Getting inquiry to work
- start with an able champion (doesn’t make much difference when introducing inquiry into a course; but when you’re introducing curriculum change, this is crucial)
- start tracking outcomes from the start (creates a benchmark for students and faculty, goal is for everyone to be able to measure change, which is easier to do if you have a benchmark from the beginning; also allows you to be ready to answer your critics; useful for building support later; makes the exercise scholarly)
- if possible, use a team of instructors. why? role change is a challenge; a team can provide a range of experience. add someone from the teaching support office (or library); team creates interdisciplinary social environment; creates a learning community for students and faculty
- recruit senior students (use successful former students as peer tutors; as a window into the course; to test materials)

Is anyone doing research into online learning communities and online social networks? There’s so much potential there! This occured to me as I listened to Corey talk about BIOME, the online portal for Life Sciences students that he set up at the University of Toronto. The project sounds amazing, and very sucessful from the evidence he provided. The other project Corey covered was the meatspace learning communities they set up for first-year Life Sciences students. More details below.

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Intro
- Corey teaches labs in a large 1st year Biology course at the University of Toronto
- both projects described in this session are intended to enhance student success
- enhancing the student experience is the #1 priority at U of T right now.

The student experience
- enjoyment of the courses
- satisfaction with grades
- connection to campus community (this is what students will remember)
- everything else – advising, classroom quality, IT resources, library resources, etc.

Where did the idea come from that they need to build community?
- survey that said that 60% of students didn’t feel “connected”
- 55-70% said they were receiving lower grades than expected
- 40% said they found transition to university challenging

Online learning community called BIOME
- web portal
- online discussion forum
- for life science students

BIOME web portal
- links to news and events
- profiles of faculty that change weekly
- chat rooms
- information about courses and course websites
- info on special lectures on campus
- student life: counseling, etc.
- tools: campus map, my biology library site, information lit tutorial called the “information foraging tutorial”
- right now 2700 students visit the site everyday
- 5120 have registered to use the chat rooms
- usage peaks on monday mornings and during exam period

Discussion forums
- threaded discussion forum powered by vBulletin
- the forum is not the course website, most courses also have their own website (on BlackBoard)
- private messaging within the forum also
- indicators to say who is logged in

Elements of a successful online community
- the cohort is important. probably wouldn’t work for ALL students, you need smaller cohorts
- student 2 student: faculty is there, but it’s mostly a student space
- social presence – e.g.: general chat. they want an area to be social on this space as well
- rules need to be established right off the top. clear rules as to what is acceptable and not acceptable academic behaviour (e.g.: no sharing assignment answers)
- comfort zones – this is where faculty can get uncomfortable (hard to accept what they’re saying and how they say it!)
- lurkers learn – literature shows that 1/3 of students read & post messages; 1/3 read only; 1/3 rarely read or post
- allow for identity & fun – avatars, emoticons, signatures. the more they can personalize their space, the more involved they will be
- restricted registration (@utoronto.ca email addresses only)
- administrator, moderator, users. moderators are students (they have a selection process). messages go automatically to the board (nothing is filtered) but the moderators keep watch and move content to appropriate categories/threads when needed
- student input – crucial! if you don’t respond to what the students want, they will stop coming
- avatars are important because it’s their online identity
- BIOME now has meatspace meetings and events! relationships are built online and grow offline

How do you measure success?
- difficult!
- they do online surveys (respondents self-select, which is problematic too)
- anecdotal evidence: 5000 users, 22,000 threads on the forum, 360,000 messages posted a year, 220 forums (for 120 courses)

Year-end evaluation: 20% of community responded
- 62% visit once a week
- 30% visit once a day
- 38% post and read messages
- 50% only read (lurkers)
- 68% visit the academic forums
- 85% of respondents agreed that BIOME was a useful resource

- is there any way of assessing the quality of the academic discussion? there is no formal mechanism but anecdotal evidence suggests that quality starts low and and then increases as the term goes on. even in instructor-moderated forums, it’s a good idea for instructors to wait 24 hours before responding to questions, wait for the students to answer questions amongst themselves. it’s self-correcting too, wrong information is often corrected.

First-Year Learning Communities – FLCs (“flicks”)
- help new students fit in at the University (which is large!)
- meet classmates, develop friendships, form study groups, develop academic and personal skills
- 2005-6 pilot year. Life Science students taking large classes not living in residence
- they were block registered in all their classes and their FLCs were added to their schedules
- college-based – all students in the FLC were in the same college
- 24 students per FLC
- non-credit. Appears on their transcript as a non-academic activity if they complete it
- facilitated by a student peer mentor, under guidance of staff and faculty mentor (student peer mentors are upper year life science students)
- peer mentor runs the program but there’s also a faculty member present

Topics:
- gettng a job
- choosing a program
- stress management
- exam prep
- research opportunities
- study groups
- time management
- the sessions can have guest speakers, etc. one rule: no powerpoint presentations! they’re supposed to be interactive sessions
- social activities have to be included
- every group gets a $250 stipend as seed money for social events, food for meetings, etc.
- year-end banquet, 160 students came!

Detailed assessment:
- everybody was assessed
- participation rate was 85%
- very good results, mostly all positive
- self-selected, so only students who wanted to do it did it (motivated students)
- cost was $400 per student during the pilot

Future:
- FLCs expanding next year
- adding computer science and commerce

Essential elements for learning communities to work:
- champions in discipline areas
- define cohorts, core courses, schedules
- cohort-specific programming
- staff & faculty advisors
- peer mentor training and support
- meeting space is critical. don’t meet in a classroom, it needs a multi-purpose room that has comfortable seating, etc. More of a social space.

I got to this session a few minutes late so I missed the introductory remarks. I got the sense that most of the attendees were librarians (with maybe 5 faculty members present) which was a recurring (and unfortunate) theme at the conference: all sessions about integrating information literacy into the curriculum were mostly attended by librarians. A little bit of preaching to the choir! I’m not sure what the best solution would be to get more faculty members into these sessions but there is a determined collection of STLHE librarians that are organizing as we speak so hopefully we can come up with some creative solutions for future conferences. Anyway, this didn’t take away from the session at all — it was a great session! — and these notes do not do the discussion justice. But here we go anyway.

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- the 50-minute session doesn’t work. Period!
- you can’t give someone a 50-minute ski lesson and then take them to a double-black diamond ski hill and say “go to it” (Daniel’s words, paraphrased).
- at Thompson Rivers, they do four hours per term and would probably up that to 6 hours for future courses

Their observations:
- if there aren’t assignments attached to a library/info lit session, students won’t be as invested as they could be
- a lot of students, especially early in their university careers, don’t make the connection between the content they are learning and the research process. so, all too often the library sessions are seen as “add-ons”, in terms of “this will help you in this class”.
- librarians need to go beyond that and unpack the research culture and become an important part of that culture.
- the “content conundrum” – yes, content is important. But content changes, skills do not. We have to move beyond tool-teaching and teach research and discovery (because the tools change too often also).

Lessons learned:
- plan well before the semester begins
- integrate librarian into the course
- begin early in the semester (have the librarian there for the first class where all the introductions happen, that way he/she does not feel like an interloper arriving out of the blue later in the term)
- integrate literature research process into regular lectures
- emphasize to students the adaptability of the skills they acquire to disciplines

Another session with scattered notes, but mostly because I was just sucked right into the energy Rochelle & Jason generated for the topic! They did a great tag-team job of presenting their content (no powerpoint!), their enthusiasm was palpable. They also recorded the session, more details + the mp3 are here. Since you can listen to the session for yourself, most of the notes below are my commentary.

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- Rochelle & Jason have funding to build a blogging tool for higher ed
- plan to build the platform independently (open source) and then integrate into BlackBoard
- both feel that there is no tool designed for higher ed
- they spoke a bit about some of the features that will be included, keep an eye on metaphorica.net (their collaboartive site) for details.

blogging & pedagogy
- we already know that learning doesn’t just happen in the classroom. Blogging provides a venue for student reflection when the “a ha! moment” (Rochelle’s words) does happen, wherever/whenever that may be.
- both speakers also mentioned the “ownership” students feel over their blogs and their online presence (customization, avatars, etc. contribute to this).
- student blogs foster reflection on not just the content but the learning process, allowing them to engage in that process (as well as the learning processes of their classmates).
- it’s not about the technology, that just enables. it’s about the pedagogy!
- Jason mentioned a couple of techniques he uses to actually get his students to blog: he requires x number of words before class, then students are organized into groups of 6-10 and they go away and read each other posts and are encouraged to comment on a significant number of posts. They also have to respond to the comments they receive on their blogs.
- “curriculum of the hallway” (Jason’s words) – what a great way to put it! Because, yes, learning does happen outside of the classroom.
- both speakers also mentioned that they don’t prep their students in “online etiquette”, they learn this on their own (probably even more effective).

My notes here are a bit scattered. The main takeaway for me was the discussion around the importance of valuing teaching in an institution (whether that is with monetary rewards or not; although, from the discussion, it seemed clear that without the monetary reward, teaching would never be as high-profile as research). Another interesting part of the discussion is the work that’s being done in Hong Kong with TLQPR (teaching & learning quality process review) which looks like a pretty extensive instrument. Lots on the web about TLQPR.

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some of the ways assessment is currently done (examples from the room)
- student feedback
- feedback from practitioners
- retention and graduation rates
- exit surveys
- programme advisory groups
- alumni surveys
- programme review
- peer review & feedback
- accreditation review
- teaching awards
- performance review, tenure & promotion

Ronald’s experience:
- institutions don’t do it well
- there are lots of issues with assessing quality (what’s quality?)
- productivity
- accountability
- honouring the trust – parents trust us with their kids. are we honouring that trust?

Ronald’s experience in Hong Kong:
- teaching development grants were given out generously
- having the money wasn’t the only answer
- everything was focused on research so that got all the money
- TLQPR was put into place to swing the pendulum back to teaching

what would a culture of quality teaching & learning look like?
- teaching and learning are our primary functions
- continued efforts to assure and enhance the quality of teaching and learning within the institution (at the institutional level, at the individual level)

the purpose of TLQBR
- to maintain the focus on teaching and learning as the primary mission of the institution
- to inform funding (because if money is not attached to it, all the extra money goes to research)
- some faculty members think of the teaching part of their job as philanthropy. what they’re really there for is the research

- quality has two facets: did you design it and did you do it?
- how do you use the results of student assessment to improve teaching and learning?
- define quality in terms of student outcomes, not in terms of teaching
- substitute low cost for high cost resources where possible without hurting quality
- work collaboratively to achieve mutual involvement and support

- the needs of students are so much more diverse than the ability of the people working in the system can respond to. our structures are fixed: calendars, timing, certain ways in which information is traditionally carried through.
- students are looking for a smaller, more user-friendly experience. larger universities can’t quite cope or adapt as quickly. how do we create more innovative ways to transform the teaching and learning experience?
- for the foreseeable future, we have to put education at the forefront, as health has been over the past few years.
- health care takes us an incredible amount of our national energies and that will grow as the population ages. how to we take teaching and learning up to that level of focus?
- the Rae Review was a chance to talk to teachers and faculty about what’s going on & Rae’s conclusion is that there has been a deterioration of the quality of the student experience in Canada over the past 15 years
- shouldn’t underestimate the value of engaging students one-on-one.
- the producer-driven culture is too powerful in universities. not enough emphasis on the student experience
- one of the great complaints we hear from students: they want their educational experience to be far more seamless than it is (e.g.: high school to college to university, etc.)
- according to students, universities are the least reponsive, most bureaucratic, and the most difficult to deal with (compared to colleges & other educational institutions)
- far too little collaboration between universities and colleges, universities and surrounding communities, universities and other local institutions, etc.
- teaching has been downgraded to research. this is dangerous. this disconnects it from the student body, from the learning experience. on the other hand, you can’t have good teaching without research.
- this simplistic differentiation between teachers and researchers is dangerous and does not stand up to closer inspection
- “it doesn’t always matter what the question is, education is always part of the answer.”