The students in this collaborative project have worked closely to support one another's creative work as well as to provide encouragement to explore new mediums. They meet weekly to discuss readings, hold critique sessions for one another along with workshops to introduce new artistic forms. Students will display their work (2-D and 3-D), and discuss the experience of collaboration on both the quality and content of their work.

Last summer Professor Dipa Basu and seven first year students, including the Claudia Sandoval and myself spent a month studying in Kalimpong, India on Pitzer College‚s Global-Local program. We were there to study visual sociology. For Claudia and me, it was our first time ever traveling internationally. During our time spent in India, the three of us faced many obstacles in relation to our identity, our privilege and our gender. Each of us experienced these situations different for they were laid upon us for different reason, whether it was our phenotype, our accent or our socio-economic status. We were; however, able to come together as a collective group and talk about what our experiences were and the reasons why we encountered these situations. Our research examines all of the issues we faced while studying in Kalimpong. Privilege, identity and the ability to connect the global to the local were all very prevalent in our month long journey. Our paper will touch on all of these issues in relation to the social constructs of race, class and gender and how we, as women of color, encountered and dealt with those issues.

From cell phones to monopolizing individuals, disruptions are a common frustration for faculty and students alike.  While we recognize that disruptions are problematic, we rarely consider whether we agree on which ones most disturb teaching and learning.  Furthermore, we rarely talk with students about what they find most disruptive, or tap into their perceptions of the causes of disruptions and best practices for resolving them. 

Does everyone agree on what counts as disruptive to teaching and learning?  On what causes these disturbances?  On how best to resolve them?  A team led by Western Washington University students and faculty will facilitate this session, beginning with an opening survey.  Participants will compare their responses to results of the same survey administered earlier at WWU‚s Teaching-Learning Academy (TLA) as well as at the 2007 PNW Higher Education Conference. Using TLA‚s dialogue model, participants will explore survey results in roundtable dialogue groups.  They will then apply insights gained from the dialogue to provided scenarios of typical disruptions. The session will close with an effort to determine a shared sense of a disruption hierarchy, a synthesis of perceived disruptive causes, and a summary of best practices for minimizing and resolving disruptions to teaching and learning.

Senior-level work at Marlboro College includes completing a Plan of Concentration˜a highly focused project that represents a student's final year of academic work.  A major part of Patrick Tyrrell‚s Plan includes anthropological field research at the Bronx Zoo.  The project ties together his interests in anthropology, philosophy, and history to approach the zoo as a place that culturally constructs the stories of animals and their relationship to humans through architecture and spatial layout.  To develop this project, he is working with anthropology faculty member Carol Hendrickson in tutorials.  Seniors at Marlboro work within the context of one-on-one tutorials almost exclusively during their senior year, which promotes a close academic exchange of expertise between a student and faculty.

At the conference, Patrick will discuss his experiences working within the tutorial system and how it has fostered his development as a researcher.  He will speak about his project, from its earliest stages in a fieldwork design class, to the creation of his research proposal for review at both the College and Zoo, to his subsequent field observations on-site in New York City and his writing.  Carol will address questions of working in tutorials with a wide range of students, each with a research "dream." Central to her consideration as a faculty is the question:  how to work closely with students and provide expert advise when, in fact, the topic a student has chosen is not one of your specialties?  The result is often an incredible learning experience for both student and faculty.

Devin, Kathryn and Michaela will discuss how collaboration has opened up new insights about interviewing as a tool for global understanding. Michaela and Devin each received a Fairhaven College Adventure Learning Grant and pursued interviewing projects in Tajikistan and South America, respectively. With the help of interpreters, Devin interviewed political leaders on energy policy as well as „persons on the street‰ about life in Bolivia.  He also interviewed community leaders in a reserve located in the Brazilian Amazon. Michaela interviewed women of all ages to investigate how economic transition has altered their opportunities and livelihoods. Throughout the process and in the months preceding, they were able to draw on Kathryn‚s support and experience to enhance their own endeavors. Michaela and Devin will share some findings revealed by the interviews and discuss the unexpected challenges that arose conducting interviews in the field.

In her role as coordinator of the Fairhaven College Adventure Learning Grant, Kathryn conducts interviews with recipients both before and after their grant years and a final exit interview a year after they return.  She will identify some of the themes these interviews have revealed about the experience of self-directed global study and travel, comparing the Adventure Learning Grant experience with the literature of travel and tourism among back-packers and others who travel independently over extended periods of time.

College mental health centers are rapidly converting to medical model diagnoses and treatments. This trend reflects and furthers the increasing numbers of students diagnosed and treated for depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, attention deficit disorder, and psychosis. Over the past two years, Gallatin students and one of their professors have been collaborating with the creative mental health community known as the Icarus Project to understand and address these issues. The Icarus Project is a voluntary association of people who reframe mental illness as a „dangerous gift.‰ For Icarus members, mental difference is not simply a negative phenomena˜it often gives valued insights and sensitivities outside the normal zone. While these can truly be seen as gifts, they also can lead to difficulties and alienation if not carefully tended. By keeping these two sides of mental difference together, Icarus members avoid previous anti-psychiatry critiques that romanticize mental difference. Yet, at the same time, Icarus opens the door to a range of creative alternatives for recovery and mutual support communities.  

Gallatin students inspired by the Icarus Project have found that there are limited opportunities for mutual support and alternative self-care on campuses. For that reason, they are creating the resources needed to set up Campus Icarus mutual supports across the country and have been piloting a Campus Icarus student life club at Gallatin. The purpose of this presentation will be to share this research with the broader higher ed community - a community which may be particularly appropriate for additional Campus Icarus initiatives.

Berea College's Academic Connections, Engagement, and Success (ACES) Initiative

The ecological restoration of native habitats on university campuses represents a key opportunity for students to gain experience with applying concepts of ecology and the hands-on challenges of environmental conservation.  At Western Washington University, the Outback Experiential Learning Facility has been the site of a student-led effort to restore a native wetland habitat.  Over the past fifteen years, an overgrown pasture and channelized ditch have been gradually transformed into a wooded, seasonally flowing stream that provides important ecosystem functions for downstream water quality.  At various stages, the Outback restoration work has involved watercourse modification, nursery propagation and replanting of seedlings of native woody and herbaceous plants, and removal and and management of invasive plant populations. 

Student accomplishments at the Outback have not only helped improved the ecology of the WWU campus, they have also served an important environmental education role by giving students hands-on exposure to ecological processes and how to work with the local biota and landscape of a site to improve ecological functioning.  One important lesson from the Outback experience is that ecological restoration efforts work best when they integrate opportunities for environmental education for all restoration participants, both students and the wider community.

The Bellingham Human Rights Film Festival is a collaborative venture of community members and businesses and campus faculty and students in creating an educational human rights  program that serves multiple purposes: 1) to provide  academically sound education on human rights issues 2) to give space for  intergenerational discussions on  human rights 3) to develop organizational and networking skills 4)to engage participants in action.

How does this collaborative experience of organizing a 10- night film festival come together with all volunteers?  What is the value of having students work with the larger local community and community members work with students and faculty? How can such partnering build solidarity between the campus and community in working for justice? What are some of the skills students develop in the process?

This collaborative experience, which has evolved over several years, provides an academically sound means to explore questions about human rights around the world. It engages the community in Whatcom County and the wider university community in intergenerational discussions about the human rights issues these films raise.  It offers information and opportunities for local and international action.  It provides an opportunity for students to develop organizational skills such as:  identifying and selecting films, negotiating with film distributors, arranging venues, fundraising, developing promotional materials and press releases, networking with non-profit organizations, coordinating volunteers.

This workshop celebrates this collaborative effort of the Bellingham and university community and welcomes from the participants new questions and ideas in pursuing the goals of this educational endeavor.

This presentation will focus on the process and outcomes of a collaborative writing project completed by New College of Florida students.  The collaborative writing project required the group of students to develop a comprehensive definition of social behavior.  The presentation will illustrate the process of collaborative writing as applied to this task. Additionally, it will show how students used different forums of collaboration inside and outside of the classroom to achieve a final product.

The successful final product demonstrates that collaborative writing projects can be a useful tool for teaching subject matter, group process, and knowledge creation. As such, the presentation will also represent the efficacy of this collaborative inquiry teaching method--through students’ eyes--to meet faculty-defined learning objectives.

College and university faculty usually enter the profession as experts in their own fields of study, but, typically, they have little to no training in the art and profession of teaching.  It is assumed that all that is required to teach at the college/university level is subject matter competence and currency, and as a result, many newly-minted lecturers and professors find themselves ill-equipped to navigate the complexities of designing and delivering a course.  Our project aims to bring together college students interested in the teaching profession and faculty who have some expertise in this area in order to firstly assess areas of need in the pre-service instruction and professional development of future college/university teachers, followed by the collaborative design of such (appropriate) instruction and development.

For the purposes of this project we will be looking at two pre-existing courses in the major˜English 497 and English 380 (both of which already contain some course content related to the teaching profession)˜with a view to enhancing teaching-specific curricula and instruction therein.

Currently, there is a growing emphasis in education literature to develop  teachers‚ capacity to situate learning in a local, or "place-based" context. Student-student collaborative inquiry is the emphasis of this presentation which describes the utilization of two promising technologies, Wikis and BlackBoard Discussion Board, that enabled students to meet some of these place-based goals.

Forty-two Elementary Education students used a Wiki Space to co-create resources for teachers of social studies. Students involved in this scholarly activity developed a web resource guide devoted to place-based education themes, constructed annotated bibliographies that provided overviews and ratings of articles devoted to social studies, and created detailed lesson plans highlighting place-based themes, that were then made available to the Wiki community.

Student-student collaboration is also demonstrated through the use of BlackBoard's Discussion Board feature. Through electronic dialoguing students were able to co-construct the meaning of a series of assigned readings permitting their professional voices to be heard in a fashion not always visible in classroom discussions.

This undergraduate-led effort reveals that Wikis and BlackBoard‚s Discussion Board can be promising tools to facilitate future teachers‚ scholarship of teaching and learning. This project provided authentic and collegial opportunities for Western teacher education students to collaborate to develop a better understanding of social studies education and ways to integrate place-based themes into social studies instruction.

Attendees of this presentation will see how Wikispaces and BlackBoard's Discussion Board have facilitated student-student collaboration and hear from students involved in this pilot project.

For five years John Bower has lead over 100 undergraduates in a marine bird census along 150 miles of coastline in NW Washington. Following the routes set in a 1970‚s seabird census, students are able to compare changes bay by bay over thirty years and consider changes in biotic and abiotic factors to explain the overall decline.

Students participate in all aspects of the census, including study design, fieldwork, data management and analysis, and writing and presenting results at professional conferences. The broad student involvement allows individuals to be as deeply involved as they wish. Taken in conjunction with traditional science classes the census can serve as a model and foundation for concepts and methods of study to build on throughout a science education; though a knowledge and appreciation of local ecology make it an invaluable learning experience for any student.

Students also participate in the educational component of the study, teaching each other through discussions and by teaching field skills to new students. The study has also provided many benefits to students, including providing scientific literacy through immersion in the scientific process, motivating students to develop strong scientific skills, encouraging the development of maturity by granting high levels of responsibility, and developing a close-knit and supportive student community.  Equally important is the benefit to the community and potential benefit to the seabirds themselves as the results are shared and published and used in practical applications.

In this talk we will discuss our experiences with this educational and scientific experiment, focusing on the experience of collaborative scientific research.

Our paper will detail the role student assistants have played in making possible Bernstein's civic competency oriented approach to an introductory American government class.  The student assistants facilitated simulations, making it possible for this innovative civic competency module to occur.  At a higher level, though, these students offered constant feedback as the project developed, and were Bernstein's eyes and ears in the classroom.  The facilitators had perhaps a greater sense of the contours of student learning than Bernstein did, and were able to offer constant feedback throughout.  For the students, of course, there were numerous benefits as well.  They worked closely with a professor, as colleagues in addition to as students.  They explored an area of work that was new to them and gained experience thinking like a scholar about teaching and learning.

In this paper, we will systematically assess the experience of these undergraduate students in the project.  We will use the autobiographical reflections of the three authors in building our argument, supplemented with survey and interview data with other current and former facilitators as they reflect on their work in the project.  We will also use the teaching journals and web logs that facilitators have kept as a way to make their learning visible.  At the heart, this paper aims to demonstrate the educational benefits that derive from involving the students in this way, and to offer our perspective on the richness that direct student involvement can add to scholarship of teaching and learning projects.

This presentation will discuss an action research project about how teachers in small rural elementary schools in Western Massachusetts have experienced the No Child Left Behind mandates.  Interested in understanding teachers‚ perspectives on accountability and standards, students enrolled in an education reform class partnered with three small, rural elementary schools and videotaped in-depth interviews with one quarter of the teaching staff, the superintendent, and all three principals.

Results of the videotaped interview project were conveyed through a 45- minute documentary, The Cost of Accountability.  Five students and their professor created the documentary the semester following the completion of the education reform course.  The documentary provides poignant evidence showing that educators, despite being in schools that were well resourced and meeting annual AYP targets, teach in a culture of fear.  They were caught in a complicated bind as they believed that the state test told them little about how their students were progressing (given the lack of statistical reliability in small schools), yet they still felt increasingly compelled to teach to the test.  The researchers argued that teachers in the these small schools found some aspects of the most recent push for standards and accountability useful, while at the same time, they were certain that NCLB constrained critical inquiry and exacerbated educational inequality in ways that were specific to educating in rural, small schools

The presentation will be conducted by a professor and student involved in the research/documentary project.  Both will discuss how this community-based collaborative research project lead to the development of new research questions and projects, social action, presentation experiences. If time permits, presenters will screen clips from the documentary. Audience members will be encouraged ask questions about any aspect of the project or documentary.

Have you always wanted to keep a journal but didn’t know where to start? Or maybe you’ve kept a journal since childhood and find it a safe place for reflection. This presentation provides valuable comments from students who were required to keep a journal as part of an upper-level Communication course. Students were given a weekly prompt and asked to reflect on course concepts in their journals.

The research findings explore the following: which is preferred, handwriting or typing the journal? Did students enjoy writing in the journal or was it considered a chore? Did they write diligently every week or wait until the last minute to compile the entries? Did students merely write for the instructor or were they honest and constructive in their entries? Research results also provide insight into methods educators can use to make journal writing more effective in the college classroom.

Participants will be given a topic and asked to freewrite for 5  minutes. This will lead into discussion of journal writing. The presentation will include findings from a survey and student input regarding journal writing as an assignment in an upper level Communication course.

This roundtable discussion will focus on the benefits of using collaborative student projects aimed at local community problems as an effective means of teaching and learning applied anthropology. Instructors can identify community problems, interests and resources compatible with course content and direct students to self select into small groups based on student topical interests and skills. Completing pilot research projects offer hands on experience to students in a rich and complex learning environment replete with real barriers and problems that will likely be encountered in future applied work. Students are motivated by meeting real community needs through collaborative research and action on local problems which often leads to tangible benefits to community interests. Further, students may use the project as the foundation for future research and collaboration with community partners. Participants worked on projects focusing on: improving the economics curriculum at Lummi Nation High School, decreasing language barriers in regional clinics serving immigrant populations, improving the coordination and communication between local environmental groups with a common interest in the cleanup of Bellingham Bay, and increasing the local Native vote.

The roundtable discussion will address the questions: What major difficulties were encountered when trying to form collaborative research relationships with community interests? Did overcoming these difficulties lead to learning or change on your part, and/or on the part of the community group? What tangible benefits did community groups receive as a result of the course project, and what role did these benefits play in your motivation throughout the project? What future actions can students, instructors and community members take to sustain the change or the benefits of these projects?