Libbie Morley Visit

Background Information

Libbie Morley taught undergraduate writing classes at the University of Kentucky and later went back while teaching to get her doctorate in educational policy in 2005. Before coming to University of Illinois, she worked at the writing center at the University of Kentucky for several years.

A writing center at the University of Illinois was created in the late 1940s as a consequence of a large influx of students after World War II lacking formal preparation for college and strong writing skills. In the 1980s, the writing center was called the Writing Clinic, and in 1989 the Center for Writing Studies was formed as a unit of the English Department, which took the administrative reins of the Writing Clinic. In 1990, the Writer’s Workshop opened its office in the Undergraduate Library, and since then has added locations in Grainger Library and Weston Hall. Until 2000, the Workshop was funded by the Provost. Today, the finances of the Writer’s Workshop are run by the Center for Writing Studies, with some funding from the College of LAS.

The purpose of the Writer’s Workshop is to provide writing assistance to anyone in the campus community. Although students often come in wanting someone to edit and proofread their writing, the consultants focus on helping with the more basic elements of following the writing prompt, organization of ideas, incorporating sources to support evidence for a thesis, and if there is time taking a look at grammar. The Workshop emphasizes the complete involvement of the student in improving his own writing. In a session, the consultant will take notes on what is said, but no marks are made on the writing--that is the responsibility of the writer. The writer can make changes or reject changes based on consultant suggestions. Sometimes the best result of the consultation is that the writer can verbalize ideas more easily than write them, and the consultant can guide the student to identify on their own what is missing in the writing.

It is necessary to schedule an appointment for the Writer’s Workshop, as consultants do not leave open time for walk-ins. The computerized scheduling system of the Writer’s Workshop, Tutor Trak, is a valuable tool for administrators like Libbie to be able to assess the effectiveness of the organization. This commercial scheduling software compiles such information as the student’s level in school, what type of writing the student has, if he or she is a native English speaker, and a list of additional demographic information. At the close of each month or semester, Tutor Track can report the number of students served, the number of repeat visits, demographic information, and tutor utilization. For example, around 85% of graduate students and 50% of undergraduates that come to the Workshop are non-native English speaking. Tutor utilization--the number of hours used of those available from consultants--is usually high (90-95%) compared to similar writing centers at other universities which may have an average of 75% tutor utilization.

Training the Consultants

The graduate student consultant training for the Writer’s Workshop consists of a two-day workshop before the semester begins. During this workshop, practice sessions are performed and questions are answered. The primary trainer is Libbie Morley, who assisted by returning grad student consultants. The two-day workshop is followed by 1-2 weeks of the trainee consultants observing veteran consultants’ sessions. Additionally, consultants are given some student papers to read and critique over the summer preceding their consulting semester. With these two activities, consultants are given experience in both face-to-face interactions with students as well as experience in improving papers.

The undergraduate student consultant training is similar to the grad consultant training, except that the undergrads are taking the consulting job for course credit, forcing all training sessions to be during the semester. In this case, a week’s worth of classes are devoted to consultant training. During the next one or two weeks (depending on the consultant’s experience,) the undergraduate consultants participate in co-consulting with a veteran consultant, participating in the consulting work but relying on the veteran consultant for direction.

In all cases, training sessions are concluded with a survey where trainees input their thoughts on the training sessions and how they can be improved. (It should be noted that these surveys are not ICES forms. Instead, they are short-answer surveys, allowing for a greater amount of response information to be collected.)

Volunteer workers are generally not accepted as consultants, unless they are returning consultants that Libbie Morley personally trusts. This is because there is no room for absences: if a volunteer worker decides not to come in one day, an entire day’s worth of appointments have to be canceled.

Grad students work as consultants as part of their graduate fellowship, and generally undergraduate students are compensated for their consulting work with course credit.

Other Details

Libbie’s favorite part about the Writer’s Workshop is working with consultants and writers. Her least favorite part, though, is not having the resources to help everyone. The statistics kept on the Writer’s Workshop show that the Writer’s Workshop could grow substantially and still have the same high rate of utilization. The main constraints in expanding the Writer’s Workshop are money and space.

The monetary constraint stands in the way of additional hours, more consultants, and extra services. Aside from the consultants and Libbie, the Writer’s Workshop also employs an office manager and two student workers. If the Writer’s Workshop offered more hours, the non-consultant employees would need to be paid for more hours. Currently, one reason the Writer’s Workshop cannot afford to be open over the summer instruction periods is because it cannot afford its auxiliary employees. Libbie admits that if the Writer’s Workshop received the funds to expand, she would like to have an assistant so that she could dedicate more of her time to the Writer’s Workshop instead of administrative duties. Adding more consultants would require the University to give more/larger assistanceships and course credit. Hiring more consultants, though, would be beneficial to the Writer’s Workshop in that more students could be served in better ways. More students could be served if the Writer’s Workshop could increase the number of consultants (or the number of hours) it has at satellite locations. Students could be served better with the addition of specifically graduate consultants because then graduate consultants could work exclusively with grad students and undergraduate consultants exclusively with undergraduates. Also, having more consultants available would allow the Writer’s Workshop to host special presentations both to specific organizations and to the general campus population, have walk-in hours, and do more “fun stuff.” Libbie refers to “fun stuff” as special events the Writer’s Workshop could host addressing items unrelated to writing for classes—such as creative writing seminars, personal writing seminars, general writing-improvement seminars, etc. Finally, the Writer’s Workshop does not offer very much, if any, professional development for its consultants. Libbie believes that consultants would benefit from being observed/taped and then having meetings to discuss their feedback. She believes this would help consultants with their consulting skills, personal growth, and professional presence. Naturally, longer hours staffed with more consultants would result in a need for additional space.

Summary of Session with Gretchen Winter

Summary
Ms. Winter spoke about the connection between social responsibility and student engagement. Having been exposed to many different fields before coming to the University of Illinois, she is an expert in professional responsibility. She strongly believes that “responsibility” should be dealt proactively as it’s necessary to reach the goal of sustainability. As a major influence on the development of the course BUS 101, Ms. Winter explores the benefits and possible expansions for the course. For our mentoring project, she advised us on effective peer mentoring designs and gave us insights on encouraging intrinsic motivations in students.

Background and education
Ms. Winter went to University of Illinois at Chicago for her undergraduate education majored in English and Secondary Education. Later, she received her J.D. from the University of Chicago. Ms. Winter went through a career spiral before becoming the Executive Director of the Center for Professional responsibility in Business and Society at the College of Business at UIUC. After receiving her degree, she worked for 18 years at Baxter International Inc. As an ethics officer, she took a part in developing the company’s global ethics program. She has also worked as an attorney and as a legislative analyst in Illinois. She is an expert on ethics, corporate social responsibility and legal programs across the US.

How she views corporate responsibility through her experience at Baxter

While creating the Code of Conduct at Baxter, Ms. Winter learned that the word “ethics” is not well received by her audiences. Because of so, she talked to focus groups around the world, and changed the word “ethics” to Standard of Business Practice. This way, she was able to reach out to the employees more effectively on the importance of corporate ethics/responsibility. She mentioned that while there’s a Code of Conduct during her work at Baxter, the ethics issues are not black and white. It’s up to the individuals to figure the right from the wrong. This is why she is very firm on the idea of taking a proactive approach on ethics issues in the workplace. It’s always ideal to resolve an ethics case prior to its happening rather than after.

Her definition of "Responsibility"

Ms. Winter introduced the concept of the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) – People, Planet, and Profit. She explains how TBL is essential in connecting corporate and societal interests. It describes the goal of sustainability linking the economics, the environment, and the social performance of a company. Tying to the concept of responsibility, Ms. Winter mentions that a commitment to corporate social responsibility implies a commitment to TBL, which will eventually help a company to achieve sustainability.

In addition, she made distinctions of the terms compliance, ethics and values. Compliance is something that one must do, ethics is what one should do, and values are what one aspires or strives to do. During her work at Baxter, creating the Code of Conduct helped her to distinguish between these terms.

Business 101

Business 101 evolved out of a need to foster three main goals: promoting professional responsibility from the perspective of the individual student, developing the individual's understanding of his or her profession's code of ethics (independent of an employer), and making companies that have these components of responsibility. Ms. Winter indicated that an individual's perspective on individual responsibility is most impacted by his or her 1st internship or job, and that these settings may not be fostering the most beneficial views. Business 101 provides an environment where individuals can be 'won' into developing personal responsibility.

Ms. Winter said that the class is lead by other undergraduates because the most effective leadership for freshmen comers from peers; however, this provides more opportunities in that the student leaders need to be taught class management skills and need a lot of support--something to take into account when talking about implementing a mentoring program or something similar to combat student disengagement.

We asked how Ms. Winter knows if Business 101 is effective. The only way to know is to look for measurable data. In this case, data is gathered in the form of student surveys, and idea which may carry over into our class projects. In any case, it is difficult to judge the effectiveness of the program.

Opportunities, not problems

Towards the end of our discussion, we asked Ms. Winter what lessons has she learned from the trial years of Business 101 and what problems are still being fixed. First, she clarified on an important point that there are never problems, only opportunities, changes or improvements. In the business world, you bring opportunities to the table as well as your solutions.

The first solution that Ms. Winter discussed was about the fashion show Business 101 is still changing. The first year, students went to Talbot’s and other high end business stores around the area. The feedback was that the suits were great, but the prices were way too high and unrealistic for freshmen or any student in college to consider. The following year, juniors and seniors were asked to show what they wore. The problem that arose was that people disagreed on what was appropriate, so how do you deal with these differences? They have not figured out a solution for this yet, but the second year obviously showed that it is good to have juniors and seniors talk to their fellow students.

Another opportunity that Ms. Winter saw in Business 101 and for all large lecture classes is that freshman really have no clue about what resources are available at this university. She wants Business 101 to help make this extra large university become smaller for students. The idea they are toying with right now is having a scavenger hunt throughout the semester. They want to have students go to various places around campus and meet as many people as possible. They want to help students start building relationships and to ingrain habits in them so that these students know how to navigate around this university.

How will we avoid the “101” trap?

One colleague asked Ms. Winter how she plans on making Business 101 sustainable. Many classes, similar to Business 101, start out great, but soon older students are telling incoming students that they do not need to worry about the course, that they can slack off. How will Business 101 keep its edge and maintain the respect of its students?

Ms. Winter’s first suggestion was to use a better name. “101” suggests that the class was more about survival skills in college when in fact it is about introducing students to professional responsibility. She hopes to encourage people to call it as “Business 101: An Introduction to Professional Responsibility.” Even a simple and small change like that could make all the difference.

Another suggestion is to keep the content fresh and different, so that one thing that happens one year does not happen the following year. Revamping information given in the class will keep the content current and new to students.

Her final idea she shared was to make Business 101 as only ONE step in the entire sequences of classes that teach professional responsibility. It is important to have other later classes tie with 101 and show the importance of the course. In the same way, our mentoring program needs to have support from the school and classes in order for students to fully participate and benefit from it.

Summary of Session with Mary-Ann Winkelmes

Courtesy of Team Ewe

Summary
Dr. Winkelmes spoke about a wide range of separate but interrelated teaching and learning topics in our interview. She is active in her job as Campus Coordinator for Programs on Teaching and Learning where she acts to unite the missions of the various teaching academies across campus. In this role, she also coordinates the transparency initiative that she has conceptualized and implemented. She is facilitating research on how professors can be more effective teachers through explaining "how and why" to students. In reference to the CHP 395 project on peer mentoring, Dr. Winkelmes suggested exploring peer mentoring programs by Elizabeth Morley of the University of Illinois Writer's Workshop and Michael Loui of the University of Illinois electrical and computer engineering department.

Background and education.
Dr. Winkelmes is a product of the Massachusetts public school system. She attended Wellesley College where she received her degree in English and art history. She received her M.A. from Yale in art history and her Ph.D. in Italian Renaissance art and architecture from Harvard. She started teaching Italian art and architecture thinking it would be her calling but became very fascinated by how the students were learning what she was teaching; she was just as curious about their learning as she was about the content. By accident, she stumbled into the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard. It is a center for graduate students and faculty to learn about teaching and learning. She was invited to do some consulting work for them, and then became associate director later on. When given the opportunity, she decided to focus on teaching and learning with professors rather than teaching art history to "pretty privileged liberal arts school students." Working with teachers would have greater impact.

What are the differences in teaching and learning across these universities (University of Illinois, University of Chicago, and Harvard)?
Dr. Winkelmes has worked at Harvard, University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois. She considers all three schools to be large research institutions that expect their faculty to publish in their field. However, she feels that the educational environment at the University of Illinois differs because of its status as a land grant institution. Education of the people matters here differently than it does at institutions like Harvard. The issues of diversity and accessibility are upheld in a different way here; this status makes it so that education of all people matters to the identity of the institution.

What do you do everyday? What is your big picture goal?
Dr. Winkelmes's job is to support the teaching work of the teaching academies on campus, and enhance the learning of all constituencies on campus. Every college or school can have a teaching academy; they are discipline specific centers that support the learning in those colleges. They have recently put together a campus-wide faculty forum, that is a chance for faculty across the campus to discuss how teaching innovations have changed the teaching culture on campus. Dr. Winkelmes tries to connect people on campus to see how they can collaborate on these different teaching issues. She describes herself as the "hub on the wheel, connecting all the spokes."

Can you discuss where [transparency] came to be and how you see that affecting [students]?
She states that if you find out something about teaching and learning that works at the University of Illinois, it is much more applicable nationally than it would be if found at University of Chicago. If you produce results about thousands of students at Illinois it is more relevant than results at private institutions. Two challenges in higher education: 1) students need to learn how they learn and 2) there is little career incentive for non-education psychology professors to delve into teaching and learning research.

Why do you feel transparency is necessary?
Dr. Winkelmes finds that in research institutions, the kind of students that are very successful undergraduates are those that have a learning style that is similar to the style of the professor that is teaching them. The problem is that it produces people who think like professors; the structure produces the same kind of thinking all the time. If you have some system that allows for different styles of thinking, you would eventually have a larger variety of thinkers that would influence higher education in the future. For those students who do not automatically think like their professors, transparency allows for the professor to pull back the curtain to let the student know how the teacher is thinking about it and lets the student determine how to grapple with that.

Can you expand on what concrete actions go into this transparency?
Dr. Winkelemes is trying to get professors who are willing to try one single way of being transparent with how they are teaching. There is a nutrition course taught by Rebecca Roach in the College of ACES, and the professor decided to be transparent about how she puts together her lectures. Dr. Roach presents topics she wants to talk about but then polls the students to see what topics they want to explore. Another course is trying to be transparent about phases of intellectual development. This course in the Law school is for second year law students; these students were at the phase that they just wanted to know what was on the test. The professor knew she could train students to ace a test but that would not help them win a case. She utilized Bloom's Taxonomy and translated that into skills needed for becoming a lawyer, she was trying to teach the skills that lawyer's used to win cases not the facts of the case.

Can you talk about the responsibility of the students in facilitating the [transparency] arrangement?

The responsibility for the students is that they become more responsible as students. They get control and power over learning experience in a transparent course. They become judges of their own learning. They control their learning better. If same tools are available to students as to professors, they have more control over their own learning.

Are there other innovations...(inaudible)?

Transparency is a catch-all term, there are many ways to be transparent. "How and why" is the essence of transparency.

In implementing these transparency initiatives, what mechanisms do you use to get student feedback? And on the flip side, what mechanisms do you use to get professor feedback?

This is the first semester that they have had a big group as a test for the initiative. The way they get feedback from students came through a 30 question survey. The faculty get data from their students responses, and they get feedback from their own tests, as in did the faculty get the answers they wanted to get. Dr. Winkelmes realizes she needs to get feedback from faculty. Right now she is interviewing the participants but once there are more participants she cannot interview everyone.

What would an ideal course structure or format look like?

Information available is a limit to answering what an ideal course would look like. Transparency initiatives should help answer this question with data with one or two variables at a time.

Is there any sort of data point that you find most important? Strong correlations to learning most?
NSSE by George Kuh identifies "learning practices" helpful to students: freshman seminar classes, undergraduate research projects, and capstone experiences. The AACU (American Academy of Colleges and Universities) have a list of high impact teaching practices. The AACU is a top-down way. Dr. Winkelmes views her apporach as a more ground up approach.

Have you seen other resistance from students, faculty, and administrators?
Some of the challenges working with the faculty is that they have some fear. It is hard for an expert on a certain content area to try something new in front of an audience. From an administrative level, it is hard to account research on teaching and learning. It is hard to gauge whether it is personal reflection publication or the serious, rigorous empirical research.

Alessandra: If there is one thing you could tell us to be a better learner, what would it be?
One piece of advice would be it is not about the teacher. It is about the students. Don't think: "How am I teaching?" Think: "How are they learning?" Dr. Winkelmes then alluded the adaptive nature requisite in teaching.

Do you have any suggestions about how you've seen peer mentoring used or how it could be effectively used?
Dr. Winkelmes named Elizabeth Morley of the Writer's Workshop and Michael Loui of the electrical and computer engineering department have implemented peer mentoring approaches successfully. "It's not enough for a teacher to teach students how to learn. You also need students teaching students how they're learning." She social residence literature in reference to peer mentoring. Faculty peer-to-peer mentoring is also relevant, but "no single mentor can give you everything you need."

Links:
Dr. Winkelmes's Bio

The Illinois Initiative on Transparency in Learning and Teaching

George Kuh, AACU High-Impact Teaching Practices

Poster with Information on Rebecca Roach innovative approach (Powerpoint)

Paper on Michael Loui Peer Mentoring Initiative (PDF)

Summary of Session with the College CIOs

Courtesy of Team Action

College CIOs Interview Summary- Team Action

On September 30, 2009, four college Chief Information Officers (CIOs) visited our class: Erik Hege, Beth Sandore, Paul Hixson, and John Rossi. They were representing the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Campus Library, College of Aces, and College of Law, respectively. In the interview, we brought up ideas of management discussed in Drucker's The Essential Drucker. Drucker discusses three essentials of a business: profit, productivity of employees, and social responsibility. From the guests, we learned that each of these areas is co-dependent on the other and plays a large role in the overall university dynamics.

Since the university is a non-profit organization, the measurement of success is not necessarily based on profit as a monetary value, rather "profit" can actually be defined through different measures of "success". For example, "profit" can be defined as students learning through the use of new information technology or faculty receiving more funding for advanced research based on technology. Comparing the university to a business gives us a different perspective based on the fact that not all businesses are centered around financial profit. For example, the faculty and staff are not only employees of the university but are also clients. The university helps students with their education and the faculty with their research. Therefore, it takes both of these aspects towards its goal alignment.

The most important factor stressed throughout the interview was communication. Communication needs to not only occur within the individual department, but also externally across departments or colleges. For example, the CIOs need to communicate with the IT staff inside and outside their department in order to be most effective. This relates to the idea of feedback and how integral it is to the success of a group. The CIOs stressed the necessity of implementing early and frequent communication, so that if something important goes wrong a framework exists to solve it. The whole panel was very adamant about working as a cohesive unit. This has a lot to do with how their actions affect their relationships with each other and the campus as a whole. Case in point - they have lunch every few weeks. It would be interesting to note what changes would happen if different departments would implement a strategy like this.

An interesting question brought up was whether or not there is a goal disparity between the individual departments and the university as a whole. In response, the CIOs said that if each department works to improve that individual department while still considering the needs of the other departments. The campus as a whole benefits. In response, we asked them about how their jobs differed as a result of the different departments or schools that they were each serving. John humorously went on to say that he constantly deals with people who argue for a living, so it is a particular challenge to please the panel of CIO's and the University of Illinois Law School. To deal with this conflict of interest, John went on to make another point about balance - he needs to keep in mind the future and the other colleges when making decisions specific to the Law School.

When we were wrapping up the interview and opening up the topic for discussion to the whole class, one of the most interesting points came up - how technology is being implemented more and more into classrooms across campus, and what students' thoughts are on this. Despite the mix of opinions received, Erik noted that for innovations, some things just need to be tried before they can get it right. We believe that this ending point incorporates one of the main overall themes of the Designing for Effective Change class - success results from perseverance and the willingness to take risks, even though some initiatives might me unsuccessful.

There were a couple of notes for improvement that we observed through being the first group to conduct an interview. First, we did not get into what our class project was during the interview. Mentioning this might have steered the conversation in a more student oriented direction. Furthermore, we should have noted in the beginning that not everyone on the interview panel had to answer each question. This might have helped us to have time to ask more questions. Finally, before going into the interview, and also admitted by Professor Arvan, we were not sure how we could relate the role of a CIO to our project or even to our readings.

Despite these setbacks, important lessons about communication and the intricacy of balancing different, sometimes conflicting objectives, were learned through conducting this interview. All things considered, we believe our interview was successful.

Summary of Session with the Deans

Team Dew Notes Summary:

Interview with Deans on October 7, 2009 (Larry DeBrock and Ruth Watkins)

At the beginning of the interview, the Deans gave a brief description of their responsibilities. Dean DeBrock stated that the primary responsibility of his position as Dean of the College of Business is to advance the best interests of the college and work with a limited budget. Ruth Watkins stated that her responsibilities involved four components: people, programs, finance, and facilities. She also stated that it is her responsibility to have strong and creative programs for students.

The Deans were asked how the business model for the university has changed over time. Dean DeBrock informed us of his experience with a high enrollment (1,685 students) of Econ 102 in the past. The large enrollment existed due to the widespread requirement for the course. Dean DeBrock believed that the model worked, and he added that technology has had a huge impact in instruction. He gave examples of using technology to have access to information out of the classroom, the ability to prepare and supply information, and the increase of the overall educational experience. Dean Watkins commented that there are ways that the model has cost effective ways. She believes that smaller classes are possible due to larger lectures. She also commented on the increase use of technology and systems like Aleks to assess the skill of mathematics for students. The idea of mentoring has been used in the Mathematics major with upper classmen honor students acting as mentors to younger students.

When the Disengagement Pact was mentioned to the deans, they stated that it is harder to engage students when the class is larger. Dean Watkins showed dislike for the idea of the Disengagement Pact, and she did not view it as a problem from the standpoint of the professors. Deans also mentioned the importance of the attitude of the professors and how the students perceive the class. When looking at the instructors, the Deans believe that the passion for the subject matter is there. If the instructor is not able to communicate well, then there is a discouragement cycle that occurs in the instruction. Regarding tenure and non-tenure track faculty, the Deans believed that non-tenure faculty could be better instructors because their sole focus is on teaching. With the tenure track, there is the additional pressure of research.

The Deans were asked if they believed disengagement in the larger class during earlier years affected later years. Dean DeBrock responded that students do not like large classes in exit interviews. Professor Arvan asked Dean Debrock to elaborate on the Business 101 mentoring objectives. This class combines traditional with experiential learning. Dean Watkins asked the students about different experiences on campus like study abroad, discovery courses, and research. There were many that raised hands, and she made the point that there are aggregate opportunities. Kim pointed out that we are not a good sample of students, but Dean Watkins gave statistics that interactions in these activities are high. Lastly, Dean Watkins stated that the school is making efforts to ensure that students are not taking all large lecture classes in the beginning.

The challenges of large lectures was brought up. Dean DeBrock commented that there are a few people that are prone to not attending class. Also, the faculty does not want to teach large classes, and it is the call of the department to place better teachers in those courses. There are other problems like the removal of discussion sessions and the overall comfort of the facilities. A student brought up the idea of requiring attendance and tying it to grades. Dean DeBrock stated that he never required attendance. There was the question of how smaller classes are chosen versus larger classes. Dean Watkins stated that there are classes like rhetoric that have to be taught in smaller sections because research shows that students learn better this way. This is a lot more costly. There are also some language classes that are smaller. One of the variables to how many people can be enrolled in the class are the number of seats that are available. LAS has experimented with online-blended courses and that students have given positive feedback about this model.

The Deans suggested that a student mentor program might be a tool that could attract the better faculty to teach large classes. They believed that putting the best teachers in large classes is in the best interest of the university. They believed that the idea of a mentoring program is one worth pursuing and encouraged us to do so.