by Naomi Story

Much has been said about the Center for Teaching and Learning’s support to faculty in professional development.  However, a strong principle of the Center’s ethos is innovation.  To sustain new thinking, creativity, and scholarship in teaching and learning, the Center is fostering learning spaces for faculty to

• blur disciplinary boundaries and mindsets
• look at integrated and multiple approaches
• change metaphors from machines to organisms
• enrich communication and intelligence

How do we do and cultivate this new culture and thinking? 

Let’s take a possible example.  Faculties Jana, Davi, and Sandy are from three different departments, a.k.a. academic and workforce development areas.  They have a common interest in wanting to incorporate critical thinking into their lessons, especially now that they have evidence from the latest Student Outcomes Assessment results.  They come to Cuppa at the Center on Friday at the same time and start chatting over donuts and tea about “what ifs.”  A CTL person (like Naomi) wanders by and starts to ask questions and “what ifs.”  They decide to continue the conversation next Friday and use the wall talker to help them imagine and sketch a new creative space for learning.  They do some research by asking other colleagues and students.  They check websites and outside vendors like Goodman’s about learning spaces that enhance critical thinking.  Naomi schedules one of the CTL’s experimental classrooms so that the three can test their ideas with students.   They assess and evaluate and revise and tweak and assess and so forth. And they share at each stage of their findings with colleagues and their departments.  Jana and Davi write and publish an article about their journey and discoveries.

The notion that innovation and the scholarship of teaching and learning can exist at MCC is realistic.  Faculty leaders, who create, revive, regenerate, and communicate their calling in teaching and learning have the space and the resources, and need only imagine and commit to such an adventure and milieu in innovation at the CTL.  So why not?