Minutes of Sep. 11 ALaB Meeting

• How can we link to documents (such as class handouts, syllabi, etc.) on this blog? We will need to create a separate web site that serves as a repository for these materials and then we can include links to those materials in blog posts.
  
• Currently the blog can be read and commented on by anyone. It would be helpful if we could all receive email alerts when posts or comments are made.
  
• Would a discussion thread serve our purpose better than a blog?
  
• Brief discussion on Bloom's Taxonomy, which lists categories of cognitive learning: Knowledge, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation. Do some disciplines need to spend more time on, say, the Knowledge category in order to help students progress while other disciplines can jump straight to Application? This could explain why some disciplines have been resistant to active learning approaches.
  
• Update on EAF grant: over $8000 remaining, only one person has not used their travel money. We should have enough to fund two consultants. Ron will try to find someone involved with EAF to serve as a consultant.
  
• Ron Thornton's visit: we will ask him to sit in on a few classes, meet with the ALaB group, and also give a presentation that will be open to all faculty. Need to find best dates for his visit: probably a Monday/Tuesday in late October or Early November.
  
• Where should the ALaB group go from here? We have become increasingly interdisciplinary, which is good but presents some challenges. We can still get ideas from each other, even if we then have to apply those ideas in a new context/discipline. Much of what we discuss relates to strategies that are not discipline-specific (although they may be better suited to some disciplines than others). The group can still play an important role in supporting faculty who are just starting to experiment with active learning.
  
• We need to find a way to pool the resources of many disciplines and combine them. Currently there are several people using active learning strategies, but they are operating in separate "silos" and don't work with each other. There might be much to gain by getting these different groups (Ed Psych, Teacher Ed, Science, Humanities, Business, etc.) talking with each other. This is one important role that our group could take on.
  
• Different disciplines may have different standards for what is recognized as innovative or progressive teaching methods. In older disciplines like science where lecture has been the norm, anything that is not lecture may be seen as innovative. In other disciplines this is not the case. For example, case studies have almost always been used in Marketing so this approach is actually very "traditional" in that field.
  
• Grant Possibilities: the interdisciplinary nature of the group makes it hard to go for an NSF grant for the entire group, but it would still be feasible for the science faculty to pursue that option. There may be other granting agencies that would be happy to fund an interdisciplinary project (Keck, Lily, AT&T, etc.). The goal of a new grant would be to use our growing expertise to train others by holding workshops, developing web resources, etc. We would probably need outside help for this at first, and later we could do it on our own.