USNA’s Seventh Annual Conference on Teaching & Learning: Faculty Development Workshops on Online Teaching

 

NOTE: This session will be in person only and it will not be recorded.

• Tokenism, Diversity, and Inclusion in Higher Ed: Discussing Presumed Incompetent chapter on "The Making of a Token. A Case Study for Stereotype Threat, Stigma, Racism, and Tokenism in Academe.” (PowerPoint)

Adapted from a week-long workshop by Mary-Ann Winkelmes (Brandeis Center for Teaching and Learning) about which Matt writes: "Most impactful to me is the perspective on bias that can be introduced when we assume student understanding of different components of assignments. It was challenging to go back and make them more explicit, but I found it to be an insightful exercise for a number of reasons."

• Making expectations explicit to avoid implicit bias (Video)
• Making expectations explicit to avoid implicit bias (PowerPoint)

The goal of this panel discussion is to give an overview of a NAPS English writing assignment that we developed to have students reflect on the ongoing national conversation about race, specifically in the military. The events over the summer of 2020, and especially Superintendent Buck’s response to CAPT Scott Bethmann’s Facebook Live audio, sparked the idea to ask students to write about a difficult topic that, as future military leaders, they will have to grapple with during their careers. The panelists collaborated on this assignment for use in their own classes; it was not a NAPS-wide initiative. Panelists will review the ideas and concerns we had at the design stage, and what the final writing assignment looked like, including related readings. We will discuss how we adapted the assignment to align with the key goals of NAPS English Composition in terms of writing and critical thinking. Finally, we will examine what worked well, what did not, student reaction, how we refined the assignment from 2020 to 2021, and potential future changes. We will plan to include time for Q&A.

• Answering the Superintendent’s Call to Action (Video)

• Please join your colleagues for an informal discussion and networking opportunity.

NOTE: this session will be in person only and it will not be recorded.

An important piece to recruiting a more diverse student body to engineering majors is to offer a curriculum that highlights diversity within the field of engineering. This session will reflect on preliminary efforts made to incorporate EDI into EM215 (Intro to Mechanical Engineering) through lectures on the engineering achievements of diverse (and often lesser known)
engineers throughout history. This was a collaborative effort with the USNA library to identify engineering EDI resources (something never previously done). The goal of this session is to discuss how to expand these efforts in a way where any engineering faculty can access these resources and begin incorporating them into their classes.

• Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Resources and Applications in Intro to Engineering Course (PowerPoint)

How might inclusive teaching apply to engineering classes? Three female engineering professors share personal experiences and thoughts on ways inclusive teaching might apply in a male-dominated engineering curriculum.

• Inclusive Teaching: An Engineering Perspective (Video)
• Inclusive Teaching: An Engineering Perspective (PowerPoint)

Students want a syllabus and policy that will maximizes their personal success. Faculty write a syllabus and policy to ensure fairness and enhance learning. The goal of this session is to hit the sweet spot of all three. We will increase our ability to craft and explain our weighted grading and grading policies in a way that incentivizes learning.

• The Art of the Grade Weights: Incentivizing Learning through Weighting of Grades (Video)

A panel from the Midshipman Development Center will discussion on topics that can facilitate or inhibit learning and decision-making. Specifically, we will address sleep, mindfulness, food intake, and anxiety/low mood. Within each of these topics, we will present on how to improve learning with selfcare and mental health interventions.

• Midshipmen and Mental Health: Effective Learning Beyond Study Hours (Video)

This workshop is inspired by an essay titled “You and Your Research” by Richard Hamming - Manhattan project and Bell Labs alumnus, Turing Award winner, and NPS emeritus – in which he ponders the question: “What separates the average researcher from the greats, whose work has a truly lasting impact?” Even though his examples relate to research in science and engineering, it applies to faculty in all disciplines and moreover to any type of deep-work or life-long creative pursuits, from writing to art to music. I’ll attempt to summarize his 60 years of accumulated colorful, and sometimes meandering, wisdom. In an interactive manner I'll present a set of 10+ questions about our attitudes toward our own work, inspired by the essay, for participants to reflect upon and discuss.

• You and Your Work -- Mediations on Life-Long Creative Productivity (Video)
• You and Your Work -- Mediations on Life-Long Creative Productivity (PowerPoint)
• You and Your Work  (Worksheet)

The Center for Teaching and Learning has recommended that SOFs should not be the only means for evaluating teaching and that teaching evaluation should be based on multiple sources of data. We will discuss other sources of data for evaluating teaching, such as sample student work, sample course materials, paired peer visitation, contributions to curricular development including design of new courses and revision of existing courses, mentoring student projects, teaching innovation, and professional development activities.

When COVID-19 hit, there were so much uncertainty that we faced: online or inperson, multiple classrooms, sick students, clarity of Google Meets, etc. In planning my SA-421 class for Fall 2020, I wanted to make delivery as consistent as it could be and decided to use a flipped classroom. Since Fall 2020, I have taught SA-421 two other semesters and I have stuck with the flipped classroom. This talk will discuss the benefits and challenges of the flipped classroom and how my implementation has evolved to improve the delivery of the class over the past 3 semesters.

• Lessons from the Pandemic: Making the Flipped Classroom an Everyday Teaching Tool (Video)
• Lessons from the Pandemic: Making the Flipped Classroom an Everyday Teaching Tool (PowerPoint)

In this session, I will explore and discuss various activities, practices, and assignments motivated by brain-based and spaced interval learning strategies. We will first discuss define, describe, and motivate both brain-based learning and spaced interval learning. Rather than focusing on theory, we will instead focus on implementing brain-based and spaced interval learning strategies in and out of the classroom. I will first describe and evaluate some activities I have implemented over the past few semesters. For the bulk of the session, we will break into groups to discuss how we can implement new adjustments based on brain-based and spaced interval learning strategies. The main goals of this
session include: a) explore components of and motivate brain-based and spaced interval learning and b) brainstorm activities, assignments, and practices based on brain-based and spaced interval learning.

• Brain-Based Learning and Spaced Interval Learning (Video)
• Brain-Based Learning and Spaced Interval Learning (PowerPoint)

The time for leaders to develop cross cultural competence (3c), which involves constructive communication skills across cultural contexts on an off-line and across organizations and government institutions, is now. As evidenced by global leaders, especially in times of tension, there are situations and problems that require cultural understanding. Throughout the world, interpersonal and cultural differences are pronounced due to diversification of systems of communication (social and online networks, for example), virtual engagement, cultural variation within businesses and governments and management styles and linguistic differences — including dialects and idioms within languages that are often shaped by social stratification and heritage. As we reflect on the past years, on the social movements and often violent social upheavals, we realize that differences prevail and that leaders seeking to mitigate strife have not achieved 3c: Many have failed in acquiring the ability to truly understand the perspective of others. Many have not realized the importance of doing so and have ultimately failed in their ability to negotiate differences effectively. This presentation is based on our book (Routledge, in press) offers a path for individuals to improve their ability at perspective-taking and effective communication.

The mission of the United States Naval Academy is "to develop Midshipmen morally, mentally, and physically to imbue them with the highest ideals of duty, honor and loyalty in order to graduate leaders...." All faculty, staff, and coaches play a pivotal role in achieving this mission. Essentially, faculty, staff, and coaches are essential in developing Midshipmen as leaders. They are LEADERSHIP INFLUENCERS. This leads to the question: how do faculty, staff, and coaches develop the tools to serve as Leadership Influencers? Leadership development is complicated due to its multidimensional, multilevel, and dynamic nature, which is further complicated when you focus not only on developing the target audience - Midshipmen - but you focus on developing the Leadership Influencers who will impact the target audience. This session will define what a Leadership Influencer is, methods to develop as a Leadership Influencer, and how Leadership Influencers can have an impact on developing the target - Midshipmen. The primary goal is to provide faculty, staff, and
coaches with a broader perspective of the role they play in leadership develop and provide tools to use as Leadership Influencers. The secondary goal is to introduce Influence the Influencer programs in the Stockdale Center that Leadership Influencers at the Naval Academy can use to develop as leaders and provide a greater impact on Midshipmen.

• Leadership Influencers: Strategic Approaches to Leadership Development (Video)

Dr. Celeste Raver Luning Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership) CDR Donald Costello (Weapons, Robotics, and Control Engineering), Dr. Amanda Click (Nimitz Library), Dr. Matthew Knight (Physics), Dr. Jane Wessel (English), and Capt Jordan Hurst (Languages and Cultures)

The mission of the Academy is three-fold focused on developing “Midshipmen morally, mentally, and physically…to graduate leaders who are dedicated to a career of naval service….” USNA Professors serve an important role in the
mission of the Academy acting as the key pillar of developing midshipmen’s mental capabilities. Perhaps more importantly, the faculty at USNA are essential in developing leaders regardless of their subject matter expertise.
According to USNA’s faculty handbook, faculty are “Hired not simply as classroom instructors, but to support the Naval Academy’s comprehensive mission to develop officers for the Navy and Marine Corps, each faculty member has a commitment to the professional training of midshipmen and the enforcement of regulations.” However, faculty at the Academy often do not have the lived experience that many midshipmen will experience upon commissioning. A program such as Professors at Sea provides a bridge for faculty to understand the dynamic nature of the roles that midshipmen will hold upon commissioning. This panel will highlight the experience of several faculty members that took part in a Professors at Sea trip to the USS George H.W. Bush in January 2022. The panel members will discuss their experience, the leadership lessons learned, and how they are integrating lessons from the experience into the classroom.

• Leadership Lessons from the Fleet: Panel on Professors at Sea Program (Video)
• Leadership Lessons from the Fleet: Panel on Professors at Sea Program (PowerPoint)

In an informal conversation, previous years’ participants report on what they have done and plan to do as a result of their projects. All faculty and staff are welcome to attend to learn more about the Ethics Across the Curriculum Program.

• Ethics Across the Curriculum and the Yard Reunion (Video)