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| Millennial
Learning: April
16-17, 2009
John Immerwahr is professor of Philosophy at Villanova University where his teaching, by his own request, is almost entirely with freshman and introductory students. He is the founder and director of www.teachphilosophy101.org, a website with strategies and resources for faculty members who are teaching philosophy courses. Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, James S. Lang described teachphilosophy101.org as “one of the most comprehensive, well-researched, and accessible guides for teachers that I have ever seen." Immerwahr also served for eleven years as Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs at Villanova, and he is also a Senior Research Fellow at Public Agenda, where he has authored a number of highly publicized reports on public attitudes toward higher education. He has also published many articles on history of philosophy and philosophical pedagogy. Overcoming Resistances: Connecting First-Year Students with Higher Level Learning Today’s first year students bring a unique set of expectations, strengths, and weaknesses that create obstacles and opportunities for college level faculty members. Reaching these students would be challenging in the best of times, but the new higher education climate makes it even more difficult for faculty members to meet those challenges. In this session, we’ll draw on some of the resources in www.teachphilosophy101.org to understand some of these resistances and develop strategies for overcoming them. On the student side, we’ll look at the obstacles that faculty face including: student goals that are inconsistent with faculty expectations; students’ generational characteristics; and the different “time perspectives” that students bring with them. We’ll explore using course projects, technology, and applied learning as ways to engage students and overcome these obstacles. We’ll also discuss professional pressures on faculty that make it more difficult to do these things, and explore strategies that faculty members can use to help themselves, as St. Augustine said, “make the old things new.” “Clickers” will be used during the session, so if you’re interested in exploring this technology, you will have an opportunity to experience how it works. |
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