Pod 2010: publicity, man-bashing, and assessment

Bright and early, 6:00 am, I attended the POD yoga class that is lead by next year's POD president, Michele DiPietro. I would say 35 podlings showed up for yoga at that hour of the morning. However, there were people who were wandering in around 6:30. Right: faculty members showing up for a class a 1/2 hour late: what are they thinking? Breakfast this year is quite improved with bacon, cheesy eggs, and much in the way of tasty pastry that went untouched by me (pat on head). People complained that the bacon was too crispy, but I count that as whining: it existed and that was enough for me to love. Oooooo and the coffee is strong, spoon stand up in it strong. Unfortunately, it does not come in tureens. It comes in little pots from which it is meted out by the wait staff. rrrrrrrr. At one point, I could wait no longer for my cup of coffee, and I had to chase one of the wait staff around the room and then beg for my tasty coffee. I cover my bad behavior by clowning, and so far it seems to work.

The Morning session was on publicity. It was really quite good. Here are the take-aways:
Make mp3s of the Faculty Development workshops and post them (somehow).
We need a recorder like Ann witham has.
Who can buy this for us?
Create an LTC facebook page that has events (robin and I can be admins of this page). We can do this on a Wednesday morning.
Blog our fdc workshops as summaries, make sure each one has a photo.
Make sure we have lots of photos from events.
Do we need to schedule someone to do this?
Is the only way we'll get this is to do it ourselves?
We should ask each FLC to take a group photo.
We should most certainly post the FLC end of quarter aha epiphanies on our website.

Of course POD always makes me feel tired and inadequate. Surely I should be able to do all of this even if I am teaching a full course load of writing intensive courses. Surely.

Friday Plenary: a faculty engagement survey of 17,000 faculty .
Women and Black faculty use the most student centered pedagogies.
Social Science departments demonstrate the most civic engagement.
Faculty who felt their education had prepared them for the faculty role felt more engaged. 56.8 percent of this sample report participating in teaching enhancement workshops as graduate students. This is a high number. These faculty are more likely to be engaged.
White men participated least in faculty development, demonstrated the least engaged teaching, and are least likely to be engaged in civic participation.

The presenter was a quantitative researcher. When she was asked, "What should we do as a result of this data?", she responded, "Give faculty this data. Just seeing the data will change their minds and make them question their previously held values." Beam her up Scotty.

The afternoon session was a session on assessment.
The take-away: Her point is that it is not enough to just count stuff. You must count with intentionality.
A base count can indicate other places to look more intentionally. Her point of the whole presentation is that you need to think before you count so that you can get some real meaning.

More useful was the group conversation where we discussed how to "share the bounty" of the activities faculty participate in as a result of using their travel money. Is there a way we can invite people who requested travel money to write like three line about where they went, what they did, and what they learned as a result of that travel? We could put it in a newsletter, or on our website, or our Brand New Blog, or our Facebook page. wooooooooooo.