Educator's Learning Community

The LAMP Educator’s Learning Community was established in 2019. It was heavily informed by a workshop given by Milton Cox at the 2018 Original Lilly Conference for College Teaching. Learning communities for college teachers have historically been termed Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs). However, in order to be inclusive of college educators who are not faculty, we chose to instead call our community an Educator’s Learning Community (ELC). In our ELC, we use Change Theory, Resistance Theory and Effective Implementation Practices to support prior fellows and catalyze continued shift to active learning / student-centered practices. Our specific goals are:

1) support prior fellows who have shown demonstrable dedication to implementing evidence-based teaching practices, measuring impacts on student learning and disseminating their findings (e.g. publication, presentation or establishment of related programming) / continued LAMP involvement

2) catalyze continued transformation of classrooms from being teacher-centered to being learner centered / spread ripples about active learning successes using the approach that is most known to be successful: people talking to people over time.

3) establish both an institution-wide and state-wide, sustainable community of STEM educators.

These goals dovetail with UW’s Strategic Plan (Explicitly: Goal 1, Bullet 4.2, Goal 4, Bullet 1.3&4)

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Our inaugural class included educators from diverse STEM disciplines. These educators completed SoTL (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) projects that were presented at the 2019 Original Lilly Conference for College Teaching. This pilot ELC has allowed us to see that involvement in LAMP increases the density of connections in the social network. This correlates with participants’ feelings and experiences changing from those of being alone/isolated to being part of a community. Additionally, their feelings of confidence, and capability to engage in educational research increase! And speaking of educational research, below are the descriptions and full presentations for each ELC member as well as Rachel, Christi and Sierra’s presentation about the group as a whole:

• Rachel, Christi and Sierra. "Leaving the Light On": From Feeling Alone to Feeling Connected Within an Educator Learning Community. View the full presentation at: https://youtu.be/lYS-UvaXpfk

• Jessica. Real Problems, Real Data: Active Learning in a 14 Billion Lightyear Classroom. View the full presentation at: https://youtu.be/d3ycGsXdC88

• Kerry, Michele and Rachel. Measuring Changes in Students' Perception of Active Learning and Feelings of Inclusion. View the full presentation at: https://youtu.be/4a3vXgI3q1w

• Michele. Assessing Student Mindsets, Self-Assessment, and Learning. View the full presentation at: https://youtu.be/5rWJj9GQZys

• Michelle. You're Not Teaching Me Anything!: Struggling With Incivility and Students Who Know Best. View the full presentation at: https://youtu.be/YQYEfSMk5-M

• Rosemary. Every Educator Entrepreneurial: Arming Teachers to Impact a Student's Entrepreneurial Disposition Across the Curriculum. View the full presentation at: https://youtu.be/HvLLemkh8F4

• Mariah. Facilitating Applied Economic Modeling in Undergraduate International Trade Policy Instruction. View the full presentation at: https://youtu.be/5sdQLHikXOg

• Jessica, Rachel and Ed. Evolving the Statement of Teaching Philosophy: From Traditional to Multimodal. This was a poster.

Contact Us

UW Science Initiative

A&S Rm 331

Department 3254, 1000 E. University

Laramie, WY 82071

Phone: 307-766-4415

Email: SI@uwyo.edu