Delta Expeditions in Learning adapted for faculty professional development at MATC

Submitted by dldaniel on Fri, 01/09/2009 - 3:47pm

On January 7th 2009, the newest collaborative effort between the UW-Madison's Delta Program (www.delta.wisc.edu ) and the Madison Area Technical College (MATC) was officially launched. MATC's Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (http://matcmadison.edu/CETL/) and Delta jointly offered a session during MATC's faculty professional development program that showcased Delta's Expeditions in Learning Program.

Faculty at MATC have been serving as partners for graduate student interns from Delta for a number of years now. The collaboration has produced several peer-reviewed publications in the Journal of Chemical Education. Also, following their internships, a number of Delta students have taken adjunct faculty positions at MATC.

Expeditions in Learning (http://www.delta.wisc.edu/programs/EL/explrn.html) is a small facilitated discussion group that draws on the Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound Program for K-12 education and adult learning theory. Small groups of participants meet once every two weeks for discussion. During the "off weeks" they go on an expedition to explore various learning situations and academic life on campus in new ways.

CETL plans to launch a pilot version of Expeditions in Learning at MATC this spring with the goal of creating a community of practice to explore and apply great ideas for teaching and learning.

Importantly, aligning with CETL makes it possible for participants in the pilot to receive 16 hrs of recertification credit. CETL is hoping to run a full-semester version in the fall for certification credit too (thus available to new faculty as well). Certification and re-certification credits are a requirement of faculty at MATC and can be earned by attending various professional development activities.

This adaptation of one of Delta's core offerings and the institutionalization of the collaboration at MATC is truly exciting!

More on Expeditions in Learning can be found at: (http://www.cirtl.net/publications/Carlson-Dakes_Pawley_2005.pdf)

Comments

Submitted by PJBenn on Wed, 01/14/2009 - 12:37pm.

DELTA MATC Collaboration is Good for the Network

Collaborations like this are very reminiscent of the Preparing Future Faculty initiatives.  It would be great if many of our network campuses could find similar collaborations.  These collaborations will allow us to increases our impact by spreading our ideas to other campuses.  It also lets other people learn about the quality of our central product (our students) which should help improve national recognition of the CIRTL brand.