Best Honors Administrative Practices Friday, November 8, 2013: 8:00 AM-9:50 AM
Sheraton New Orleans Hotel (Nottoway)
74 Developing faculty to become successful Honors teachers
John Zubizarreta, Columbia College South Carolina;
Joseph King, Radford University
Becoming an effective teacher is hard enough, but honors makes the goal even more challenging because of the particular characteristics of honors education and its ubiquitous emphasis on interdisciplinarity, interactive pedagogies, experiential approaches to learning, discussion-based classrooms, undergraduate research, high expectations, reflective learning practices, and a host of other dimensions of our work in honors. What does it take to be a successful honors teacher? What faculty development strategies help to identify, support, and reward good honors teaching? In this session, we will provide a framework for defining successful honors pedagogy, model effective practices, and invite participants to share their own philosophy and practice as honors instructors.
Sheraton New Orleans Hotel (Oak Alley)
184-2 Developing a coherent Honors curriculum
Donna Bowman, University of Central Arkansas;
Greg Lanier, University of West Florida;
Richard Scott, University of Central Arkansas
A focused and coherent honors curriculum that sequentially arrays the crucial learning skills and outcomes provides many benefits: the honors students are more likely to be retained in the program because the learning community can extend over a number of years and classes, the focused sequence provides opportunities for introduction, practice, and mastery of specific skills (particularly research methods and interdisciplinary investigation), the assessment mechanics for the program can be streamlined for greater efficiency, and the faculty buy-in of the programs goals can become a central focus of the honors program's teaching effort. This session will investigate strategies for bringing honors sections of general education courses, honors-specific interdisciplinary seminar type courses, honors by contract courses, and honors independent studies courses (including capstones and theses) into maximum alignment. In addition, the session will show how coherent curricular design promotes coherent and doable assessment plans for honors programs and colleges.
