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Focus on Teaching and Learning
Events, issues and IDEaS...
Welcome to Focus on Teaching and Learning, our World Wide Web-based newsletter. Focus on Teaching and Learning is published in the tradition and spirit first established in the winter of 1990. Focus on Teaching and Learning will focus on events, issues, and ideas related to academic and organizational learning at ESF. We will continue to encourage and facilitate contributions from faculty, staff, undergraduate, and graduate students and other members of the College Community. Focus represents a collaborative effort between the office of Educational Outreach, Instructional Quality Improvement, and Instructional Technology, the office of the Provost, and ESF Faculty Governance.
Focus on Teaching and Learning's Web-based format (initiated in 2001) allows us to be more interactive and collaborative, and to demonstrate the use of current and emerging learning technologies. .
We hope our new approach meets the expectations and needs of a new millenium, a new academic year, new executive leadership at ESF, and a new and unprecedented higher education environment. As always, your suggestions and questions, and especially your involvement are necessary and most welcome.
Chuck Spuches, Associate Dean
Current Issue
Table of Contents
Faculty-Driven Instructional Technology Chuck Spuches ESF faculty are engaged in a project that aims to further the creative use and understanding of instructional technology, and to support collaborative faculty development through focused faculty-driven instructional technology initiatives. |
Integrated Resource Management Courses: Lessons Learned After 6 Years Hugh Canham Since 1996, seniors in Forest Resources Management have been required to take a course in integrated management. Course teacher Professor Hugh Canham covers the important lessons learned, along with student reactions to different kinds of cases and procedures. |
Teachers and Scholars as Designers: The Art and Practice of Instructional Design Chuck Spuches "Helping people learn is central to our faculty work. Instructional design theory and practice can help us create optimal learning environments. Perhaps no other area of our faculty work, however, is at once so inextricably linked to what we are all about as educators and so confused as instructional design (ID)." |
Chuck Spuches An illustrative list of components to consider including in your course syllabus. |
Faculty Governance Agenda for Teaching and Learning Scott Shannon In an environment like ESF's, so much of what really makes us unique and gives real added value to our programs is the "experimental" quality of learning. |
Life's Lessons: Learning From and For Our Journey Donald Leopold Countless hours of mentoring don't show up in annual reports but are most importantly reflected in a student's personal and professional growth. These efforts are not unusual here at the College of Environmental Science and Forestry. But we can do better. We have unique opportunities--and responsibilities--to make a difference to so many lives, so let us rise to the occasion. |
The Seven Deadly Comments That Get in the Way of Learning About Teaching Marilla Svinicki, Ph. D I'm always pleased to have an opportunity to dialogue with others who care about teaching. It gives me a chance to let my guard down for a while and say what I really think about teaching without being disparaged by all those others who hold teaching in such low regard...Teaching is not an easy job; it's frustrating, time-consuming, challenging, irritating, and when it goes wrong, demoralizing. But when it goes right, there's nothing like it. |
Instructional Research and Development: A Case Study Chuck Spuches and Jim Coufal In this article we describe a project undertaken to create a faculty resource guide, Environmental Ethics in Practice. We focus on the instructional research and development (IRD) process we employed and the resulting instructional product. Our purpose is to show faculty and administrators the practical application of IRD and its relevance to similar educational projects in all disciplines. |
John E. Wagner My view of forestry research and teaching is not the result of my many years' experience in the field nor is it the result of just being finished with my doctorate, starting a new job, and forecasting about the future. It is the result of being some where in the middle. |
Our spring 1997 edition of Focus was an Anthology containing articles from our first issue, Winter 1990, through to the Fall 1996 issue. A chronological and alphabetical list of articles is provided.. To obtain a copy of this special anthology issue of Focus, contact IDEaS (13 Moon--IDEaS, SUNY-ESF, Syracuse, NY 13210, phone: 315-470-6810; FAX: 315-470-6890). |
