Professional Learning Communities

Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) offer a semester-long experience focused on discussion of topics related to the academic experience at EKU.

PLC registration is capped at 15 participants. Please contact the Faculty Innovator facilitating your PLC with any questions. 

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) - Dr. Shirley O'Brien, Dr. Russell Carpenter | Registration for this PLC has closed.

Join us for a Professional Learning Community (PLC) focused on designing, planning, and writing Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) projects. This PLC will review recent literature on SoTL, discuss strategies for SoTL research, and develop a pilot SoTL project. Facilitated by Shirley O’Brien and Rusty Carpenter.

Day and Time: Dr. O'Brien (Group 1): Mondays, 9-10am; Dr. Carpenter (Group 2): Fridays, 11am-12pm

Location: Noel Studio Breakout 3

Rethinking Classroom Design: An EKU Professional Learning Community (PLC) - Dr. Doris Pierce | Registration for this PLC has closed.

Rethinking Classroom Design will explore innovations in the design of 21stcentury learning spaces.  Topics will include creative work spacedesign, learning space design, and information technology supports to campus-based classes.  Redesign of the Faculty Innovation Teaching Studio (formerly the LEAF classroom) will serve as the PLC’s primary application of these concepts.  Individual participants’ classroom design/redesign projects will also be supported.  The PLC will meet weekly over the spring semester on a day/time selected by its participants.

Day and Time: Tuesdays, 2-3:15pm

Location: FIT Studio (Powell 13)

Best Practices for Peer Observation of Teaching - Dr. Lisa Day | Registration for this PLC has closed.

Are you a department chair or unit head who needs to update your observation and evaluation process for faculty members? Are you a faculty member who would like to assist in the peer observation process? You may join the Spring 2016 Professional Learning Community on Peer Observation to learn more and to fine-tune your skills in this area.

In this PLC, we will be reading and discussing scholarly sources on summative and formative evaluations and on peer teaching observation at the college level. Along the way we’ll examine ways to evaluate the design, coverage of material, and appropriateness of assignments and assessments of student learning. The overall goal will be to design a set of best practices that will make the need for peer evaluations of teaching both significant in potential improvement and valid for promotion-related documentation. Throughout the semester, individual small groups will design projects on different facets of the process.

Day and Time: Tuesdays, 11:30am - 12:30pm

Location: Noel Studio Breakout 3