Grants in Higher Education

SYSTEMATIC IMPROVEMENT OF UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION IN RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES

A PROJECT BASED AT DUKE UNIVERSITY

CO-SPONSORED BY THE SPENCER FOUNDATION AND THE TEAGLE FOUNDATION

NOVEMBER 2007

$246,960 over 54 months. Under the leadership of Robert J. Thompson (principal investigator), and with the support of the Spencer and Teagle Foundations, Duke University will embark on a collaborative research project aimed at fostering a culture of experimentation and evidence for undergraduate education at research universities. That iterative approaches to curricular and pedagogical efforts to enhance student learning and engagement become the standard practice for departments and programs responsible for undergraduate education in the humanities and social sciences is a primary outcome. A second goal of the project is to incorporate what is known about cognitive development, the process of learning, and effective teaching and learning practices into well-designed initiatives with measurable and replicable results. Promoting a spread of effect for this work within and across institutions will also be key.

Schools will be drawn from the American members of the Association of American Universities and will be selected to participate through a competitive RFP. Each participating institution will be granted up to $100,000 to undertake one or two campus-based projects over three years that evaluate and experiment with various pedagogical approaches focused on the development of two core intellectual skills: writing and critical thinking / analytical reasoning. The campus projects will employ a basic A-B-C design for a specific, well-defined experiment. (The A condition is the first step in which the experiment is undertaken and the learning outcome assessed. The B condition is the second step in which modifications of the A condition are made and the learning outcome is again evaluated. The C condition is a modification of the B initiative based on the evaluation of the B condition.)

Leaders of the campus projects will convene once a year to share results and experiences, and potentially to establish working groups or clusters of faculty across institutions around each core intellectual skill.

The knowledge generated from this project will be disseminated in two ways. First, leaders of campus projects will be expected to publish their findings in appropriate journals and to present their work at national and regional professional meetings. Second, the principal investigator will write a book that synthesizes the findings of the entire project and addresses the implications for higher education's commitment to liberal education at the undergraduate level. At the heart of the book will be a discussion about the evidence for effective practices in the development of writing and critical thinking / analytical reasoning abilities.

Project Website

CAMPUS PROJECTS
(The grant awards listed below represent Teagle's commitment; the Spencer Foundation will match these amounts.)

Carnegie Mellon University
Using argument diagramming in freshman writing courses.
Project Leader: Maralee Harrell
$25,200 over 36 months.

Duke University
Enhancing writing and critical thinking.
Project Leader: Robert J. Thompson
$40,000 over 36 months.

Georgetown University
Threshold of writing project.
Project Leader: Randy Bass
$25,000 over 36 months.

Indiana University
The history learning project: Decoding critical thinking and writing.
Project Leader: Leah Shopkow | Project Website
$40,000 over 36 months.

Pennsylvania State University
Excellence in communication certificate: Integrating ethics into teaching of environmental science, economics, and policy.
Project Leader: Donald Brown
$25,000 over 36 months.

The University of California at Berkeley
An active learning model for enhancing writing in sociology ; Improving critical thinking through methodological training in an interdisciplinary context.
Project Leader: Christina Maslach
$45,000 over 36 months.

The University of California at Davis
Improvement of writing as an intellectual skills ; Critical thinking and visual imagery.
Project Leader: Christopher Thaiss
$45,000 over 36 months.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Enhancing traditional and innovative approaches to advanced composition in academic disciplines.
Project Leader: Peter Mortensen
$40,000 over 36 months.

The University of Kansas at Lawrence
Enhancing research and writing skills through instructional design teams.
Project Leader: Dan Bernstein
$40,000 over 36 months.

The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
The impact of metacognitive strategies within writing in the disciplines: Experiments to improve writing and critical thinking.
Project Leader: Naomi Silver
$45,000 over 36 months.

The University of Nebraska at Lincoln
Piloting a general education writing assessment system.
Project Leader: David Wilson
$25,000 over 36 months.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Investigating synergies between research and writing: CI-GFC courses at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Project Leader: Bobbi Owen
$40,000 over 36 months.

University of Southern California
Technology at the service of writing and critical thinking.
Project Leader: Richard Fliegel
$25,000 over 36 months.