Two professors will work on projects that explore alternative faculty grading practices, and enhance student and faculty understanding of statistical software packages through an online video tutorial.
The Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning has named Elon University professors Margaret Chapman and Andrew Greenland CATL Scholars for the 2020-21 and 2021-22 academic years.
These new CATL Scholars join 47 other CATL scholars including current scholars Renay Aumiller (Dance), Scott Morrison (Education), Shannon Duvall and Duke Hutchings (Computer Science), Kevin Bourque (English), Doug Kass (Communications), and Brandon Sheridan (Economics).
The CATL Scholar program fosters innovative and scholarly teaching and learning. Echoing the Elon Teacher-Scholar statement, the CATL Scholars program is designed so that participants engage deeply with the shared goals of our academic community and develop highly innovative projects.
Margaret Chapman, lecturer in English, proposed a project aiming to transform student learning through the understanding of how faculty grade. Despite the research suggesting that grading practices inhibit student learning, faculty receive almost no preparation in alternative assessment strategies and theories.
As a CATL scholar, Chapman will survey cross-disciplinary faculty grading practices, investigate how students and faculty understand those practices, and use her findings to enable faculty to experiment with alternative grading practices in order to improve student learning. By comparing faculty and student experiences of grading practices, Chapman will reveal points of agreement and disagreement, critical to help faculty implement any new pedagogical strategy, especially for grading.
Andrew Greenland, assistant professor of economics, will focus on Teaching Replicable Research in Business and Economics by developing, testing and making publicly available an online video tutorial that is designed to re-enforce concepts in introductory statistics, data analysis and econometrics courses and to teach students interested in business or economics how to conduct a replicable research project.
To ensure that this resource is accessible to the broadest set of faculty and students, this tutorial will be scaffolded to allow users to progressively build on technical skills in three of the most commonly utilized statistical software packages/programming languages used in these fields — Microsoft Excel, Stata, and R. By presenting the same material in parallel across multiple languages Greenland’s tutorial will serve as a sort of “Programming Rosetta Stone,” allowing students with training in Excel to work through an identical exercise in a new language.
A call for applications for CATL Scholars is announced early each fall. All full-time faculty are encouraged to apply. CATL Scholars are selected by a faculty committee comprised of other Scholars and CATL faculty advisory committee members. For more information, visit our website or email catl@elon.edu.