Center for Teaching and Learning
Welcome
The LaGuardia Center for Teaching and Learning is a hub for professional innovation, reflection, collaboration and transformation. Engaging the collective expertise of LaGuardia faculty and colleagues across the U.S., the Center provides professional development opportunities that support effective, student-centered pedagogies and scholarly approaches to teaching.
Through workshops, forums, mini conferences, informal discussions and sustained seminars, faculty develop innovative strategies for examining and advancing student learning. Activities explore a spectrum of pedagogical topics: integrative learning, basic skills education in mathematics, learning communities, inquiry learning, effective uses of digital technologies, critical literacies, the scholarship of teaching and learning, holistic assessment, and ePortfolio. Building capacities across the college, our mission is to promote a dynamic, supportive culture of learning for students and faculty at the college and beyond.
Read our latest news on the LaGuardia Center for Teaching and Learning’s blog on CUNY Academic Commons.
About Us
LaGuardia’s Core Values statement defines “Learning” as the first among our institutional values:
“Believing that everyone can learn, we foster a creative and collaborative environment that stimulates the intellect, inspires the imagination and enlarges our vision of the world.”
Guided by this principle, LaGuardia’s Center for Teaching and Learning offers a comprehensive program of professional development opportunities to faculty, staff, and students. Based on long experience with proven effective practices, CTL seminars and development programs encourage active, collaborative learning and high expectations and academic aspiration for LaGuardia students.
Read more
Our Fall 2019 report, “2018-19 Evaluation and Report” describes the CTL’s activities in depth through data and narrative.
Sustained, semester-long and year-long programs, co-facilitated by faculty leaders and CTL staff, afford faculty participants the time and space to experiment, reflect, assess, and improve their teaching practice. While professional development for faculty remains the core CTL mission, we are now building and offering learning opportunities for staff and students as well. Working closely with faculty and administrators from across the College, the CTL designs programming which seeks to balance multiple goals:
- Encouraging pedagogical innovation, reflection, and collaboration;
- Supporting faculty and staff implementation of key institutional initiatives, such as the First Year Seminar, team-based advisement, Core Competencies, and outcomes assessment;
- Offering support for activities which assist faculty in reappointment, tenure, and promotion, such as developing peer-reviewed publications in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and other fields;
- Supporting Front Line college staff with timely updates about campus initiatives and resources while providing opportunities for building skills and strategies that improve the workplace;
- Providing students with meaningful paid work (for example, the Student Technology Mentor, Student Success Mentor, and Peer Advisor Academy programs), contributing to their personal growth while furthering college goals.
Founded in 1999 with funding from a Title V, Hispanic Serving Institutions grant from the U.S. Department of Education, the LaGuardia Center for Teaching and Learning has grown steadily, shaping faculty development seminars and programs to respond to the College’s strategic plan and a variety of initiatives designed to increase student retention, completion, and success. In the early years, CTL seminars focused on helping faculty develop effective student-centered pedagogies that incorporated technology tools such as Powerpoint, digital stories, and web-based inquiry projects.
Subsequent grants from the US Department of Education enabled the CTL to support faculty’s extensive exploration of effective ways to incorporate an ePortfolio practice designed to capture students’ experiences from their first semester through their capstone courses. Funding also enabled the piloting and development of the College’s First Year Seminar and the Student Success Mentor program .
Recent projects support the College’s Mathematics, Engineering, and Computer Science (MEC) and Natural Sciences (NS) departments to develop new majors, engage faculty in curricular and assignment revision that promote student-centered pedagogies, undergraduate research, and the development of students’ inquiry and problem-solving skills.
Offering a variety of seminars and workshops to full- and part-time faculty, the CTL has supported major College initiatives and strategic goals such as:
- improving the First Year Experience.
- strengthening advisement processes and effectiveness.
- assessing students’ development of the College’s Core Competencies and Communication Abilities.
- incorporating High-impact Practices such as experiential learning and ePortfolio
Mission
In collaboration with faculty, staff, and students, the CTL commits to strengthen and promote a culture of continuous learning and innovation for all LaGuardians while contributing to the intellectual and civic welfare of our students.
Key Principles of Good Practice for Professional Development
In all of its programs, the Center seeks to manifest these key principles:
- Respect Faculty Knowledge. Effective professional development builds on faculty’s tremendous expertise. Faculty leaders are critical to success. So are formal and informal opportunities for faculty participants to share and learn from each other. Encourage multiple perspectives and approaches.
- Focus on the classroom. Classroom practice is the nexus of professional growth. Link questions of theory to practical possibilities for the LaGuardia classroom. Focus on activities, classroom resources, technologies and approaches that faculty can actually use with students. Model good classroom practice. Faculty should be able to walk away from each seminar with new skills and resources. Make it useful.
- Support Collective Inquiry. Meaningful professional development provides opportunities to explore important questions about learning and teaching through a gradually unfolding inquiry process. Faculty are master learners—help them apply the tools of scholarship to their own classroom practice. Innovative faculty see their classrooms as laboratories, sites for thoughtful pedagogical experimentation and documentation, with the seminar providing opportunities for reflection and exchange.
- Create Opportunities for Sustained Work. Change in professional practice happens over time. One-shot workshops are primarily outreach, not faculty development. Faculty need structures and support that enables them to engage in a long-term and recursive learning process.
- Break Boundaries. Bring faculty together in groups that don’t normally work together. Create opportunities for faculty to explore contrasting disciplinary perspectives, and to collaborate across departmental lines, focusing on the wholistic student experience. Help faculty develop ways to combine skill-building and discipline-based learning. Link classroom issues to larger questions about learning, teaching, and our highest goals for the College.
- Create a Supportive Professional Community. Teaching is a challenging profession. Innovation involves risk-taking. Establish a climate of support and thoughtful reflection, generating safe spaces, where faulty can talk about and learn from what doesn’t work, as well as what does.
- Respect Faculty Time. Make sure that seminars and workshops are carefully planned and well organized. Think about the details. Make sure that hand-outs and activities are clear and accurate. Work hard to start on time and end on time. Provide good food.
| GRANT | INCEPTION/DURATION | GOAL |
|---|---|---|
| Teagle Foundation: Learning Matters: Building Curricular Cohesion at LaGuardia Community College | 2017/3 years | Improve learning in Liberal Arts courses through assessment. |
| Title V: STEM-Connect | 2016/5 years | Attract, retain, and graduate under-represented students in STEM majors; collaborate with transfer institutions to smooth transition to BS degrees |
| Mellon Foundation: The Humanities Alliance | 2016/4 years | Provide graduate students with effective pedagogical strategies in community college humanities classrooms |
Programs and Initiatives
LaGuardia’s Core Values statement defines “Learning” as the first among our institutional values:
“Believing that everyone can learn, we foster a creative and collaborative environment that stimulates the intellect, inspires the imagination and enlarges our vision of the world.”
Guided by this principle, LaGuardia’s Center for Teaching and Learning offers a comprehensive program of professional development opportunities to faculty, staff, and students. Based on long experience with proven effective practices, CTL seminars and development programs encourage active, collaborative learning and high expectations and academic aspiration for LaGuardia students.
Sustained, semester-long and year-long programs, co-facilitated by faculty leaders and CTL staff, afford faculty participants the time and space to experiment, reflect, assess, and improve their teaching practice. While professional development for faculty remains the core CTL mission, we are now building and offering learning opportunities for staff and students as well. Working closely with faculty and administrators from across the College, the CTL designs programming which seeks to balance multiple goals:
Advisement 2.0
Advisement 2.0, a relatively new advisement model, started in Spring 2017 in three academic departments: Business & Technology, Health Sciences & Natural Sciences. Modeled on a “Guided Pathways” approach (Bailey, Jaggars & Jenkins, 2015), this initiative provides advisement and guidance throughout students’ LaGuardia career to help increase retention and graduation rates. Our approach guides every student according to his or her own personal needs within the major at every point along a clearly defined pathway, from the beginning of admission through to graduation.
To accomplish its goals and expected outcomes, the Advisement 2.0 model tests ways to enhance the College’s earlier department-oriented advising team model by implementing a tiered services approach and advanced digital technology that integrates with CUNY systems. It engages faculty, peer advisors, and staff on advising teams, connecting them with advisement support communities at LaGuardia.
The program’s objectives are the following:
- More comprehensive support for LaGuardia students with the greatest need
- Stronger collaboration among staff, faculty, students, and the community, in general
- Clear roles and responsibilities for staff in order to better assist all students
- More effective engagement of the strengths of faculty and peers
- Support for faculty teams with structure, data, and professional development
A comprehensive menu of professional development activities for faculty supports Advisement 2.0, including mini-seminars, workshops, and department meeting activities.Through these activities, faculty deepen their knowledge of CUNY and LaGuardia academic and transfer policies; CUNY- and LaGuardia-developed advisement tools and technologies; and student-centered, “developmental advisement” conversations.
Peer Advisor Academy
Since January 2015, the Peer Advisor Academy has recruited and trained hundreds of LaGuardia Community College students to help fellow students plan their academic futures. Peer Advisors strive to support their peers in designing and achieving their academic goals at LaGuardia and beyond. Working one-on-one with students who have completed their first semester, Peer Advisors use their own experiences as successful college students to offer guidance in academic planning and navigating college resources. Peer Advisors interact with students at various levels in their academic career and mentor them through the process of achieving academic goals and developing their college and career paths. Our students benefit significantly from working with Peer Advisors because of the support, knowledge, experience, and resources they are able to share with their fellow students.
Co-Curricular Learning
At LaGuardia, co-curricular learning activities help students link study in their courses to campus events, workshops, speaker series, clubs, and other experiences that complement academic learning. These activities also help connect our students to the wider LaGuardia community, showcasing a wide range of faculty, staff, and student expertise and interests. The CTL supports co-curricular learning by working with colleagues in Student Affairs to shape the First Year Experience and First Year Seminar activities, as well as supporting activities such as student research forums, film festivals, and Global Learning mini-grants. Students are often asked to reflect on these activities during an event or by updating their ePortfolios.
Our Digital Badging initiative creates a formal structure for highlighting participation in specific co-curricular activities. A joint project of both Academic and Student Affairs, LaGuardia Digital Badges are validated indicators of achievement, professional development, and deep integrative learning that students are able to earn through various academic and co-curricular activities. Digital Badges allow students to earn verified forms of recognition—with meaningful examples of the work they’ve done throughout their time at LaGuardia—for use with transfer institutions and employers.
The First Year Experience (FYE)
A comprehensive, extended orientation program designed to engage and support new students as they learn to navigate the College and use its many resources, FYE activities formed through a collaboration between Academic Affairs and Student Affairs. It includes a series of co-curricular programs and events, such as My First Day and My Campus Events, that complement and extend students’ work in the First Year Seminar.The First Year Seminar (FYS)
The FYS is designed to support freshmen or transfer students in their transition to college life. Faculty in every department teach these discipline-specific courses. FYS students are introduced to their major as they receive advising support and learn how to tap into the College’s many resources and co-curricular learning opportunities. They receive additional support in an attached Studio Hour, where these students learn about digital tools that facilitate educational and career planning. LaGuardia students must complete the First Year Seminar successfully in order to graduate.ePortfolio
ePortfolio plays an integral role in the First Year Seminar (FYS) course. In FYS, students start to build and develop their “Next Generation” ePortfolios, integrating what they learn in the course about their major, career interests, and transfer with academic planning and the College’s General Education Core Competencies and Communication Abilities. Supported by Student Success Mentors, new students create and work on their ePortfolio and are encouraged to continue in future semesters. Doing so allows students to flesh-out their graduation plan, see their growth as they move toward graduation, and prepare for transferring after graduating from LaGuardia.Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL)
Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) is a global learning initiative supported by the Division of Academic Affairs and the Center for Teaching and Learning at LaGuardia Community College. Modeled after SUNY COIL, it is a teaching method that facilitates students’ global awareness, cross-cultural and cross-linguistic communication through interactive online practices. COIL faculty in any discipline can connect their courses with courses abroad using digital tools, such as video chat and web blogs. Since the program’s inception at LaGuardia in Fall 2016, 42 courses have benefited from COIL projects with colleges and universities in France, Russia, Nicaragua, Morocco, Dominica, South Africa, Colombia, French Guiana, India, Mexico, Montenegro, Brazil, Japan, and Egypt. In April 2021, LaGuardia COIL was awarded a grant of $750,000 by The Stevens Initiative, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, with funding provided by the U.S. Government, and administered by the Aspen Institute. The Stevens Initiative is also supported by the Bezos Family Foundation and the governments of Morocco and the United Arab Emirates. To learn more about COIL at LaGuardia, please visit laguardia.edu/coil.We value the social dimensions of learning. Collaboration is an important aspect of our work in the Center for Teaching and Learning, and this extends from our college-based programs to work with colleagues local to CUNY, and on a regional or national scale. Some of our recent partnerships demonstrate the reach of our activities and the range of practices we support, all in the service of supporting LaGuardia students as we contribute to building the field of professional development within the higher ed landscape.
Humanities Alliance
TA partnership between the CUNY Graduate Center and LaGuardia Community College, with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the CUNY Humanities Alliance trains Ph.D. students in the most successful methods for teaching humanities courses in some of the country’s most diverse undergraduate classrooms. Working with graduate students, administrators in the Graduate Center, and LaGuardia faculty, the CTL supports professional development that helps to broaden and strengthen access to and engagement in the humanities for LaGuardia students. Initiated in Fall 2016, the Humanities Alliance (HA) pairs Graduate Center fellows with LaGuardia mentors—master faculty in humanities disciplines relevant to the fellows’ academic interests, including philosophy, communication studies, English, art history, and the humanistic social sciences.
A year-long seminar supports a consistent and collaborative mentor relationship by orienting HA fellows to LaGuardia’s mission and ethos; its college-wide framework of Core Competencies, General Education, and departmental requirements; and teaching methodologies that benefit all learners, especially students traditionally underrepresented in higher education. In preparation for teaching their own courses, the Seminar guides the construction of discipline-specific syllabuses that reflect the Fellows’ evolving understanding of the opportunities and obligations of community college teaching and learning.
A complementary program—the Humanities Scholars—introduces a cohort of LaGuardia students to academic and career opportunities in the humanities.
CUNY CTLs Council
LaGuardia’s Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) is an active member of the CUNY-wide CTLs Council, a network for support among CUNY campus’ pedagogical centers. The CTL Council’s website describes its mission as prioritizing the following considerations for teaching and learning throughout CUNY
- Sharing resources and promoting best practices of the synergistic relationship between teaching and learning
- Advocating for sufficient resource allocation for teaching and learning operations on each campus
- Building and disseminating standards of excellence for faculty development
- Mentoring and supporting new CUNY CTLs and their leaders
- Producing research and scholarship about our collective endeavors
- Promoting best practices and models of SOTL
- Endorsing good models for the assessment of teaching and student learning.
Together the CUNY CTLs focus on a theme for a given academic year. Recent themes have included Open Education Resources (OERs), making CUNY classrooms inclusive and accessible, and Experiential Learning.
Making Connections National Resource Center
From 2007-2010, the CTL worked with 30 NYC-area colleges to help them pilot ePortfolio on their campuses through the Making Connections National Resource Center. Joining forces with AAEEBL, a global ePortfolio network of more than 100 member campuses active with ePortfolio, selected AAEEBL and Making Connections campuses have worked in sustained collaborations to improve campus practice and generate resources for the field.
With a collection of grant funds, the Making Connections National Resource Center has strengthened LaGuardia’s work around reflective learning and developed mechanisms for more systematic exchanges within higher education by working with LaGuardia faculty and students in advancing our own ePortfolio practice, and by broadening engagement with educators from colleges and universities from around the world.
STEM Connect
LaGuardia Community College was awarded a Hispanic Serving Institutions-STEM grant by the US Department of Education in Fall 2016. Through STEM-CONNECT, LaGuardia is collaborating with CUNY partners, New York City College of Technology (City Tech) and York College, to build a “guided pathway” to advanced STEM degrees, thereby improving STEM education at LaGuardia and supporting students from admission to transfer success. STEM-CONNECT is focused on three major goals:
- Connect to College: LaGuardia is opening the STEM pipeline by engaging Hispanic and underrepresented minority students in the pre-term (between admission and matriculation) by expanding access and building STEM preparedness.
- Connect to STEM Learning: STEM-CONNECT is linking its High Impact Practices into a comprehensive STEM pathway.
- Connect to STEM Success: LaGuardia is building model STEM articulation agreements with City Tech and York, facilitating completion with “reverse transfer” innovation and shared transfer advisement. Creating transfer partnerships, building on shared data, and scaffolding transfer support activities into the STEM experience, LaGuardia is connecting students with faculty and peer mentors at partner campuses, building bridges to successful STEM careers.
As an outgrowth of the Frontline Staff Professional Development workshop series, the CTL and Human Resources developed a 3-day program that provides a more sustained experience for our student-facing colleagues. The goals to enhance the effectiveness and engagement of frontline leaders, and to provide the information and tools needed to strengthen team performance and achieve greater personal professional success.The program is an investment in those staff who play a pivotal role in supporting student success either through direct interaction with our students or in their support for departmental and/or divisional teams across the College.
The CTL supports several peer-to-peer mentoring programs. Each program employs current LaGuardia students or former students currently enrolled in another CUNY college in order to provide support to help current students progress through their programs successfully. Center staff recruit, train, and provide continuous professional development for CTL peer mentors so that they can gain the necessary knowledge and skills for their responsibilities. We focus on leadership development and opportunities to improve their professional preparation, such as building effective communication skills, providing networking opportunities, and goal-setting.
Peer Advisors
Since January 2015, the Peer Advisor Academy has recruited and trained hundreds of LaGuardia Community College students to help fellow students plan their academic futures. Peer Advisors strive to support their peers in designing and achieving their academic goals at LaGuardia and beyond. Working one-on-one with students who have completed their first semester, Peer Advisors use their own experiences as successful college students to offer guidance in academic planning and navigating college resources.
Peer Advisors interact with students at various levels in their academic career and mentor them through the process of achieving academic goals and developing their career paths. LaGuardia Community College students benefit significantly from working with Peer Advisors because of the support, knowledge, experience and resources they are able to share with their fellow students.
Student Technology Mentors
The Student Technology Mentors (STMs) provide support for faculty, students and staff using various technology tools for research, web development, and document production. STMs are trained to provide both one-on-one support for faculty and to assist faculty with class sessions where students are using technology.
STMs may assist faculty and students with designing, creating, and maintaining technology projects and resources for teaching and learning, such as:
To learn more visit the STM website, where you can also request assistance from an STM for help with technologies including these and more:
- PowerPoint presentations
- web pages
- course management in Blackboard, ePortfolio, and Ektron
- video recording
- multimedia learning projects
- library database and Internet search assistance
- tutorials
Student Success Mentors
Launched in the summer of 2014, the Student Success Mentor (SSM) Program is comprised of peer mentors who have a demonstrated record of success at LaGuardia. They are current LaGuardia students or alumni attending a four-year college. SSMs provide a wide-range of support to students while facilitating the Studio Hour component of a discipline-specific First Year Seminar course. SSMs mentor students who are new to the College by sharing their own academic experiences. They introduce students to key strategies and habits of mind for academic success, initiate and guide ePortfolio development, promote co-curricular learning opportunities, and share important campus resources designed to support student success.
Teaching Hub
The LaGuardia Center for Teaching and Learning offers programs designed to advance innovative teaching and enrich student learning at LaGuardia Community College and beyond. Our resources include those which inform our practice as a center for faculty professional development, as well as a selection of those we have developed, including:
Our robust professional development structure is designed to support faculty innovation and exchange, focused on student learning. Paramount to our approach is a focus on classroom inquiry and reflective practice: faculty in Center programs investigate student learning in their own classes and reflect on their efforts to introduce new activities and approaches as evidenced by student performance. Winner of a Hesburgh Award for excellence in advancing undergraduate education, the Center for Teaching and Learning facilitates professional development activities within a larger framework of broad institutional learning at LaGuardia.
Approches to Pedagogy
We believe students learn more deeply, and more permanently, through asking questions, through collaboration, and through active engagement that draws on the full range of their knowledge and experience, both cognitive and affective. Activities that build this approach, a hallmark of LaGuardia’s faculty development programs, emphasize attention to learning and the learner, shifting the conversation from what the instructor does to what students do.
Over the College’s half-century history, LaGuardia faculty have been leaders in innovative approaches to teaching and student learning. Guided by learning theory and reflective teaching practice, the CTL has helped shape, guide, and support the implementation of effective pedagogical practices across the curriculum, in learning in and out of the classroom. Over the years, we have built on this foundation as our understanding of learning has evolved. And we have experimented with new approaches or variations on previous practice, such as a focus on the affective dimensions of learning, or inclusive learning and Universal Design for Learning, or flipped learning, or the Dewey Cycle of Inquiry.
Assessment and Core Competencies
The Center supports the College’s Outcomes Assessment process by providing year-long and mini-seminars that support the development of course activities and assignments linked to the College’s general education Core Learning Competencies and Communication Abilities. Our faculty have determined that these Competencies (Global and Integrative Learning, Inquiry & Problem Solving) and Abilities (Oral, Written, and Digital Communication) are key for students’ development as 21st Century learners—for college and career.
Every academic program includes a range of courses across the curriculum that incorporate assignments that help students build the Core Competencies and Abilities. Faculty teaching these courses will implement assignments aligned with rubrics for each Competency or Ability; students enrolled in these courses will deposit their work for future scoring as part of a programmatic or college-wide Benchmark Reading. To support assignment development, the CTL announces a range of seminar and mini-grant offerings each spring for faculty interested in participating the following year. To learn more about these offerings and how they connect with the Learning Competencies and Communication Abilities, please visit our Seminars page.
Conversations at the Center
Every year, the Center supports Brown Bag Conversations, which provide an opportunity for LaGuardia faculty throughout the college to present on the topics that most interest them. Initiated in 2000, this popular series has provided a broad spectrum of activities with topics ranging from “How Can We Help Fix Our Water: Environmental Science Adventures at the Newtown Creek” to “Educating for a Global Citizenry.” The Brown Bag series provides a valuable informal forum for faculty wishing to get input on their presentations, or to connect with colleagues from across the College who are interested in similar themes or research. Each year, the faculty solicits interest from faculty and announces the Conversations College-wide.
LaGuardia Faculty Resource
Developed by newer faculty members who saw the need for a faculty-friendly guide to campus and support services, this practical, hands-on guide provides links and tips to navigating LaGuardia and accessing the resources faculty need for teaching here.
New Faculty Colloquium
In this year-long orientation to teaching and learning at LaGuardia, new full-time faculty work with CTL staff, senior colleagues, and chairpersons to learn about their new professional environment. Participants learn from each other and colleagues across the College about LaGuardia’s students, college-wide initiatives, networking opportunities, institutional resources to support scholarship and service, and pedagogical strategies proven to be effective at LaGuardia. The Colloquium provides a setting where new faculty can form friendships that carry into future endeavors. Colloquium activities include introductions to key processes, resources, and information that will help new faculty successfully navigate their first year at the college and set the stage for a successful LaGuardia career.
Provost’s Learning Space
Effective teaching requires consistent evaluation of student learning. In the Provost’s Learning Space (PLS) seminar, participants expand their pedagogical “toolbox” by exploring various strategies used to assess learning. Through a series of hands-on activities and workshops, participants will become more thoughtful in their approach to assessment planning and implementation.
Tech (and Other) Resource Links
LaGuardia’s Faculty and Staff Portal provides links to key resources including Blackboard, CUNY First, Outlook Web Access, Web Attendance, the IT HelpDesk, the Library, Human Resources, and more.
The Center for Teaching and Learning supports a range of activities that promote learning in digital environments. For example, among LaGuardia’s new Learning Competencies and Communication Abilities is Digital Communication. This ability emphasizes multimedia forms of expression, such as text, image, and/or video, as well as various platforms for digital interaction, including discussion threads and social media. The Center offers seminars, workshops, and presentations in support of this important success skill for the 21st Century.
As always, LaGuardia faculty experiment with their own strategies and incorporate an ever-expanding range of tools and digital platforms for learning. Some of these projects are included here.
ePortfolio
LaGuardia is national leader in ePortfolio practice, with thousands of students creating an ePortfolio in their first semester that they will develop over their academic experience at LaGuardia. This “Next Generation ePortfolio” is part of a college-wide initiative to help deepen community and foster integration across students’ learning experience at LaGuardia. Grounding ePortfolio practice in integrative social pedagogy helps our students accomplish a deeper, more reflective learning that connects them to the College and each other. Through comprehensive ePortfolio practice, faculty and staff are empowering students as learners and emerging professionals.
Our ePortfolio Consultants, a team of LaGuardia alumni and current CUNY students, offer their expertise through training in the development and design of ePortfolios, as well as support for with the implementation of ePortfolio in the classroom. Services range from student workshops to one-on-one faculty conversations.
Hybrid-Online
Hybrid or “blended” courses connect instructors and students alike to the rich possibilities of the internet and web-centered learning while offering scheduling flexibility to students with very busy lives. Online learning is most effective when course design and pedagogical methods are built around widely accepted practices, and sound decisions about technology applications.
The Center for Teaching and Learning supports faculty initiatives for hybrid and online instruction. CTL has offered year-long seminars and workshops that provide the opportunity for faculty to explore pedagogical strategies for transitioning from traditional classroom teaching to hybrid or online, and integrating various technologies for student engagement. The Center also provides resources and instructional support to faculty building their hybrid and online courses.For further information or assistance, please contact Pablo Avila at pavila@lagcc.cuny.edu.
You may also visit the LaGuardia Online Web page.
Publication And Scholarship
The College highlights faculty’s scholarly achievements and provides support for faculty who publish their work. The CTL offers two extensive related seminars, and the opportunity to publish a work in progress in In Transit: The LaGuardia Journal on Teaching and Learning . Both the Carnegie Seminar on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and the Faculty Scholars Publication Workshop (FSPW), which supports faculty’s disciplinary-focused research, provide faculty with support structures for at least a full academic year or more. The CTL also connects faculty with related LaGuardia supports, such as the Literacy Brokers, an 8-week session open to anyone working on a piece of writing, and Library workshops on topics like predatory publishing, hands-on practice with new databases, and techniques for researching potential publishers.
Over the years, the CTL has compiled example of faculty’s work with students across a range of activities, such as the DFL Sampler, the Project Quantum Leap Sampler and the ePortfolio Sampler. Each Sampler featured work by LaGuardia faculty and provides useful, engaging activities that others may use or adapt.
Since 2005, In Transit: LaGuardia’s Journal on Teaching and Learning has invited LaGuardia faculty to submit scholarly inquiries into faculty teaching, defined by Pat Hutchings as “the conditions under which [learning] occurs, what it looks like, how to deepen it…with an eye not only to improving their own classrooms, but to advancing practice beyond it.” Proposals span a variety of methodical approaches, including case studies, empirical research, literature reviews, and reflective essays, address the college’s mission and problem-solving and global initiatives, and define disciplinary-based learning objectives. In Transit publications should demonstrate credible knowledge of the background and purposes of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), as well as faculty awareness of the practical implications of their disciplinary research for the diverse communities and identities of LaGuardia students, faculty, and staff. In Transit themes are summarized below:
- Volume 1, numbers 1—2, Fall 2005 and Spring 2006: Inaugural volume
LaGuardia faculty from across the curriculum offer multi-faceted reflections on the everyday reality of classroom teaching and learning, creating a key first step in the development of SoTL and public scholarship in the two-year college. - Volume 2, Fall 2007: Border Pedagogy
Authors transcend the concepts of demographic or geographic borders to trace the effects of changes in teaching and learning that occur when the limits of preconceptions, misconceptions, and biases are dissolved. - Volume 3, Fall 2008: Work, Class, and Identity in the Classroom
Recognizing the historical and material conditions of the lives of LaGuardia students, authors design and critique pedagogical choices directed toward framing the purposes, demands, and effects of various forms of work—academic, aesthetic, and professional—and the ways these experiences shape identity. - Volume 4, Fall 2009: Reflecting to Learn
Writers inquire into the classroom strategies that help students develop the systematic habits of reflection, and offer their own experiences with creating classrooms designed to strengthen connections between lived experiences and disciplinary ways of thinking. - Volume 5, Spring 2011: Greening the Campus Community
Thirteen authors suggest a “reorientation of the human community,“ each reflecting a unique disciplinary ecological perspective, passion, and desire to “green” the curricula of LaGuardia’s credit and non-credit programs. - Volume 6, Spring 2014: STEMing Inequities
Guided by SoTL values and methodology, STEM faculty examine teaching and learning practices in their classrooms and laboratories with the purpose of sharing with the wider LaGuardia community the skills and forms of collaboration and experimentation necessary to thinking like a scientist, mathematician, or engineer, and argue for equitable opportunities in STEM preparation. - Volume 7, Fall 2016: The First Year Seminar as a Whole-College Approach to First-Year Success
As students enter their first year of college, many experience an intense, sometimes disorienting process of change. This volume presents research the ways First Year Seminar (FYS) faculty facilitate the new student’s transition to academic work and culture, and also describes a parallel quest, that of the FYS instructor who has left the familiar world of own academic disciplines to venture into a different kind of teaching. - Volume 8, Fall 2017: LaGuardia’s Prison-to-College Initiative
This issue of In Transit takes as its subject a special learner: the person who has been incarcerated. At LaGuardia, classroom practice is informed by the identities and experiences of our students—who they are now, in this city, at this time in our history—and it is from this position that the current issue of In Transit engages SoTL to contribute to increased whole-campus awareness of the consequences of mass incarceration on the daily lives of our students. - Volume 9, Spring 2019: LaGuardia’s Prison-to-College Initiative
Papers draw upon class assignments previously initiated by cross-disciplinary faculty in the Provost’s Learning Circle or CTL seminars, and further developed in the three-semester Carnegie Seminar (Fall 2017, Spring 2018, and Fall 2018). Designed for traditional classrooms, online courses, and learning environments that exist beyond the classroom, the current issue’s SoTL explorations range from peer activist learning and philosophical debate as civil discourse to critical reading, culturally relevant pedagogy, and the relations between race and linguistics. All investigations further LaGuardia’s understanding of the multiple ways learning is experienced and evaluated in the arts and sciences at a two-year urban college.
In his groundbreaking monograph, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (1990), Ernest Boyer argues for a broadening of the traditional view of acceptable forms of scholarship to include teaching as a valid category of intellectual work. The scholarship of teaching and learning encompasses both practice and mastery, which in turn generate questions for systematic inquiry and the creation of new knowledge offered for public sharing and review. Intended for critical review by a community of peers, faculty “frame and systematically investigate questions related to student learning – the conditions under which they occur, what it looks like, how to deepen it, and so forth – with an eye not only to improving their own classroom but to advancing practice beyond it.”
At the Center for Teaching and Learning, inquiry into effective classroom pedagogy is a practice common to all seminars as is the commitment to making investigations into teaching and learning public and open to critical review. More formal research projects are undertaken in the Carnegie Seminar on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, a year-long seminar in which faculty investigate significant issues in the teaching and learning of their fields and complete a scholarly paper for internal publication in In Transit: LaGuardia’s Journal on Teaching and Learning.
Developing Scholarship and Writing
- Carnegie Seminar on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning – Michele Piso Manoukian. A year-long seminar in which faculty investigate significant issues in the teaching and learning of their fields and complete a scholarly paper for internal publication in a href=”http://ctl.laguardia.edu/journal/” title=”In Transit: LaGuardia’s Journal on Teaching and Learning” target=”_blank”>In Transit: LaGuardia’s Journal on Teaching and Learning. A second seminar expectation is that papers will be presented at conferences and revised for external, peer reviewed publication
- Faculty Scholars Publication Workshop – Nancy Berke. The Faculty Scholars Publication Workshop, a year-long seminar providing collegial support for faculty developing research for peer-reviewed publication
- Literacy Brokers Writing Circle (semester-long writing group) – Maria Jerskey. You want to publish. So do your colleagues. You have expertise. So do your colleagues. Why go it alone? Get the community you need by joining The Literacy Brokers’ Writing Circle.
Opportunities and Resources at LaGuardia & CUNY
- In Transit: LaGuardia’s Journal on Teaching and Learning
- Faculty and Staff Notes Submission and Archives and CUNY Creative Activity Collection for CUNY
- CUNY Academic Works
- CUNY Funding, Opportunities and Support