Faculty Development Programs

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Annual Project Plan - 2004-2005

Overview and Objectives

During its second year of participation in the AAM project, the Federation of Independent Illinois Colleges and Universities will continue its emphasis on working with teacher educators at member institutions as a means of advancing the use of LOC digitized materials by new teachers across the state of Illinois, and ultimately by large numbers of Illinois students. This initiative will be guided by the following objectives:

• Implement, evaluate, and revise AAM credit courses and other instructional activities for pre-service teachers that were developed by the five original partner colleges/universities during year one of the project.
• Further integrate LOC web-based resources into the curricula of the partner schools through cross-department collaboration and other strategies.
• Bring three new Federation schools into the project, providing the resources and training needed for these new partners to develop AAM courses and other AAM-related learning activities that are appropriate for their pre-service teachers.
• Expand educational resources for teacher education faculty involved in the project and provide numerous opportunities for collaboration and information exchange.
• Use multiple strategies to disseminate project results at the state, regional, and national levels, focusing both on use of LOC resources and, more broadly, on model, replicable approaches to faculty development enacted through this project.

Activities

As these objectives suggest, project activities will be directed toward implementation, integration, and evaluation; orientation; resource development; and dissemination.

Implementation, Integration, and Evaluation: During this second project year, the ten original faculty participants who developed AAM courses and other related curricula for pre-service teachers during the year one, will implement them, working with a project evaluator to assess their effectiveness and make changes as needed. The ten original faculty participants will also work toward embedding AAM instructional activities and materials into the broader pre-service curriculum by collaborating with colleagues both within and across departments. For example, the faculty participants from National-Louis University will pursue a cross-disciplinary effort focused on integrating a sequential, progressive emphasis on visual literacy into the teacher education curriculum at NLU through the use of LOC materials.

Orientation: Also during the second project year, faculty from three new college partners will become a part of the project so that this initiative will continue to grow, reaching increasingly larger numbers of new teachers and their students across the state. These new participants will receive an initial orientation to the project, conducted by the project staff, to be held a day before the first general participant meeting in the late fall of 2004. They will receive another full day of training the day before the second general participant meeting, to be held in the late winter of 2005. In creating their own AAM courses and other curricula, these new participants will have access to the 10 original participants, their evolving materials, and a number of print and on-line resources to be created during summer and early fall of 2004. Also, each independent college or university new to the project will be paired with the original partner institution that is closest to it geographically to encourage communication, material sharing, and class observations.

Resource Development: During the summer and fall of 2004, the project staff and the original participants will collaborate on the development of a web-based resource "clearing house" to provide content activities, models of professional development processes, tutorials for technology and other curricular activities, web links and other resources, and a bibliography of references. This clearing house will contribute significantly to the sustainability of the project by making the induction of new teacher education faculty less dependent on group workshops. Eventually, other teacher educators will be able to join the project at any time and from anywhere in the state, with the assistance of an increasingly rich, easily accessible array of resource materials and the help of one or more of the growing cadre of AAM teacher educators also produced by this project—whose names and contact information will also be listed on the clearing house web site.

Dissemination: Finally, during this second project year there will also be a strong emphasis on dissemination, led by the project staff and the ten original faculty participants. Working together, they will plan and convene a one-day AAM conference to be held in Springfield, Illinois, in the spring of 2005, inviting the participation of other AAM projects throughout the state. The ten original participants and the project staff will also make presentations at professional conferences and publish articles highlighting the potential of AAM materials and methodology for invigorating pre-service teacher education.

An Adventure of the American Mind is made available through a Library of Congress grant funded by the U.S. Congress. AAM is administered through the Education and Research Consortium of the Western Carolinas Inc.
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