Fall Activities

During the fall, Institute participants met five times to share the results of teaching in this new mode. Our discussions shifted from theory and planning to the details of what was going on in our classrooms. We discussed our challenges, frustrations, triumphs and failures of working with the learner outcomes model. The exchange was invaluable. In effect, we created our own classroom or learning community in which every participant became both teacher and student, learner and facilitator of this new way of working.

Although seventeen instructors developed projects at the Institute, only fourteen were able to put them into effect due to departmental demands. Three departments simply could not allow these instructors to have one-class reassigned time in Spring 2000 to analyze the results of their projects. Staffing needs demanded that they remain in the classroom. Nevertheless, those three instructors continued to meet with the group throughout the fall.

Spring Activities

During Spring semester 2000, participants intensively analyzed the results of their fall activities. Our five meetings shifted from discussing teaching to talking about data collection, analysis and interpretation. Cabrillo's Office of Institutional Research provided some data and tutoring on how to use it. David Douglass, psychology instructor and Institute participant, proved to be an invaluable resource for number crunching and analysis.

Project participants also spent a considerable part of the spring semester developing curriculum plans to incorporate the learner outcomes approach in another class that they will be teaching during the coming fall term.