CETL goes to GEPA

CETL director Josh Eyler and associate director Liz Norell recently attended the AAC&U conference on general education, pedagogy, and assessment (GEPA). Here's their report.

The American Association of Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) hosts an annual conference about General Education, Pedagogy, and Assessment, or GEPA*. The 2024 conference took place earlier this month in Providence, Rhode Island, where two CETL team members appeared on the program. Here, we share some of our reflections on the conference and highlights of our contributions. The theme of GEPA 2024 was Courage, which brought together higher education faculty, staff, students, and leaders in several tracks: creative courage, pedagogical courage, methodological courage, compassionate courage, disciplinary courage, moral courage, and collective courage.

Photo by Oliver Cole on Unsplash

Liz: Rethinking learning outcomes

With Chris Creighton from the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, I led a theory-to-practice workshop called “Co-Creating Learning Outcomes as a Student-Centered Practice.” The gist of our argument is that when instructors write highly defined learning outcomes before a class begins—in other words, before meeting their students—there is an inevitable loss of student agency and co-creation.

A little back story: I began working with Chris many months ago (August 2023) when he posted something about having strong feelings about learning objectives on Bluesky. Our conversation soon moved to emails.

Quickly, I learned that Chris’s great big brain and seemingly endless curiosity were qualities that could generate terrific collaboration. We spent months exchanging lengthy emails about our ideas, questions, and curiosities around learning objectives. That rich discussion became our GEPA presentation, which drew from a diverse set of frameworks and philosophies, including feminist pedagogies, Fink’s significant learning experiences, Ryan and Deci’s self-determination theory, Wiggins and McTighe’s Understanding by Design, Barre’s taxonomy of learning goals, and Webb’s Depth of Knowledge framework.

The willingness to rethink how we design courses requires plenty of courage—but it also challenges existing assessment paradigms and institutional requirements/policies. We recognize that individual faculty members or departments cannot buck these requirements alone, but in the context of framing for students how we explore the material of what we teach, instructors have considerable autonomy to create those pathways. 

Our session drew positive feedback. One attendee, whose small group had engaged Chris in a somewhat critical dialogue, told us afterwards that she had “never thought so much or so deeply in a conference session before.” Another attendee, who had jokingly expressed frustration with me for not just giving him the “correct” answer to his questions, later thanked us for our provocative and thoughtful session.

Liz: Centering wellness as effective pedagogy in 2024?

Along with Sarah Rose Cavanagh of Simmons University and Thomas J. Tobin of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I was honored to serve on a panel discussion about what effective pedagogy looks like in 2024. The panel was sponsored by OneHE, a website that offers professional learning opportunities for faculty and that features materials from Sarah, Tom, and our CETL colleague Derek Bruff.

A few days before the conference, we got together to talk about how we’d structure our short conversation. One by one, we shared what we might identify as critical to effective pedagogy in 2024…and one by one, we identified something related to student/faculty wellness. Tom suggested we each focus on wellness at a different level, and our session format was born: Sarah talked about the micro level (individuals), I shared about the meso level (groups), and Tom focused on the macro level (institutions). 

In my remarks, I shared five challenges to faculty wellness that have emerged from my discussions with faculty at UM and elsewhere: 

1. The perception that students are increasingly disengaged;

2. A perceived loss of community among faculty, especially since 2020 (some even call it faculty disengagement); 

3. Feelings of overwhelm and burnout; 

4. Uncertainty that effective teaching is recognized; and

5. Pressure to do more and make changes from every conceivable direction.

What do faculty need to ensure they are well? I proposed:

1. Social connection with others on campus, without asking for a lot of time or effort; 

2. Practical tools for engaging students; 

3. Relaxing hustle culture and expectations of constant work—with a hat tip to Karen Costa’s scope of practice (read her book chapter or download a template to generate your own scope of practice); 

4. Feeling that their struggles are seen and understood by their institutions; and 

5. A win. Simply put, faculty need to feel like they are getting a win—in some way that matters to them (hat tip to Jennifer Gonzalez for this). 

Josh: Having the Courage to Change the Way We Grade

I led a session called “The Courage to Change the Way We Grade,” where I presented some of the research on the harms of grades and then facilitated a workshop in which participants outlined some of the barriers to grading reform on their own campuses. After they completed this activity, I provided some starting points for how to address these barriers. I recently shared some additional reflections about the conference in my newsletter, “It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way.”

Favorite moments

Josh: My favorite moment was a collection of moments, actually. The energy at this conference was unlike any other. Not only were people talking about change at scale, but they were presenting their plans for making change and sharing reflections about reform initiatives that had succeeded or failed. Higher ed has a reputation for being allergic to change, but you would never have known that at this conference. It was refreshing.

Liz: My favorite moment of the conference came from an audience member during our panel Friday afternoon—and that timing was important. I had made brief mention of part-time faculty when I addressed faculty wellness (at the meso level), and the attendee shouted from the hallway at our overflowing panel room that it was the first time he had heard anyone at the conference mention our part-time faculty colleagues. A spontaneous round of applause broke out. That moment was a poignant reminder of how important it is to keep all faculty in mind when we’re talking about courageous pedagogy—particularly given the stark reality of how many contingent faculty are teaching our general education courses. 

Conclusion

We were both struck by the mix of faculty, staff (especially institutional assessment and research staff members), administrators, and students who attended this conference. By bringing together such a diverse set of academic roles, GEPA delivered on its promise of identifying potential barriers to courageous change and building momentum necessary to overcome them. 

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* As in the pronunciation of GIF, we’ve heard people use a hard g (as in gift) and a soft g (as in gem). As far as we can tell, there is no settled community understanding on this.