Collaborative Curriculum Revision Project: Documentarian's Report

Authors

Anastasia Chiu

Document Type

Report

Publication Date

4-2015

Abstract

The fourth series of Collaborative Curriculum Revision Project workshops, created by the DOE/CUNY Library Collaborative and project managed by Graduate NYC, took place in spring 2015. It comprised five professional development workshop sessions held in March at Graduate NYC’s/CUNY Central Office in Downtown Brooklyn. Faculty and librarians from the New York City College of Technology and Sunset Park High School gathered, developed a shared collection of teaching strategies for preparing students for the college experience, and revised a high school earth science curricular unit. To inform revisions to the high school curricular unit, participants engaged in conversations on common teaching goals and challenges, skills that constitute “college-readiness,” and best teaching practices. In engaging in these conversations, participants developed a community of practice that can extend beyond the workshop series itself.

The development of this series was largely informed by reflections and recommendations of Collaborative members who developed the first two workshop series. Members of the Collaborative distributed copies of their white paper, DOE/CUNY Library Collaborative: Bridging the Gap Between High School and College, from which participants learned about successes and lessons of the 2012 and 2013 workshop series. The newly-hired facilitator and documentarian of this series also underwent training and were given access to documentation of previous series, from which they gained further insight into the process of shaping the series around collaborative work and dialogues.

This report describes the collaborative revisions to the high school earth science curriculum unit, explicates the process of revision and community-building, and details successes and recommendations to inform upcoming workshop series.

Comments

This project was funded by the Teagle Foundation, the CUNY University Dean for Libraries and Information Resources, and the NYC DOE Library Division.