As Director of the Office of Educational Development, I am responsible for supporting the teaching activities of the faculty in the Veterinary College. This refers to teaching as broadly defined, and involves faculty development in many areas. For example, my work involves consulting with faculty individually and in groups to improve or refine their approaches to teaching, curricular materials, assessment of student performance, course evaluation, etc. It also involves supporting the development of computer programs or other models, displays, etc. for use in teaching, helping faculty to document their teaching activity for purposes of promotion and tenure, and providing assistance in developing and disseminating course materials. I coordinate (and often lead) regular seminars for the veterinary faculty on aspects of teaching and learning, serve on the College Curriculum Committee and also the Academic Council, and attend the weekly meetings of teaching faculty and the regular meetings of course planners. I also offer more formal (1-2 day) workshops in areas such as assessment or tutor training, and recently led a retreat for the faculty who serve as tutors in our tutorial-based curriculum. In addition, I conduct educational research projects and have my own areas of scholarly interest and activity. I also serve as a faculty tutor, am responsible for new student orientation, and I am involved in other areas that relate to the support of the teaching program in the College.
The past several years have been a time of significant change in the College, namely, with the development and implementation of an entirely new veterinary curriculum. I have been intimately involved in this process and many of the faculty development activities in which I've been involved have been geared toward supporting both the faculty and the direction of change. We are now working toward institutionalizing the changes we've made, and fine-tuning the curriculum as it is currently structured. (The new curriculum was implemented in Aug. of 1993-- we've just started our third class of students through it.)
The curriculum is now comprised of 7 large interdisciplinary courses that have been developed by groups of faculty representing different departments. It is aimed toward helping students to integrate their learning, assume greater responsibility for their learning, and help them develop the skills they need to keep learning in their professional lives. The case-based curriculum was developed using concept maps, and concept maps for each of the courses are posted in tutorial rooms. Tutorial groups use concept maps to summarize their learning, and some faculty use concept mapping in their teaching (including exams). (I give concept mapping workshops to all new students.)
The new veterinary curriculum follows the model of a modified problem-based curriculum. Its implementation has required the faculty to adopt new conceptions about teaching, and has forced them to reconsider (and change) their fundamental assumptions about education. Success for students in the new curriculum has also required them to reevaluate their expectations and assumptions about education, and has highlighted for them many issues about learning, authority, the permanence of knowledge, etc. The scholarly work I've done has focused primarily on these issues. My older papers have focused on the faculty and the process of change; my more recent work has been directed toward documenting qualitative changes in student learning as a result of the new curriculum.
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That's as brief a summary as I can give at this point. My work has basically involved taking Dr. Novak's work and related theories and applying them to a real-world situation.
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Katherine M. Edmondson, Ph.D.
Director, Office of Educational Development
College of Veterinary Medicine
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853-6401
Telephone: (607) 253-3767
FAX: (607) 253-3708
E-mail: kme2@cornell.edu
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