UIUC: Creativity and Innovation in Service-Learning


by Ann Abbott

The Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Illinois puts on an annual Faculty Retreat to focus on teaching excellence and teaching innovation. This year's retreat centered on Keith Sawyer's book, Group Genius.

As a follow-up, Valeri Werpetinski has organized a wonderful reading group connecting Sawyer's ideas to service learning. If you are at or near the University of Illinois, please consider participating. (I had to miss the first meeting, but I will go to the others.) And if you're not in the vicinity, you can always sign up for the Engaged Illinois group on Ning.com to get all the wonderful information that Valeri provides in that venue.

Here is the information about the reading group:

Creativity and Innovation in Service-Learning

This reading group will meet from 12-1:30 p.m. on Mondays five times throughout the semester (Feb 22, Mar 8, Mar 29, Apr 12, & Apr 26) and will focus on readings and discussion about creativity and innovation in service-learning. As a follow-up to the Annual Faculty Retreat on "Crosscurrents of Creativity in Teaching," the group will use Keith Sawyer's book, Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration as a springboard for conversation about service-learning (and perhaps a bit of action by the Scholarship of Engagement Community). Topics will include

•Course and curriculum innovation via service-learning pedagogy
•Designing and assessing course components to enhance group genius
•Problem-solving and problem-finding tasks in service-learning models
•Creative solutions to actively support service-learning on campus
•Creative collaborations between campus units and with community partners
•Leveraging the Scholarship of Engagement Community as a collaborative web

To register, visit the event calendar on the CTE website cte.illinois.edu

ENGAGEDILLINOIS-L Listserv
To receive announcements, resources, and updates about the social networking site of the Scholarship of Engagement Community, sign up for the ENGAGEDILLINOIS-L listserv. Send an email message to listserv@listserv.illinois.edu and in the body of the message type "subscribe ENGAGEDILLINOIS-L"

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