Milt Cox

Educational Consultant, CFT Vanderbilt University
and Center for the Enhancement of Learning, Teaching and Assessment
University of Miami-Oxford, Ohio

Engaging Communities of Learners: Exploring Some Brain- and Cognitive-Based Approaches to Understand and Enhance Learning

In this session we will investigate some evidence-based perspectives that can inform an instructor’s engagement with and teaching of communities of learners. Examples of communities of learners will include small groups, student learning communities, and faculty learning communities. Examples of perspectives include the role of community, cognitive-structural intellectual development, and Gardner’s concept of multiple intelligences.

Biography

Milton D. Cox, PhD, is Consultant to Miami University’s Center for the Enhancement of Learning, Teaching, and University Assessment, which he founded and directed in various formats for 30 years. He is also a consultant during 2010-11 for the Center for Teaching Excellence at Xavier University, Ohio. His areas of expertise include faculty and professional learning communities, the scholarship of teaching and learning, teaching and learning centers, student cognitive-intellectual development, active/student-centered learning, and communities of practice. He founded and directs the annual International Lilly Conference on College Teaching, now in its 30th year. He is also founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal on Excellence in College Teaching and the Learning Communities Journal. He facilitates the Hesburgh Award-winning Teaching Scholars Faculty Learning Community in its 32nd year.

Milt has been project director of state and federal grants establishing faculty learning community programs at other institutions and is co-editor of the book, Building Faculty Learning Communities. He has worked on site at over 70 institutions to develop faculty and professional learning communities, including the CIA and King Abdulaziz University in Saudia Arabia. He incorporates the use of student learning portfolios and Howard Gardner's concept of multiple intelligences in his mathematics classes. He is recipient of the C. C. MacDuffee Award for distinguished service to Pi Mu Epsilon, the national mathematics honorary, and a certificate of special achievement from the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education in recognition and appreciation of notable contributions to the profession of faculty, instructional, and organizational development