Foremost among its services, the Keystone Institute provides consulting, coordinating, and coaching for programmatic (applied) research and R&D with the goal of improving higher education and the scholarship of teaching. 

All disciplines of teaching and learning are supported, including the humanities; the social, behavioral, life, and natural sciences; the technical and engineering fields; and professional studies. 

The Keystone Institute emphasis is on encouraging the most appropriately rigorous observational and/or comparative methods needed to achieve ends but a full range of theoretical, descriptive, observational, correlative, quasi-experimental, causal-comparative, double-blind; controlled/randomized designs, and field-trial techniques are utilized. 

Research & Development.   Scholarly and educational communities require a special kind of assistance when involved in R&D. At times, it is helpful to have someone to organize, oversee, observe, consult, cajole, coax, coach, or coordinate. The Keystone Institute provides that assistance with enough depth to permit independent or collaborative work by the principal investigators.  In some instances, the Keystone Institute staff can take major responsibility for conducting a project. 

Needs Analysis/Assessment. Review of mission statements, disciplinary standards, governing documents, accreditation reviews, and other similar sources are used to structure interviews, focus groups, and surveys of policy makers, administrators, faculty members, instructional technology staff, institutional research staff, and professional development staff. A report of qualitative and quantitative indicators of current and near-term future needs is produced.

Program Evaluation.   The Keystone Institute provides external evaluation services and assistance with disciplinary and institutional accreditation procedures related to the assessment and evaluation of implementing academic innovations.

Tests and Questionnaires. Assistance with the construction and validation of assessment and survey instruments is available from the Keystone Institute. Accurate measurement of ability, achievement, and attitude are all possible. Consultation is available for preparing closed and open response procedures, conducting item and factor analysis, creating scoring rubrics, determining test reliability, eliminating biases, ensuring content/construct validity, and establishing interpretive norms.

Faculty Development. In a conventional sense, the Keystone Institute does not conduct faculty development programs but we do assist in the development of such programs. Faculty development is a form of higher education and is supported in two ways. First, the scholarship of teaching and higher-ed R&D are themselves specialized fields of knowledge. Learning the techniques and implementing R&D in conjuction with the Keystone Institute is itself faculty development. Second, when a college or university begins a faculty development program, they want to be both innovative and effective, and they want to document the value of the program. The Keystone Institute consults on the conception, implementation, and evaluation of faculty development programs.

Advanced Learning Technology (ALT). The innovative use of technology to promote learning is at the core of the Keystone Institute mission. Advanced Learning Technologies can be but are not necessarily “high-tech.” An ALT is a novel or innovative piece of equipment that provides for value-added student achievement, and/or school efficiency, over standard practices. The advancement may be procedural or material; it may be widely available or exist only in the mind of the creator; it may be electronic or mechanical. The Keystone Institute provides ALT consultation from concept to design, from prototype to product, and from purchase to use.

Project Management. The Keystone Institute can support R&D and applied research by assisting in task analysis, work breakdown, milestone identification, progress evaluation, and activity-based costing.

 

Consultation

The departmental faculty members at your institution provide expertise in their discipline and pedagogy; it is you, as “the client,” who provides the content and procedural knowledge to be taught to students.

We are experts on how people learn, how people set goals and make plans, and on how people work together to achieve goals and create new ideas. We are not the kind of consultants who come onto your campus and tell you about the trendy thinking in your own field of teaching.

We provide solid empirical information about human achievement and emerging educational technologies based on the cognitive and learning sciences. We do not provide faddish ideas about teaching and learning based in mere anecdote.

We are your clear choice for a partner in developing and implementing new instructional methods with strong research-based evidence of effectiveness. We are your clear choice for a partner in creating new revenue streams from your innovative higher education solutions.

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Keystone Workshops encourage and sustain higher education R&D activity and the scholarship of teaching.

Keystone Workshops provide an experiential example of best practices in active, problem/project based learning and the use of advanced learning technologies.

Keystone Workshops establish real R&D collaborations that ultimately lead to marketable products for advancing higher education.

Three formats:

  • Afternoon Workshops
  • Weekend Workshops
  • Summer Workshops



   

Afternoon Workshops

A sequence of five, 3-hour workshops is offered over the period of a year. Typically, twenty-minute, multimedia presentations (or demonstrations) are followed by forty-minutes of participant activities. Although they have a logical order, each workshop may be scheduled individually. In the future, additional topical workshops (outside of the sequence) will be made available.

1. The Necessity for Higher Education R&D and the Scholarship of Teaching. Offered beginning October 1, 2009 .

This workshop presents the scholarship-of-teaching as unifying collegiate and university ideals – melding the formation of good people, good citizens, and good leaders with the advancement of knowledge. The teaching faculties of colleges dedicate significant time and effort to thinking about, and being engaged with, the learning process. Although many creative methods and materials are used to convey the content, procedures, implications, and applications of both academic disciplines and life skills, it is only rarely that such innovations are sustained beyond a few semesters or transferred to other teachers. There are often only limited resources for the systematic development, testing, and dissemination of instructional techniques and technologies beyond what we would call a “proof of concept.” Further, an already overburdened faculty cannot be expected to add R&D to their professional duties without a new model of scholarly activity. The workshop begins with arguments for making R&D and the scholarship of teaching the assigned task of at least a segment of the faculty and administrative staff. A strategy is presented to make this argument practical. Participants will work on adapting this strategy to the circumstances of their own teaching and institution. Subsequent workshops will address implementation.

   

2. Cognitive & Learning Sciences at the Primarily Undergraduate Institution. Offered beginning November 15, 2009 .

Invention may be driven by necessity but it should also be grounded in explicit theory and directed by accurate information. The multi/interdisciplinary field of cognitive and learning sciences blends the domains of psychology, neurology, programming, and philosophy with education, engineering, and technology. Although it is a relatively new academic specialty, the field has matured to the point where its research-based knowledge should inform what teachers do in the classroom. Several theories, models, and hypotheses about how humans are motivated, learn, think, remember, and create will be examined and applied to the improvement of higher education. Participants will select a theory especially appropriate to their particular teaching challenges and work to align the theory with the problem and then conceptualizing an innovative solution.

 

 

 
   

3. Advanced Learning Technologies: Today, Tomorrow, and Next Tuesday. Offered beginning January 1, 2010 .

Advanced Learning Technology (ALT) is sometimes, but not necessarily, “High Tech.” An ALT is a material piece of equipment that observably improves some aspect of the education process over traditional methods and standard practices. These improvements can be in areas as diverse as classroom management, presentation style, student interaction, apprehension of information, active problem solving, application of knowledge, formative evaluation, assessment of achievement, and so on. The workshop will begin with a review of generally available ALTs and the participants will examine how these might be adopted into their “educational environment.” Next, some newer, less-familiar ALTs, and some products under development, will be presented for possible application to the participants' teaching. Finally, current developments in science, technology, and engineering will be considered for potential utility in education settings. Beyond informing participants about useful products and trends, the workshop will emphasize awareness of “what is not out there” and encourage thinking about “what might be” with a little R&D.

 

 
   

4. Applied Research and R&D: Design, Measurement, & Funding. Offered beginning February 15, 2010.

Traditionally, the primarily undergraduate institutions have instituted educational improvement using the aesthetical, experiential, historical, and logical methods of the humanities and observational sciences. Under present market conditions and the pressures of accountability, those methods will no longer be adequate. Higher education will soon be required to “scientifically” demonstrate that its best practices exceed “minimum standards” and that new methods result in “value-added” achievements. Using the dimensions proposed by Donald Stokes (1997), this workshop will place applied research and R&D on the continuum of science between Louis Pasteur and Thomas Edison. Innovators in higher education, like engineers, must be able to conceive, design, implement, and operate (Crawley et al., 2007) new ways of teaching but they must also be able to design an evaluation, measure outcomes, and finance their project in order to demonstrate improvement. Participants will work on the dual challenges of methodology and pragmatics in higher education R&D and take home some options and opportunities.

 

 
   

5. Colleagues, Collaborations, Communications, and Community. Offered beginning April 1, 2010.


A major goal of the Keystone Institute is making the R&D process at teaching institutions “scalable” through inter-institutional collaboration. Participants will reflect on their personal strengths, possible R&D interests, and what they are looking for from potential colleagues. This information will be used by the Keystone Institute staff to facilitate networking across institutions and disciplines. The workshop will summarize the current research-based understandings of teamwork, cooperation, group cohesion, leadership, project management, learning organizations, physical and telepresence, synchronous and asynchronous interaction, and virtual communities. The participants will work in small groups to examine the implications of that research background for their student's cooperative learning experiences and for themselves in the process of R&D collaboration.

 

 

   

Weekend Workshops

Customized workshops are conducted to facilitate specific tasks of R&D projects and/or to investigate in detail specific common interests, which might lead to R&D projects for one or more collaborative teams. The teams would already have reached consensus on a basic direction and have come together through participation in the afternoon workshops and the connections of the Keystone Institute. Typically, two hours on Friday evening is followed by a full day of work on Saturday and three hours on Sunday morning or afternoon.

As examples,

  • R&D project plans might be created by teams of collaborators,
  • Research ideas could be turned into operationalized hypotheses and basic studies outlined, or
  • New educational software packages or advanced learning technologies could be explored collaboratively by an interested group.


 

    

Summer Workshops

During these longer workshops, the Keystone Institute staff facilitates and consults on the accomplishment of a major milestone for a specific collaboration or closely related projects. The summer workshops can also be scheduled over fall, winter, or spring break and typically last from three to five days. In some instances, the involvement of the Keystone Institute can be requested at the level of a full, participating-partner in the task at hand.

As examples,

  • Finalizing and submitting a grant proposal,
  • Analyzing and interpreting data, or
  • Drafting and revising a scholarly publication/presentation.

 

    

 

2010-2011 Workshops

All workshops are conducted on-site at the host institution's campus. Fees include all workshop materials and the services of a leader and two facilitators. The size of the workshop staff is based on the expectation of 15 to 24 participants; larger enrollments require a larger staff and an increased fee. Travel, room, and board expenses for the workshop staff are additional. Keystone Institute staff do not arrange for catering nor reserve the venue, which are the reponsibility of the host campus and not included in the workshop fee structure below.

 

Please schedule workshops at least 60 days in advance. Cancellations less than 14 days in advance are subject to a 15% cancellation charge and any unreimbursable travel related expenses.

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The Keystone Institute accepts members from among the Baccalaureate Colleges and the small-to-medium-sized Masters Universities.

There are 260 such institutions in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, and surrounding States. The Keystone Institute serves as the nexus and catalyst and support for this R&D effort. Membership is by institution and includes both material and motivational benefits:

Material Benefits:

  • Reduced consulting rates for the institutions and their individual faculty and staff.
  • Faculty and staff may attend Keystone Institute workshops and programs.
  • Institutions may host Keystone Institute workshops and programs.
  • Participation in Keystone Institute speakers series and the collaboration finder.
  • Opportunities for student internships with the Keystone Institute.
  • Faculty and staff subscription to Keystone Institute quarterly RFP summaries.

Motivational Benefits:

  • The entrepreneurial environment of the Keystone Institute community.
  • The economy of scale afforded by inter-institutional R&D collaboration.
  • The enhancement of education and academic achievement on campus.
  • The excitement of innovation and scholarship into teaching and learning.

How does membership work?

  • When a college or university becomes a member of the Keystone Institute, they join an entrepreneurial partnership. The faculty, staff, and administration of member institutions cooperate in higher education R&D with Keystone Institute personnel and individuals with similar goals from other member institutions.
  • The Keystone Institute jump-starts and facilitates the conceptualization, coordination, and implementation of higher education innovation.
  • New ideas are brought beyond application to an individual classroom or curriculum. Use within a single environment is only a Proof-of-Concept. The Keystone Institute permits R&D that brings the innovation to a level of general utility. At this point, the innovation is attractive for development and delivery as a product.
  • The Keystone Institute assists the formation of independent business entities to produce and market an innovation. The Keystone Institute assists in obtaining venture capital.
  • Ownership and profits from the new business are distributed for the benefit of the innovators, the participating institutions, the investors, and the Keystone Institute programs.

This is really a new model. A virtual industrial park is positioned next to a geographically distributed set of linked colleges and universities. The thematic specialty of the industrial park will be higher education itself.

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The Keystone Institute periodically emails an electronic newsletter to subscribers. The newsletter contains information about upcoming workshops at host institutions, announcements of new R&D projects, thoughts about current events and future directions, and a summary list of opportunities and Requests for Proposals (RFP's) related to disciplinary and higher education policy, R&D, and business published by agencies, foundations, and other organizations.

If you are interested in receiving this newsletter, please subscribe through the following link. subscribe@keystone-institute.org

 

     

 

     

 

 

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