Case Studies

For over twenty years Drs. Noreen and Peter Facione, founders of Measured Reasons, have provided on-site workshop presenters to over 200 businesses, academic institutions, government agencies, national and international conferences. Consulting workshops are tailored to the client's specific needs. Here are the four popular workshop topics:

"Teaching For and About Critical Thinking" - This highly interactive workshop demonstrates how faculty from every academic discipline and professional field can adapt classroom teaching techniques which engage students' critical thinking skills and foster their critical thinking dispositions. The workshop incorporates those same teaching techniques so that participants experience them as students would, rather than simply hearing them described.

"Why We Err and What We Can Do About It" - Through case studies and live examples, participants make decisions and then analyze those decisions in light of the latest finding from cognitive science about how the human mind thinks, reasons and uses cognitive heuristics. Where heuristic leaps may cause err, strategies to avoid or remedy these potential problems, which are common to all humans at every level of decision making, are suggested.

"Assessing Critical Thinking" - Both qualitative and quantitative approaches to gathering useful evidence of undergraduate and graduate students students' critical thinking are discussed and demonstrated. Tools including rubrics, performance measures, tasks, tests and inventories are included in this workshop. The workshop illustrates gathering, interpreting and using data for a variety of educational purposes.

Developing academic leaders at all levels is not only the responsibility of the current leadership team, it is a natural part of the career progression of mid-career faculty in colleges and universities. Workshops and retreats are ideal venues for structured academic leadership development activities because they provide the time for reflection and growth. Don't let the urgent trump the important. Plan your own leadership development workshop or retreat, or contact Dr. Facione, who has been facilitating academic leadership development activities since 1980.

Faculty, Chairs, and Deans	"Eleven Faculty Evaluation Vignettes and a Rubric for Faculty Evaluation"      (12 pages)	Peer evaluation is a vital professional responsibility of faculty. Clarify expectations, develop consistent standards of evaluation, and surface areas for potential policy development by applying the five-level faculty evaluation rubric to the vignettes.
Chairs and Deans	"A Dozen Questions for Chairs"     (1 page)	A series of questions for conversation and reflection that expand the horizons of one's vision of the leadership opportunities for department Chairs.
Deans and Academic Vice Presidents	"Areas of Professional Leadership Responsibility" (1 page)	A list of areas of potential responsibility for those academics of vision who would be leaders, and not merely managers or administrators.
	"Planning a Chair Retreat"      (2 pages)	Topics and ideas for designing a leadership retreat for one's department Chair colleagues.