Abstract
Despite a convincing body of research and some of our best outreach and faculty development efforts, pursuing a new learner-centered paradigm that extends beyond the early adopters is quite a challenge—especially at a research institution. At the University of Southern California, we are not unique as we grapple with historic teacher-centered models to deliver volumes of content, divergent teaching and research agendas, decentralized funding, and lack of faculty incentive. As such, we have implemented a multi-tiered approach to our training, outreach, and grant programs to encourage pedagogical experimentation and to promote visions of systemic adoption of learner-centered practices. Donald Buckley's article "In Pursuit of the Learning Paradigm," published in "EDUCAUSE Review" (http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0202.pdf), provides a four-part framework for this presentation where we describe our multi-tiered curriculum redesign grants and the ways in which they integrate Merrill's first principles of instruction into the design of learner-centered tools and curricula; provide transformative experiences for faculty, departments, and programs (and faculty-bound graduate students); capitalize on the foundational force of Blackboard as a course management system, but work towards ideals of a learning management system; and stimulate and rely upon institutional and systemic change. We will also highlight the ways this grant program interacts with other campus initiatives for teaching and learning effectiveness.