Auburn University's Conversations in Celebration of Teaching

CCT 2015

Today, Auburn University celebrated its second Conversations in Celebration of Teaching, with lots of participation from faculty from all across campus.
For more information about the event, see http://wp.auburn.edu/biggio/cct/





Most exciting for me was the number of faculty who have been teaching in the EASL spaces and were showing off  how they have been engaging their students with the course materials.  Lots of pictures of students working hard.  Here are some of the folks who were presenting and what their topic was on -- I am hoping that down the line I can add some of their posters as well.

• Emily Burns (Art):  Breaking Out of the College Bubble:  Using the EASL Classroom to Engage the Community Beyond Auburn
• Ana Franco-Watkins (Psychology):  The Game of Life:  Active Learning Strategies Applied to Game Theory
• Yasser Gowayed (Polymer & Fiber Engineering):  Connecting Science to Practice:  A Function-Based Teaching Approach to Engineering Design
• Patrica Hartman (Libraries) and Sharon Roberts (Biological Sciences):  Teaching Students About Srouces Through Infographics
• Stuart Loch (Physics):  Exploring Active Learning Techniques in a Flipped-Classroom:  Lessons from an Introductory Physics Course
• James Zanzot (Biological Sciences):  Open-colleague Examination:  A Novel Approach to Testing Strategies in the Flipped Classroom

Something to Read

new EASL signs

On Monday, we are going to have our teaching retreat for the folks teaching in the two EASL classrooms.  As we are trying to model how to teach in these classrooms for faculty, they will be squarely put into the roles of students --minus the grades (would it not be great not to have to worry about grading when teaching?)

1.  Folks will learn from their peers -- four faculty will share a strategy, idea, assignment, activity each on how they are using the EASL spaces successfuly.

2. Folks will collaborate with their peers -- in groups, faculty will write language for a student contract that should clarify to students expectations and address at least some of the student expectations.  At the end, these drafts will be shared, and through a gallery walk, other groups can interact with these drafts.

3.  Folks will play with the technology in the room

For preparation, we are asking them to read at least 3 of the following articles that I found on the great blog post from Faculty Focus -- the best of 2014, bring a mobile device, syllabus and other course documents,  and find one online resource about active, collaborative, or otherwise engaged learning to share with colleagues.

Students Riding on Coattails during Group Work?  Five Simple Ideas to Try

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/effective-teaching-strategies/students-riding-coattails-group-work-five-simple-ideas-try/

Seven Characteristics of Good Learners

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/seven-characteristics-good-learners/

She Didn’t Teach, We had to Learn it Ourselves

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/didnt-teach-learn/

Prompts to Help Students Reflect on How they approach learning

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/prompts-help-students-reflect-approach-learning/

Three Strategies for creating meaningful learning experiences

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/effective-teaching-strategies/three-strategies-creating-meaningful-learning-experiences/

Putting students in the driver’s seat:  technology projects to decrease passivity

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-with-technology-articles/putting-students-drivers-seat-technology-projects-decrease-passivity/

You may have also seen the study Ball University published in Inside Higher Ed:  https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/12/12/interactive-learning-spaces-center-ball-state-us-faculty-development-program