News for "Flipped Classrooms"

CoE Applied Engineering Sciences Use of REAL Classroom Highlighted in Chronicle of Higher Education

posted Oct 7, 2013, 7:12 AM by Jon Sticklen [ updated Oct 7, 2013, 7:27 AM ]

From an Article by Lee Gardner, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 7, 2013.

Jon Sticklen, an associate professor at Michigan State University and director of its program in applied engineering sciences, beams when he talks about teaching in Michigan State's new Rooms for Engaged and Active Learning, aka REAL.
Mr. Sticklen says he asks students enrolled in classes in his REAL spaces to familiarize themselves with material relating to a new assignment—say, modeling carbon systems—then devotes every minute of class time to their working together at the six-seat tables.
"Our students, when they graduate and get in the real world, are all about communication and teamwork and problem solving in areas they haven't seen before," he says. "This facility is really on mark for getting close to that real-world experience."

To read the entire article, go to: http://chronicle.com/article/Colleges-Adapt-Slowly-to/141881/

Web Tool for Journaling (free)

posted Jan 8, 2013, 8:07 AM by Jon Sticklen

Reflective learning is becomes a topic of discussion within engineering education circles. Reflective learning emphasizes students looking back over what they have done in class or exercises or any educational activity and extracting from it what they have learned - including how they would approach a problem differently if given a second crack. PENZU is a web-based tool for journaling. There is a free version of it that is pretty functional and a cheap PRO version that is more full featured. Both versions allow sending journal entries via email (e.g., for handing in a class setting).

Tool for Building Collaborative Teams - CATME (from Purdue)

posted Dec 3, 2012, 2:10 PM by Jon Sticklen [ updated Dec 3, 2012, 2:11 PM ]

One of the key startup activities in building an effective flipped classroom is thinking through how collaborative groups should be constructed. The CATME project at Purdue has done a great amount of that creative thinking and has developed an automated tool to help ease the process of team formation. While no automated tool is likely to cover all the factors that turn out to be important in a given situation, there is a fair amount of flexibility that a user of CATME can use to tailor the criteria for group formation.

See https://engineering.purdue.edu/CATME.

Tool for Self-Assessment in Collaborative Teams

posted Dec 3, 2012, 11:01 AM by Jon Sticklen [ updated Dec 3, 2012, 2:12 PM ]

A critical function for most flipped classrooms is some organized and principled way for each member within a collaborative team to be evaluated with respect to group contribution and etc. One set of methods to accomplish this is peer-evalaution methodology. SPARK PLUS is one approach.

See http://spark.uts.edu.au.

Flipped Classroom Talk: A Holistic Approach to Electrical Engineering Based on the Flipped Classroom Approach, Dimitri Peroulis (Purdue)

posted Dec 2, 2012, 4:47 PM by Jon Sticklen [ updated Dec 2, 2012, 4:53 PM ]

From: Peggy Wade
Please join us Tuesday, Dec 4, 12-1 in 3540 Engr. Bldg. Pizza and Pop provided.

Jon Sticklen from CEER will be hosting the speaker. If you're interested in a 1:1 or small group meeting with Dr. Peroulis, please email Jon directly (sticklen@icloud.com) and let him know which time slot you want.

9-9:30
9:30-10
10-10:30
10:30-11
11-11:30

---------------------------------

Title: A Holistic Approach to Electrical Engineering Based on the Flipped Classroom Approach

Presenter: Dimititrios Peroulis, University Faculty Scholar, Purdue University

Abstract:

This talk will focus on a significant curriculum innovation that is currently underway at the school of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. It focuses on beginning engineering students and impacts more than 1,000 students/year in many engineering areas. During the past five years, Prof. Peroulis has been re-developing the mandatory introductory course and laboratory experiments based on a new learning paradigm. Rather than following the traditional circuits-centric approach for introducing students to Electrical Engineering, this new paradigm offers a holistic view that empowers students to appreciate the wide application-range and tremendous societal impact of this engineering area by introducing them to all critical pillars of Electrical Engineering: a) Electromagnetic fields and waves, b) Circuits, and c) Solid-state physics and non-linear devices. This course is offered in a student-centric way by following the flipped classroom approach where part of the content is not explicitly taught in class but is made available to students in pre-recorded concept-nuggets. The class period focuses on active learning and encourages student participation in a variety of ways. This embraces diverse learning styles and abilities in a strong, inclusive, demanding, and rewarding learning environment.

MSU Libraries Sponsored Breakfast on Flipped Classrooms, OCT 10

posted Oct 9, 2012, 12:36 PM by Jon Sticklen [ updated Oct 9, 2012, 12:44 PM ]

Date: October 10, 2012 at 8:45 a.m. (free breakfast at 8:30 a.m.)

Location: 4^th floor of the Main Library

Presenter: */Chris Kobus, Oakland University/*

Presentation: *Utilizing Motion Pictures to Optimize Flipped Class Student Learning*

Student comprehension and retention of difficult material has been a challenge going back to the founding of the Academy. There is a recognized need for going beyond the classroom today with both the challenge of decreasing average student performance (especially in STEM fields) and the advent of technological tools available to instructors. To that end, I will discuss the advantages of a flipped class to a traditional setting, why online or partly online education is heralding in an educational revolution, and the engagement of different areas of students’ brains to stimulate comprehension. In particular, involving the part of the brain that is engaged in pleasure, such as watching a part of an interesting motion picture, and centering lectures, homework and projects around movie clips can increase the engagement of students to what might otherwise be ‘boring’ material (at least to students).

Examples of how this can be done in both a lecture format and a student-centered format will be presented and discussed. Issues such as copyright infringement, what we as instructors can and cannot do, will also be covered.

If you want to learn more about the flipped method check out our LearnDAT video: http://youtu.be/Ui8LuxbFYyY

And make sure to join the active conversation already happening on our Facebook http://www.facebook.com/LearnDAT page and through Twitter http://twitter.com/MSUlearnDAT.

For more announcements please visit our LearnDAT blog: http://learndat.tech.msu.edu/blog

Great ways to learn about upcoming events happening in the Teaching and Learning community at MSU!

Keesa V. Muhammad

eProducer:: IT Services

Teaching and Learning (formally Virtual University Design and Technology

<http://www.vudat.msu.edu/>)

Michigan State University <http://www.msu.edu/>

287 Delta Court (Wills House)

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-884-0663

Lilly Seminar Oct 23 on Scale Up/REAL Classroom

posted Sep 16, 2012, 10:44 AM by Jon Sticklen [ updated Sep 16, 2012, 10:58 AM ]

From FOD

To register for this Lilly Workshop, click here.

Scale-Up / REAL Classroom
Facilitator: D. Christopher Brooks, Research Fellow, Office of Information Technology, University of Minnesota
Tuesday, October 23, 8:45 a.m - 12:00 p.m., MSU Union, Parlor C
(Registration at 8:45 a.m.; program begins at 9:00 a.m.)

The SCALE-UP (“Student-Centered Active Learning Environment with Upside-down Pedagogies“)model offers improved problem-solving, increased conceptual understanding, improved attitudes, and reduced failure rates. In January 2013, MSU classrooms designed for this intensive active learning experience will be available and will be known as REAL (Rooms for Engaged and Active Learning) classrooms.

REAL/SCALE-UP classroom spaces are specifically designed to enable lively interaction, enhanced learning, and increased faculty and student engagement. Essentially, students engage with readings, concepts, and, perhaps lectures outside the classroom and class time is spent working collaboratively on interesting problems requiring application of out-of-class material, additional research, reasoning and collaboration. Faculty are not at the front of the classroom but walk around the classroom and provide ‘just-in-time’ assistance to the working teams.

Dr. Brooks will share research and experiences with Active Learning Classrooms (ALCs) at the University of Minnesota, what makes the learning so effective, and how aligning teaching methodologies and classrooms has affected student learning and attitudes.

Co-sponsored by the MSU Libraries and IT Services and F&OD.

Very Short Description of the "Flipped Classroom" Approach

posted Sep 16, 2012, 10:39 AM by Jon Sticklen [ updated Sep 16, 2012, 10:48 AM ]

The "flipped" classroom is simple in concept, but there are many variants with new ones developed frequently. The core idea is old: to put the responsibility back on students for doing their own learning while being supportive as a tutor and guide. Students are asked to do work BEFORE coming to class, then much of in-class time is spent working problems typically in collaborative work teams (elements of Problem-based Learning here...) and with facilitation by instructors. That viewpoint is actually old, and as simple as expecting students to prepare before class.

But the flipped classroom puts teeth in the idea by not going over material the students have studied out of class, expect to deal with common problems of misconceptions. That has teeth because if a student comes unprepared (without doing the outside work) then they will over time take flake from other students in their work team. The peer pressure to come prepared is a key ingredient that makes flipped classrooms work.

The "new" version of this old idea is two fold: the medium the students use to get the material to study before class and the technology in the classroom to support collaborative group work during class. The medium used to be simply textbooks and readings. That has expended not to include options like web delivered movies or electronic textbooks. The more important technology in the classroom is quite simply tables around which teams can work and chairs that are not nailed down to the floor. The ability to reconfigure is critical so movable chairs and tables that can be reconfigured to support work groups of differing sizes is key. Although its very hard to do serious collaborative work in a fixed seating arrangement. Imagine yourself in a work group where you were were sitting in an auditorium... it would be difficult... not impossible... but difficult.

The range of options for technology supporting the collaborative work teams essential to the flipped classroom approach is larger. A starting, and one of the oldest explorations, is the SCALE UP classrooms pioneered at NC State. http://scaleup.ncsu.edu

More locally, MSU has not started to develop high tech classrooms that are very supportive of the flipped classroom path. http://tech.msu.edu/classroom-technology/real.php