'Experiencing Engaging Education'
UD's Winter Faculty Institute and ITUE Workshop to be held Feb. 4-6
9:57 a.m., Dec. 9, 2014--The 2015 Winter Faculty Institute and ITUE Workshop, titled “Experiencing Engaging Education,” will be held Feb. 4-6, 2015, offering a program to help faculty implement the active learning approaches that best match their teaching styles and subject areas.
"We all want engaged students, students who want to learn, who generate questions and ideas, who need to be reminded that class has ended," said Tony Middlebrooks, associate professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration. "The February 2015 program is a great opportunity for those who teach at the university level to develop their thinking, teaching skills and courses around an active learning strategy."
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“Experiencing Engaging Education” is based around in-depth, two-and-a-half day workshops to help faculty develop one of three active learning strategies for their students:
- Project-Based Learning: Collaborative, facilitated, team-based activities that work toward and deliver a significant, clearly communicated and useful product for a real or hypothetical client.
- Design-Based Learning: Small team, problem-solving activities that utilize principles of design thinking, including rapid prototyping and iterative modeling.
- Studio-Based Learning: Open-space, individualized, iterative instruction in the form of modeling, critique, guidance and support.
The keynote speaker on Feb. 5 will be Ann Hill Duin, from the University of Minnesota (UM). Duin is a professor of writing studies in UM's College of Liberal Arts, director of graduate studies in UM’s Scientific and Technical Communication Program, and a senior affiliate of the Jandris Center for Innovative Higher Education at UM.
She is one of the editors of a recent e-book, Cultivating Change in the Academy, that “showcases a sampling of academic technology projects” designed to “inspire other faculty and staff to consider, utilize, or perhaps even develop new solutions that have the potential to make their efforts more responsive, nimble, efficient, effective and far-reaching.”
"Ann's 'students first' approach will set the stage for the hands-on workshops," Middlebrooks said.
According to Jon Cox, assistant professor of art, the balance of the program "will combine some of the features of previous Winter Faculty Institutes with those of workshops offered by ITUE and ISLL [Interdisciplinary Science Learning Laboratories]."
As at previous events, the workshop facilitators will be UD faculty members, modeling techniques with which they have had teaching success.
But this year's program will:
- Provide an active learning experience for the faculty participants as they work in teams to develop teaching strategies;
- Use innovative classroom facilities across the UD campus;
- Be open to faculty from colleges, universities and public schools; and
- Expect participants to commit to the complete two-and-a-half day program.
"If you are a faculty member who wants to return to your classroom with practical experience instead of a set of conference notes, then you should attend ‘Experiencing Engaging Education,’" Cox said.
More information
The event is sponsored by partners of Faculty Commons:
- Center for Teaching and Assessing Learning (CTAL);
- Institute for Transforming Undergraduate Education (ITUE);
- Interdisciplinary Science Learning Laboratories (ISLL);
- IT Academic Technology Services (IT-ATS); and
- University of Delaware Library.
Participation is free for UD teaching faculty, but there are fees for participants from outside the University.
For more information, visit the “Experiencing Engaging Education” website.