[ED-TECH] Lunch and Learn - Fri, Oct. 7 [ANNOUNCEMENT]

Attend the IAC Faculty Lunch and Learn on Friday, Oct. 7 at 12:20 PM and hear how 2005 Excellence in Teaching Award Winner Gema Pérez-Sánchez turned boring student presentations into valuable and engaging classroom activities.

To register for this Lunch and Learn session, please use the http://www.snurl.com/OralPresentations web form.

 

Oral Presentations, the Internet, and Blackboard

2005 Excellence in Teaching Award Winner
Gema Pérez-Sánchez
College of Arts & Sciences, Foreign Languages and Literatures

How can we encourage students to convey information orally to their classmates in a concise yet effective manner that helps students learn new material through a personal connection to it? This workshop will explore different ways of productively enhancing student oral presentations through the use of the World Wide Web and Blackboard. Although most of the examples will be taken from the context of language and literature classes, we will discuss how to extrapolate these oral presentation techniques to other disciplines. In particular, we will discuss how to teach students to develop their creative agency by giving them the opportunity to supplement the syllabus with an oral presentation on a topic of their choice, within parameters carefully crafted by the professor; to have students use technology to teach the class in a controlled fashion; and to encourage those students listening to the presentation to participate actively in making it a successful, collective learning event.

Friday, October 7, 2005
12:20 PM - 1:10 PM
Cuban Heritage Collection Conference Room
Richter Library, 2nd Floor

 

If you would like to read the complete description of Gema's technique, use the  "The Focused Five-minute Student Oral Presentation Enhanced with the World Wide Web and Blackboard" link on the http://www.snurl.com/excellence web page.

 

To register for this Lunch and Learn session, please use the http://www.snurl.com/OralPresentations web form.

 

Bill Vilberg

 

 

[ED-TECH] Facilitator Training for Student Feedback Process

We are inviting instructors at UM to be trained in a student feedback process.  These trained facilitators will then be paid to perform this service for other instructors who request it. Sign up for one of the training sessions by filling out the form at http://www.snurl.com/facilitators web page. The sessions will be held on Tuesday, October 4 and Wednesday, October 5, 3:30-4:30 PM, in the University Center, Florida Ballroom - A, and you can attend either one.

 

One way to improve our teaching is to ask our students for their feedback.  There is a widely used system that seems to provide useful feedback.  With 20 minutes left in a class period the instructor leaves and a facilitor asks the students three questions: What is going well in this class?  What part of this class should be removed or improved?  What could be added to this class in order to improve it?  A series of steps are performed to assure consensus and on the feedback.  The results are given to the instructor for consideration. The instructor is usually able to find at least one suggestion that can be immediately implemented. This closes the feedback loop for the students and lets the instructor try out the suggestion at once.  For best effect this feedback process takes place around the middle of the term.

 

This is an opportunity to interact with other faculty who are interested in improving their teaching.  I hope you will join us for the training if you can.  I hope you will request this service in your own classes when it is announced.

 

To register for one of the training sessions, please fill out the form on the http://www.snurl.com/facilitators web page.

 

Bill Vilberg

Instructional Advancement Center

 

[ED-TECH] Lunch and Learn - Sept. 29 - Experiencing the Millennial Generation

There will be Lunch and Learn session next Thursday, September 29, 2005, on the Millennial Generation.  Alison Grewe and V. Chunoo, from the Toppel Career Center, will be presenting some very interesting information about the students that we are seeing now in our classes.  Come and hear how they differ from previous generations and what that means as we teach and advise them.

To sign up for this session, please go to the http://www.snurl.com/millennials web page.

Issues in Teaching and Advising: Experiencing the Millennial Generation

This presentation takes a multi-generational approach to understanding our current student body. Comprised of four distinct generations, today's college campuses face unique challenges concerning generational perceptions of work attitudes, management expectations and communication patterns. Understanding the history, strengths and differences of these generations can serve faculty and administrators in anticipating the issues likely to affect our current student body and in developing strategies for working effectively with them to improve our undergraduate education and teaching.
Alison Grewe and V. Chunoo, Academic and Career Advisors in Residence, Toppel Career Center

Thursday, September 29, 2005
12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
Cuban Heritage Collection Conference Room
Richter Library, 2nd Floor

To sign up for this session, please go to the http://www.snurl.com/millennials web page.

Bill Vilberg
Instructional Advancement Center

[ED-TECH] Maple site license

The University of Miami is in the process of entering into a site license agreement for Maple, a mathematics instruction package that has amazing graphics and visualization capabilities.  This license would allow Maple to be installed on all UM computers and on faculty/instructor computers at home, I believe.  Maple is already being used in some Math and Engineering courses at UM.  Other courses and disciplines might be interested in the software, since there will be no additional charges.

 

On Friday, September 9, at 3:00-5:00 PM there will be a WebEx online demonstration of Maple.  I encourage interested faculty to participate.  To sign up go to this web page:

   https://maplesoft.webex.com/maplesoft/onstage/g.php?d=351686815&t=a 

 

Other information about Maple, including online demos, can be found at:

   http://www.maplesoft.com/academic/teaching/index.aspx

 

Bill Vilberg

305-284-3949 (work); 786-218-3052 (cell); 305-255-9138 (home)