Upcoming Events

Food for Thought Luncheons, 2009-10

To reserve a meal for lunch, WPI community members should use our event registration process. (Note to non-WPI attendees: Please e-mail CEDA instead.) All are welcome at all events, but we order food based on pre-registrations received up to three business days before the event. If you are not able to pre-register, please come anyway! There is often surplus food, but to be safe you may wish to bring your own lunch.

Presentation slides and handouts, when available, are archived on CEDA's myWPI (Blackboard) site. To access, log on to myWPI, go to the Community tab, do an organization search for "CEDA", and enroll in the site.

Suggestions are welcome!

Faculty, staff, and students with ideas for events should call (x5707) or email CEDA to discuss ideas and timing. Please consider the following criteria for a Food for Thought luncheon:

  1. The topic should be of general interest, stimulate broad discussion, and contribute to better teaching and learning at WPI.
  2. The session should be scheduled in one of the middle five weeks of the term-- not the first or last weeks, or during the break.
  3. You will be asked for a title and a brief abstract for use in advertising the session.

Is There a Case to Be Made for "Teaching Naked"?

Monday, September 14, 12-1:20pm, Higgins House Great Hall

Steve Bitar, David Spanagel, Janice Gobert, Destin Heilman, Jill Rulfs

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education discusses the decision of a Dean at Southern Methodist University, Jose Bowen, to remove computers from classrooms. He is urging his colleagues to "teach naked," a phrase he coined to describe class time that is technology-free and focused on discussion. He further argues that such classes are actually more engaging to students. How do faculty at WPI feel about Bowen's concept of discussion-oriented classes free of PowerPoint and other technologies? More broadly, how might we best use our face-to-face time with students, and what is technology good for? Come participate in a dialogue, moderated by Professor Jill Rulfs with panelists Steve Bitar (ECE), David Spanagel (HUA), Janice Gobert (SSPS), and Destin Heilman (CBC), to share your thoughts on the article and how to make decisions about use of technology in the classroom. 

Innovations in Project Reports

Tuesday, September 22, 12-1:20pm, Higgins House Great Hall

Chris Brown, Chrys Demetry, Mike Elmes, Lorraine Higgins, Scott Jiusto, Rick Vaz

The multiple purposes and audiences of  IQP and MQP reports sometimes make their genre unclear. One purpose of project reports is for students to practice writing in a context-appropriate genre, but a report might also document IQP and MQP learning outcomes more broadly in ways that aren't naturally integrated into a traditional article or report. For sponsored projects, the reports that are submitted to meet WPI's needs may be unwieldy for sponsors or research communities to use. This session will highlight some faculty initiatives to shift or augment the content and/or medium of project reports in an attempt to: a) enhance student learning; b) document the multiple dimensions of student learning; and/or c) serve, reach, and engage multiple stakeholders.

Scott Jiusto (IGSD) will describe his ongoing efforts to transform IQP reports for the Cape Town Project Centre into a multimedia atlas that will serve as a reference and research tool for the community and project teams going forward. Mike Elmes (MG) will discuss how the project report process might be used more deliberately to help students increase their capacity for written reflection. Chrys Demetry (ME) and Rick Vaz (IGSD) will show examples of brief written assignments on teamwork and culture learning that were incorporated as appendices in Bangkok IQP reports. And Chris Brown will talk about how he guides students to learn about and anticipate intellectual property in MQP reports. Lorraine Higgins will serve as respondent and lead discussion about these experiments and other ways in which we might add value to project reports.    

© 2009, Steven J. McDonald

Tuesday, October 6, 12-1:20pm, Higgins House, Great Hall

Steven J. McDonald, J.D., General Counsel, Rhode Island School of Design

A practical, informative, and even entertaining discussion of basic copyright principles as they apply in and to higher education generally and to online learning and digital materials specifically.  Topics to be addressed include: 

About the Speaker: Steven J. McDonald is General Counsel at Rhode Island School of Design and previously served as Associate Legal Counsel at The Ohio State University.  Steve has experience with a wide variety of copyright-related issues, including the development of intellectual property policies, guidelines, and educational materials; IP licensing; and alleged infringements of copyrighted materials both on and off the internet.  He began his legal career in private practice at Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, where he represented CompuServe in Cubby v. CompuServe, the first online libel case, and he also has taught courses in Internet law at Ohio State's College of Law and at Capital University Law School.  He is a Fellow and past member of the Board of Directors of the National Association of College and University Attorneys and the editor of NACUA's The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act: A Legal Compendium.  In State, ex rel. Thomas v. The Ohio State University, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that he really is a lawyer.  He received his A.B. from Duke University and his J.D. from The Yale Law School.

 

Teaching First Year Students: Particular Challenges and Opportunities

Tuesday, November 3, 12-1:20pm, Campus Center, Hagglund Room

First year students come to college with a variety of backgrounds, competencies and expectations of college work. This diversity can pose challenges to the instructor, but also offers some unique opportunities. A panel of faculty with extensive first year experience will be on hand to answer questions about the range of challenges and their responses to them.  Participants include Tom Keil (PH), Carolann Koleci (PH), John MacDonald (CBC), and John Goulet (MA).  Kris Wobbe (CBC and Associate Dean for the First Year) will moderate.

Getting Results: New Directions in the Teaching of Lab Report Writing

Tuesday, November 10, 12-1:20pm, Campus Center, Hagglund Room

Ally Hunter, Biology & Biotechnology; Lorraine Higgins, Writing Across the Curriculum

The lab report is often the genre in which WPI undergraduates in the sciences and engineering are initiated to writing in their discipline. With a grant from WPI's Educational Development Council, Ally Hunter is introducing an explicit "learning to write" component in the biology laboratory curriculum. In this session she will describe preliminary assessment data including student-reported problems with lab report writing, information from Teaching Assistants, and writing help session observations. Hunter is using these assessment data to redesign the curriculum so that students build reports over the term with a sequence of scaffolded writing assignments.

Lorraine Higgins will continue the session by presenting strategies for writing the RESULTS section of the lab report, responding to common challenges students face as they approach this task. She'll address the following questions and provide materials that can be adapted for classroom teaching: What are the distinct features of the RESULTS section? How should RESULTS be connected to other sections of a lab report? How is the RESULTS section a type of argument? How might quantitative information be integrated verbally and visually to support the researcher's claims?

Teaching Effective Data Communication: A Learner-Centered Approach

Tuesday, November 17, 12-1:20pm, Campus Center, Hagglund Room

Craig Wills, Computer Science Department

The communication of data has become such a fundamental skill in today's society, yet students receive little, if any, guidance on how to present data as they begin to run experiments or perform calculations and simulations.  This presentation seeks to motivate work for improving the visual communication skills of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) undergraduate students.

The long-term goal is to develop educational material to support the effective communication of data, in the form of graphs, tables and other data presentation mechanisms, across the STEM disciplines using a learner-centered approach.  The presenter will both present ideas for doing so as well as seeking to build upon the experience of attendees.

The Why and How of Rubrics, or How Do I Get an A?

Thursday, December 3, 12-1:20pm, Higgins House, Great Hall

Chrys Demetry, Director, Center for Educational Development & Assessment

A rubric is an assessment tool that lays out the criteria for various levels of achievement on an assignment or performance task. Rubrics support and deepen student learning by clarifying expectations, focusing students more on performance standards and progress and less on grades, and providing them with informative feedback in an efficient way. In addition, students can evaluate their own performance and compare with the instructor's assessment, enhancing their ability to monitor and judge their own work using professional standards. Rubrics also assist instructors by making subjective grading less subjective, less time-consuming, and more consistent.  In this workshop, participants will learn about various types of rubrics, examine and share some examples, and construct or refine a rubric for use in their teaching.

Food for Thought Luncheons, 2008-09

One Year Later: A Follow-up on Lecture Capturing

Jon Abraham (MA), Kate Beverage (ATC), Mary Beth Harrity (ATC), Tom Keil (PH), Dale Snyder (Academic Advising)

Lecture capturing has grown substantially in its second pilot year at WPI. Come learn more about the technology and how WPI faculty are using it to capture their courses. In addition, we'll also discuss how other institutions are using lecture capturing to attract and retain students and how WPI can promote lecture capturing to enhance learning in challenging or high-impact courses.

Developing 3-D Spatial Skills for Engineering and Science Students

Sheryl A. Sorby, Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Michigan Technological University, and Program Director, Division of Undergraduate Education, National Science Foundation

The ability to visualize in three dimensions is a cognitive skill that has been shown to be important for success in engineering and other technological fields. For engineering, the ability to mentally rotate 3-D objects is especially important. Unfortunately, of all the cognitive skills, 3-D rotation abilities exhibit robust gender differences, favoring males. The assessment of 3-D spatial skill and associated gender differences has been a topic of educational research for nearly a century; however, a great deal of the previous work has been aimed at merely identifying differences. Dr. Sorby has been conducting research in the area of spatial skills development for more than a decade aimed at identifying practical methods for improving 3-D spatial skills, especially for women engineering students. This presentation details the significant findings obtained over the past several years through this research and identifies strategies that appear to be effective in developing 3-D spatial skills and in contributing to student success.

Engaging Engineering Examples Employing Everyday Experiences

Eann A. Patterson, Professor and Chair, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Michigan State University

Students have a preference for teaching methods that include discussion and problem-solving, working in teams, and visual presentations. Student success is a multiplicative function of ability and motivation, with the latter significantly enhanced by guest speakers, field trips, student clubs and relevant/appealing applications or examples. Traditional examples employed to illustrate basic engineering concepts often appear irrelevant and abstract to students, particular those from under-represented groups in engineering. This lack of perceived relevance to their experience of life can be very discouraging to students, leading to a lack of motivation causing poor recruitment, performance, and retention. The use of thematic coherence and sets of lesson plans based around real-life examples will be discussed and illustrated. Thematic coherence has been shown to promote good academic progress and to counter academic procrastination, an inverse form of motivation. Pilot studies at a number of universities have demonstrated that examples based on real-life or everyday experiences enhance students' interest and learning.

 Promoting Lab Literacy: Supporting Students as They Write Lab Reports

The lab report presents a number of challenges to students learning to engage in the work of science and engineering. Faculty and writing instructors from WPI and MIT will diagnose typical problems students experience as they write lab reports and will introduce techniques faculty and TAs can use to support them in the process.

Communicating Well with Students

Erin DeSilva (ATC), Moderator; Faculty Panelists: Fabienne Miller (MG), Rob Lindeman (CS/IMGD); Student Panelists: Amanda Debaie (ME '09), Ishita Tyagi (BME '10), Renee Walker (ECE '10)

Have you ever...

Join us for this Food for Thought to explore these and other barriers to communicating well with your students. Faculty and student panelists will lead an interactive discussion on experiences, lessons learned, and strategies for setting communication guidelines with students. Topics will include, but aren't limited to: leveraging technology to organize communication and promote collaboration, manage time. The ATC will present current research on effective communication strategies, as well as follow up on the WPI-specific issues with resources to continue this process.

The Challenge of Moving from Prescriptive to Open-Ended Labs

Kristen Billiar (BME), Moderator; Panelists: Sharon Johnson (IE), Bob Kinicki (CS), Fred Looft (ECE)

Current educational literature suggests that challenge-based laboratory learning (i.e., inquiry- or problem-based learning) increases student motivation and retention of key concepts. On the other hand, prescriptive (a.k.a., cookbook) lab assignments are, or are perceived to be, simpler to implement and grade and require less time for the students and instructors alike. The goal of this workshop is to discuss the general concept of open-ended lab assignments and to generate ideas of how participants can modify current prescriptive labs to make them more open-ended without requiring excessive additional resources including precious instructor time.

Project Advising Tool Swap

Holly Ault (ME), Chrys Demetry (ME), Allen Hoffman (ME), John McNeill (ECE), Kent Rissmiller (IGSD), Rick Vaz (IGSD), Sue Vernon-Gerstenfeld (IGSD)

In this session presenters will share documents, rubrics, assignments, and assessments that they have developed over many years of project advising. Participants will come away with some concrete ideas to apply in both IQP and MQP advising, including various ways of structuring weekly meetings and progress reports, communicating with students about the quality of their work, and monitoring teamwork and individual contributions.

Helping Students Write from Sources: Strategies for "Reframing" Information

Writing Across the Curriculum Series

Lorraine Higgins, Director of Writing Across the Curriculum

College students are often asked to develop written arguments that address the questions and problems raised in their courses and projects. This intellectually demanding task requires them to research information from multiple sources and to "reframe" that information around their own claims and organizing structures. This workshop explores some of the difficulties students face as they work with and write from sources texts, and it introduces a number of notetaking, planning, and other pre-writing strategies that can support students and help them avoid the unfocused knowledge dumps and list-like summaries we sometimes see in their drafts. Specifically, the workshop introduces how annotated bibliographies, notetaking matrices, mind maps, and peer planning techniques can be used productively when writing from sources.

Using Clickers to Engage Students and Enhance Learning

Kate Beverage (ATC), Jon Abraham (MA), Kristen Billiar (BME), Mike Buckholt (BB), Jill Rulfs (BB)

Clickers can be used to...

  1. Promote active learning
  2. Check for student understanding
  3. Encourage discussion
  4. All of the above and more!

Classroom response systems (or "clickers") are being used in many WPI classrooms. Clickers allow instructors to ask questions and gather students' responses during a class. Come learn about the Classroom Performance System (CPS) and how faculty at WPI are using it in their classes.

Classroom Assessment Techniques

Chrys Demetry, Director, Center for Educational Development & Assessment and Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Have you ever had this sinking feeling when reviewing student work on an important assignment, lab, or exam: I wish I had known earlier how much they did not understand. Classroom assessment is an approach designed to help instructors find out early what students are learning and how well they are learning it so that adjustments can be made. Classroom assessment differs from grading in that it is formative and informative rather than summative and evaluative, and it is often but not always done anonymously.

This workshop will introduce a number of techniques that require relatively low levels of time and energy for instructors to prepare and analyze the information collected. Participants will review a sampling of techniques that can be used to assess the following: students' background knowledge, understanding and application of knowledge; analysis and critical thinking skills; synthesis and creative thinking; problem solving processes; and reactions to instruction. Each participant will leave the workshop with an initial plan for adapting at least one technique in a current or upcoming course.

Grading Flexibility at WPI

Joseph Fehribach (MA) and other members of the Committee on Academic Policy

Over the past year or so, the Committee on Academic Policy (CAP) has received a number of requests to, for example, allow +/- grading, allow F as a failing grade, or allow multiple grades for single-term, one-unit projects. All of these ideas come under the general heading of giving the instructor/advisor more choices in how to assign grades. This Food for Thought is a general discussion of these and other ideas for how to improve grading flexibility.

Writing Recommendation Letters

Peter Hansen (HU) and Jill Rulfs (BB)

College faculty and staff are routinely asked to write recommendation letters for students applying for employment, graduate school, or nationally competitive scholarships. This workshop is intended to help faculty and staff improve their skills in writing these letters of recommendation. In particular, the workshop will discuss common ethical and practical dilemmas for the writers (and readers) of recommendation letters, use case studies to frame a discussion of letter writing by participants in the workshop, and provide practical materials to help faculty and staff write more effective letters of recommendation.

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Last modified: October 08, 2009 11:41:49