Faculty Learning Communities (Cox, 2004) have been designed to introduce professors to a variety of active learning strategies (Prince, 2004) in the Faculty of Engineering at a large, research-intensive North American public university. After participating for more than a year a chemical Engineering professor and her teaching assistant (TA) decided to restructure their course to make it more student-centered. This resulted in a course where multiple active learning strategies (open-ended student response system, peer-review assignments, online quizzes and flipped tutorials) were used by both the instructor in class and the TA in tutorials. During this interactive session, the instructor, TA and educational developer will discuss the activities undertaken during the term. Several of the strategies will be used during the course of the session (e.g. open-ended response system, online quizzes and videos). Recommendations will be provided for future implementation of these strategies. The instructor and TA will share their reflections on the trajectory they followed in shifting from a teacher-centered approach to a more student-centered, evidence based teaching practice. We will share the results of a student survey and discuss how the instructor plans to respond to student feedback in future iterations of the course. We will provide examples where feedback was mixed, such as in the peer review exercises, invite participants to share their own experiences with similar strategies, and brainstorm ways to move forward given the contextual constraints.
Cox, M. D. (2004). Introduction to faculty learning communities. New directions for teaching and learning, 97, 5-23.
Prince, M. (2004). Does active learning work? A review of the research. Journal of engineering education, 93, 223-231.
