FACULTY INSTRUCTIONAL INNOVATION STUDIO
Relevant course(s) name/number, approx. number of students, and short description
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Psych 013, Skepticism and Pseudoscience in Psychology, Psychology for non-majors (60% are non-majors), with enrollment evolving from around 15 initially to current enrollment of 160
Teaching or learning problem/challenge that made you rethink your learning model or approach or try something new
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Teaching research methods, including concepts of validity and reliability, to non-majors in a way that will engage students
How you addressed that challenge (if applicable, what technology, learning strategy, etc. you integrated to do so)
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Utilize the following:
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compelling video segments,
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in-class demonstrations,
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real-world examples,
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journal articles, ( posted it on iLearn)
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clickers,
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iLearn tools (i.e., discussion boards),
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engaging and fun lecture
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online office hours,
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student projects using wikis
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Sometimes need to be patient and ask for assistance from other faculty member
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Sometimes have “no technology” portions of class
How students responded, any challenges, and lessons learned
Students appreciate how the clicker questions provide immediate feedback and the get an impression of how other students are thinking. They also report that they help motivate them to go to class since they are worth class credit. To my surprise, the students, for the most part, appreciate the no-electronic devices policy and report that it has helped them in class. Lesson learned: have a seamless Plan B for when the technology fails!
Panelist: Curt Burgess
Professor of Psychology, Ph.D. University of Rochester
Areas of specialization: Cognitive science; memory mechanisms that underlie language comprehension, the processing of semantic and syntactic ambiguity, as well as figurative language. (Research Group)
In general, I am interested in how meaning can be represented at the cognitive, neural, and computational levels. From a neurolinguistic perspective, my work investigates the complementary roles of the two cerebral hemispheres in activating information in memory using both normal, computational and brain-damaged subject populations.
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Relevant course(s) name/number, approx. number of students, and short description
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Lower division large intro courses:
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General Chemistry 1A and 1B (Between 250-600 participants; with 3-4 courses taught in parallel) There is no distinction between Chemistry majors and non-majors. â…“ of the students on campus will go through this series
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Chemistry 110 B (50-80 students) Physical Chemistry Series taken by students in their junior or senior year.
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Teaching or learning problem/challenge that made you rethink your learning model or approach or try something new
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Being prerequisite courses for many other disciplines, there are sometimes significant motivation issues and participation issues
How you addressed that challenge (if applicable, what technology, learning strategy, etc. you integrated to do so)
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Use of student learning communities (importance of peer to peer influence)
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Create engaging lectures through the use of:
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Video clips
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Demonstrations
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Clickers
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Additionally, follow course attrition and persistence by conducting research on student ID
How students responded, any challenges, and lessons learned
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Some positive and some negative responses
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Student time outside of academics is a a strain
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Must be flexible and accepting of change in responding to your students
Panelist: Ludwig Bartels
Professor of Chemistry CFM in Elec. & Mech. Eng. and Physics, Ph.D. Freie Universität Berlin
Areas of specialization: Physical Chemistry, Analytical Chemistry, Computational Chemistry, Materials Chemistry (Research Group)
Research in the Bartels Lab addresses three different areas of surface chemistry, physics and materials science: the growth and properties of MoS2 and other metal dichalcogenides monolayers; the processes underlying ordering and self-assembly of molecular layers at metal surfaces; and the control of molecular motion at surface aiming at the development of molecular machine.
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Panelist: Ward Beyermann
Professor of Physics, Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles
Areas of specialization: Experimental condensed matter physic: the transport and thermodynamic properties of highly correlated electronic condensed matter systems.
Dr. Ward Beyermann is an Associate Professor of Physics. His research focus is in the area of thermodynamic, magnetic and transport properties of exotic materials over a wide range of temperature and applied magnetic field.
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Dr. Ward Beyermann is an Associate Professor of Physics. His research focus is in the area of thermodynamic, magnetic and transport properties of exotic materials over a wide range of temperature and applied magnetic field. For many of these systems, string interactions between the electrons lead to unusual phenomena. Some of these systems investigated include lanthanide and actinide intermetallic compounds, carbon fullerenes, nanotubes, wide band-gap semiconductors, nanoscale magnetic structure and biomolecules. In addition to upper-division courses in physics, Dr. Beyermann teaches introductory physics for the life-science majors. Dr. Beyermann earned a B.A. degree on Physics from UC Berkeley, and M.S. and PhD. Degrees in Physics from UCLA.
Relevant course(s) name/number, approx. number of students, and short description
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Lower division courses with large enrollment
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Physics 2A, 2B, 2C (General Physics)
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280 students in the fall and 80 students during the summer
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Teaching or learning problem/challenge that made you rethink your learning model or approach or try something new
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Application of Physics teaching research from the literature (Eric Mazur and other experimentation)
How you addressed that challenge (if applicable, what technology, learning strategy, etc. you integrated to do so)
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Clickers - one of the first departments to use them
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“Flipping the classroom” teaching (to check if the student read the material beforehand)
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Just-in-time ("JIT") teaching/mini-lectures/discussion questions (focus on area where the students are too unsure)
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Allows him to focus more on developing better questions
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Still experimenting other methods
How students responded, any challenges, and lessons learned
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Students like to participate and mostly enjoy the new methods
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Creating student engagement opportunities does compete for classroom time.
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Hard to develop consensus on the student response
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Hoping students will be engaged to learn these materials by themselves
Panelist: Erika Suderburg
Professor of Media & Cultural Studies, MFA. University of California, San Diego
Areas of specialization: Areas of interest include experimental film, media arts, installation art, critical theory, activist practice(s), and queer theory.
Erika Suderburg is a filmmaker and writer. She has written on art, performance, media theory, and television and film history. Her work has been exhibited in film festivals, museums, and on television including: the Pacific Film Archives-Berkeley, the Museum of Modern Art-New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art-Los Angeles, Kunstlerhaus-Stuttgart, Fukai International Video Biennale-Japan, International Video Festival-Bonn, Mix Mexico-Mexico City, and The Getty Museum-Los Angeles, among many others.
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Erika Suderburg is a filmmaker and writer. She has written on art, performance, media theory, and television and film history. Suderburg is co-editor with Michael Renov of Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices, co-editor of Resolution 3: Global Video Praxis with Ming-Yuen S. Ma and editor of Space Site Intervention: Situating Installation Art, all of which are published by the University of Minnesota Press. Her work has been exhibited in film festivals, museums, and on television including: the Pacific Film Archives-Berkeley, the Millennium Film Workshop-New York, the Museum of Modern Art-New York, The American Film Institute-Los Angeles, the Museum of Contemporary Art-Los Angeles, Kunstlerhaus-Stuttgart, Grazer Kunstverein-Austria, the Collective for Living Cinema-New York, Fukai International Video Biennale-Japan, New Langton Arts-San Francisco, International Video Festival-Bonn, The Long Beach Museum of Art, Mix Mexico-Mexico City, FilmForum-Los Angeles, and The Getty Museum-Los Angeles.
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Relevant course(s) name/number, approx. number of students, and short description
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Initially Introduction to Art Theory (large class), and currently, History of Video Art, History of Experimental Film, History of Documentary Film, Queer Cinema, Intermedia, Filmmaking (enrollment around 40)
Teaching or learning problem/challenge that made you rethink your learning model or approach or try something new
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Getting students to read. Reading and writing literacy deficits among students who need to “read, write, and look” through the lens of disciplines like Art Theory
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Engaging students “in creating culture together” or “creating a commons together”
How you addressed that challenge (if applicable, what technology, learning strategy, etc. you integrated to do so)
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Collective editing or co-authoring of a wiki-style glossary in iLearn,
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Blogging,
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Group assignments to have students practice teamwork and collaborate on answering “thorny” foundational questions,
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Social media platforms to serve as a “public commons” for students (iLearn, Facebook, Vimeo, Wordpress, etc.) in several courses,
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Opportunities for students to participate in a dialogue as part of a larger community of filmmakers,
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Assignments that enable students to develop their portfolios,
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Exercises in note-taking as observation,
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Putting smartphones away so that students can listen via “listening exercises,” i.e., “slow teaching.”
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Interjecting deliberate opportunities for students to play
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Determining what is pertinent/important to students, which helps guide the sequence of topics addressed in the course
How students responded, any challenges, and lessons learned
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Students who may not normally talk in class can now talk in other ways, and students often continue blogs outside of class
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Teaching critical thinking skills through film often changes how students think about film and of themselves