Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Session Two Session Three Session Four Session Five Breakout Session One: 10:10-10:45 a.m.
An Exploration of Faculty Perception on Civic Engagement, Service Learning and Scholarship in Practice
Lynne Heighton and Lenea Stocker, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, Amanda T. Berger, Department of Family Science, Steve Buzinsky, Department of Social, Decisional and Organizational Sciences, Paul Dean, Department of Sociology, Terri Donofrio, Department of Communication, Abram Fox, Department of Art History and Ali Fuad Selvi, Department of Curriculum and Instruction The 2010-11 Lilly Fellowship project seeks to elucidate the current understanding at the University of Maryland about the pedagogy of several active learning approaches, pedagogical styles that become particularly important as the University moves to revise its general education curriculum. Questions exist as to how active learning is defined and how approaches such as service learning and civic engagement compare and contrast. A survey was distributed to instructional faculty in order to identify the characteristics that UMD instructors attribute to each term. Understanding current attempts at defining, valuing and incorporating civic engagement and service learning into pedagogical practice may help highlight specific needs for future resources and facilitate instructors, faculty, and administrators to identify areas of the curricula that can incorporate active learning approaches effectively in their curricula. Hopefully, the survey will generate an organic definition of two practices at UMD reading and assessing the views of different disciplines within the learning community.
Exploring How Peer Interaction Using Wikis Influences ELLs' Rhetorical Analysis Learning
Nabila Hijazi, Department of English With the shift from individual acquisition to artifact mediated collaborative participation, adopting a multimodal and multiliteracies approach to teaching academic writing can help undergraduate English Language Learners (ELLs) improve their English writing and rhetorical skills by making them articulate to one another what they are doing as they write. Furthermore, technological advances help composition instructors gain insights of the integration of research into instruction. Using wikis in teaching writing is a great opportunity to enhance students writing competency. Wikis promote collaboration, especially in group projects. By adopting this, I, as a researcher interested in issues related to teaching writing to ELLs, collected data from Introduction to Academic Writing course for ELLs. I analyzed students composing practices and presentations, paying particular attention to how the students draw on different modes to make meaning and to present their thoughts and arguments to their intended audience. I argue that wiki use improves students writing as it intellectually transforms them in ways that are not as prevalent in the traditional face-to-face classroom. The monologic and dialogic writing tasks that occur in wikis have important implications for student participation, motivation, and inter-cultural awareness. Students who are shy or reluctant to speak in class gain another vehicle to freely present their thoughts, become more interactive, and even assume a leadership role in presenting their ideas. I witnessed how the in-class and wiki collaboration can improve ELLs writing. The goal of the study is to allow research and practice inform each other in ways that help develop pedagogical practices aimed at engaging ELL writers in 21st century academic literacy skills. Results from this study and the collected data will contribute to a community of inquiry, discussion about curriculum design, reflection on teaching and researching, and making adjustments based on students feedback and progress.
engaging instructional material to students online. Specifically, I will be speaking about ScreenFlow (a video editing program) and NoteTaker (an online organizer), both for the Macintosh, but my methods can easily be transferred to many other similar programs. Breakout Session Three: 11:30 a.m. - 12:05 p.m.
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An Innovative Use of Technology to Improve Spatial Translations in the Organic Chemistry Classroom
Panelists include: Bonnie Dixon, Bryna Kumi, Richard Wroblewski and Matthew Kennelly, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry A significant portion of mastering organic chemistry hinges on the ability to comprehend the three-dimensional nature of molecules. Chemists have developed many two- and three-dimensional molecular representations to understand this science at the molecular level. In the classroom and in organic chemistry texts, two-dimensional representations are used to communicate the three-dimensional organization of molecules. To aid in the instruction of three-dimensional structure of molecules, physical models are often used in the classroom. To be successful in organic chemistry, students are expected to be able to translate between the two- and three-dimensional representations with ease. The current study explores the use of two specific types of models in the classroom: lecture-sized models and the projection of personal-sized models via a document camera.
Creating Online Animations as a Tool for Teaching Preparation and Development in Mathematics
Hagit Sela and Rick Hollenbeck, Center for Mathematics Education How should a teacher deal with a situation where students come up with four different answers to a mathematics problem? Should all the solution methods be addressed? Should class time be devoted to learning the correct answer only? These questions represent an example of decision-making that a mathematics teacher needs to address in class. In order to reason about the complexities of teaching, it is important that teacher educators find ways to represent classroom interactions so they can analyze and discuss it with their students/teachers. In this presentation, a piece of technology will be demonstrated that provides teacher educators opportunities to construct animated representations of teaching that can be used to highlight specific classroom interactions. LessonSketch is an online environment that was developed by an NSF funded project awarded to the University of Michigan and the University of Maryland. It allows for the creation of animated scenarios around teaching interactions and provides the opportunity for users to engage in online conversations around these scenarios. Teachers and prospective teachers can watch the scenarios on their home computer, suggest an alternative scenario that reflects a better set of teaching moves that allow for deeper learning, and remotely participate in discussions about the teaching. The facilitator can manage the online discussion as a forum and guide the discussion to directions they choose.
Expanding the Boundaries of the Language Classroom Using Web-based Tools: Three Case Studies
Roberta Lavine, Ana Patricia Rodriguez and Mary Ellen Scullen, School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures This panel will present three different classroom projects at the University level that focused on expanding the boundaries of the language classroom by using web based tools such as Twitter, Google Maps, Wimba Live Classroom and Skype. Each tool was used to produce collaborations, enhance learning, and create communities. Dr. Roberta Z. Lavine and Julian Chen and Yi-Ti Lin of the Tamkang University in Taiwan co-taught a graduate class called Methods of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. Students worked both asynchronously and in real time exchanging cultural and pedagogical information and developing materials useful to their partners. They used several electronic media including Moodle, Skype, and Wimba Live Classroom. This portion of the presentation will discuss both the positive aspects and the challenges involved in this type of high stakes formal cross-continent exchange.
Dr. Ana Patricia Rodriguez, in collaboration with the National Park Service and the students in U.S. Latina/o Studies I: An Historical Overview to the 1960's, developed a Latin@-theme tour of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The tour featured landmarks, monuments, memorials, community centers, and organizations. The students individually wrote narratives about selected sites. In groups, they produced a marketing plan, brochure, Google map and website, and post-tour evaluation on SurveyMonkey. In a 300-level class on advanced oral expression in French, Dr. Mary Ellen Scullen used Twitter as a medium for creating a virtual world in which members of the class communicated via Twitter. Half the class played the role of Francophone students studying at UMD and the other half were friends and family in their home countries/regions. The students gained insight into Francophone culture and practice communicating with peers in French, thus strengthening their expression in French all without thinking that they were engaging in writing in a foreign language. Breakout Session FIve: 2:40-3:15 p.m.
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Before Class Meets: Pre-class Worksheets as a Key in Unlocking Active Engagement and Student Performance
Steven Buzinski, Scott Roberts and Ryan Curtis, Department of Psychology I refuse to ever teach another class without them. I dont know how I did it before. UMD Psychology Instructor. Without a firmly established foundation of information to call upon during the intense periods of debate, reflection, and integration in class, a student will struggle to move beyond the perfunctory memorization of facts and concepts to the application, analysis,
and creation of knowledge that we, as instructors, hope for them to achieve. This session will provide instructors with a pedagogy designed specifically to engender the foundation of information their students need to be active and productive during class meetings, and more successful overall. Specifically, we will discuss the incorporation of online, pre-class worksheet assignments into the curriculum, the potential for their integration with new teaching technologies, preliminary evidence of their influence on student learning, and how members of our audience can begin to use these assignments immediately. Preliminary analysis has demonstrated that they do far more than simply force students to read. Even when the points attributable to these assignments are excluded from final point-totals, pre-class worksheet assignments are nearly as predictive of final grades as combined exam scores. Take 35 minutes to discover a pedagogy that can make your class more productive, active, and enjoyable for yourself and your students.