Please join us on Friday, April 5th, at 3 p.m. in the Hatfield Room for our eighth Faculty Colloquium of this semester.
Presenter: Henry M. Walker, Class of 1959 Distinguished Visiting Chair, Willamette University
Title: Lab-based Pedagogy with Collaboration: An Example of a Flipped Classroom
Abstract: Much current discussion among college and university faculty focuses upon the notion of a flipped classroom. But how might that pedagogy be implemented in actual introductory courses, particularly in the sciences? This talk will first review several different pedagogical approaches commonly used in STEM fields, and then expand upon a workshop-style pedagogy.
At Grinnell College, for example, all introductory courses in biology, computer science, statistics, and psychology follow this workshop style pedagogy that integrates class lecture/discussion with laboratory experiments. Some sections of introductory chemistry and physics follow a similar approach.
To illustrate the general approach, the talk will highlight the pedagogy used in introductory computer science courses at Grinnell College, where students complete about 47 laboratory exercises, and I lecture about 4 hours per month (mostly in 5-10 minute segments). Altogether, these courses provide fine examples of one type of flipped classroom. As will be discussed, the approach pushes active learning to an extreme, and our experience suggests that this pedagogy allows us to cover about 20% more material than our traditional approach (with separate lectures and labs), and our students perform better on tests. The approach also seems to help student recruitment and retention.
Students are welcome and coffee and treats will be provided. We look forward to seeing you there.
Bill Kelm and Daniel Rouslin
Faculty Colloquium Coordinators