Presentations

    Technology for Peer Instruction, at AAPT Summer Meeting (Salt Lake City, Utah), Tuesday, August 9, 2005:
    The Interactive Learning Toolkit (ILT) is a tool to implement innovative teaching ideas such as Peer Instruction and Just in Time Teaching, and to monitor students’ learning. It incorporates a large Concept Test (CT) database and provides the opportunity to easily integrate CTs into lectures. This talk will discuss the integration of the content management of the ILT with the Interactive Classroom features of BQ, a software developed at Erskine College. Student responses using IR clickers, wireless laptops, PDAs and cell phones are combined to give the instructor immediate feedback on student... Read more about Technology for Peer Instruction
    Visual learning: how much do we learn from what we see?, at AAPT Summer Meeting (Salt Lake City, UT), Wednesday, August 10, 2005:
    Classroom demonstrations and textbook illustrations are often considered to be key tools in improving student understanding of physical concepts. Vizualization alone, however, does not necessarily improve student understanding and can even create additional misconceptions. Active engagement of the students is essential to avoid the creation of a “wrong picture”.
    Learning Together Through Technology, at AAPT Summer Meeting (Syracuse, NY), Saturday, July 22, 2006
    The LT3 software, a combination of the Harvard ILT and the Erskine BQ programs, is a free, open source, web-based program. Many instructors are excited by new interactive pedagogies like Just-In-Time-Teaching (JITT) or Peer Instruction. LT3 provides an easy way to implement these. Participants will have hands-on experience as they learn: to create and manage courses in the LT3 program; to set up JiTT reading assignments; to access and browse a unique pool of content material, including ConceptTests, physlets, reading assignments and homework problems; to facilitate this content for in-class... Read more about Learning Together Through Technology
    Interactive teaching: Turning a large lecture into a seminar, at Stipendiatentreffen der Daimler-Benz-Stiftung, Franken-Akademie Schloß Schney (Lichtenfels, Germany), Saturday, September 16, 2006:
    Education is more than just transfer of information, yet that is mostly what happens in large introductory courses -- instructors present material and students take down as many notes as they can. This format tends to reinforce the idea that learning is about acquiring information rather than gaining new ways of thinking. In undergraduate science, however, learning consists primarily of developing new thinking skills; this mismatch between instruction and learning leads to students misunderstanding what science is, as well as frustration for both students and instructors. The problem has a... Read more about Interactive teaching: Turning a large lecture into a seminar