PULLMAN, Wash. — Washington State University will discuss a number of ways to improve the effectiveness of instructing engineering students in a series of workshops and seminars Feb. 5-6.
They will be held at the Paradise Creek Conference Center, the Quality Inn in Pullman, and in the Engineering and Teaching Research Laboratory, Room 101, on the WSU campus. Pre-registration is required for the workshops. Contact Diana Thornton, Department of Chemical Engineering, at (509) 335-4332 for more information.
The workshops will cover active and cooperative learning at the university level, peer review of teaching and engineering education in 2010.
How can students be actively involved in class, even if there are 200 of them in the room? What has the research shown regarding the effectiveness of cooperative learning? What are productive ways to involve students in teams in lecture, laboratory and project courses? How should engineering curricula be structured? These are some of the topics that will be tackled.
Presenters will be Richard M. Felder, Hoechst Celanese Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering at North Carolina State University and Rebecca Brent, president of Education Designs Inc. and an adjunct professor of education at East Carolina University. Felder and Brent have presented more than 100 workshops and seminars to primarily engineering and science faculties on effective teaching, course design, mentoring and supporting new faculty members, and faculty development on campuses throughout the United States and in Europe, Asia, South America and South Africa. They co-direct and facilitate the annual National Effective Teaching Institute under the support of the American Society for Engineering Education.
The event is co-sponsored by the WSU Office of Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, the WSU College of Engineering and Architecture and associated departments, the WSU Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology and the University of Idaho Department of Chemical Engineering.
