“Effective Teaching and Learning”
We all face urgent global needs (e.g., to minimize and reverse climate change and environmental pollution, develop sustainable forms of energy, provide universally affordable health care, housing, and food, etc.), and the need for adequate numbers of engineers with the skills required to meet the global needs. This will require that we educate our students to possess problem solving skills using creative, critical entrepreneurial multidisciplinary, collaborative, and metacognitive thinking. This is not possible with traditional methods of teaching using conventional textbooks and assessment techniques.
We must use student centric techniques to enable them to be self-directed learners and problem solvers. They should be able to tackle a new problem and figure out what they need to learn to solve it, where to get the necessary information, and how to work their way to a solution, all without professors and textbooks. Such techniques include inductive teaching, active and cooperative learning, technology-assisted instruction, experiential and service learning, formative and summative assessment of learning and high-level thinking and problem-solving skills, instructional design, and instructional development.
Several people around the world have been using these approaches. In order to encourage more educators to change to student centric teaching techniques, we need to provide a global forum for sharing best practices and encouraging collaboration. IFEES, GEDC and IUCEE propose to partner in creating a platform for such sharing and collaboration among global educators. The central element of this will be to build a global community of practice through a series of bi-monthly webinars by educators from around the world.
Two of the leading practitioners of student centric teaching techniques are Dr. Rebecca Brent and Dr. Richard Felder. They have been practicing, as well as training others, in the use of such techniques for several decades. Drs. Brent and Felder are coauthors of Teaching and Learning STEM: A Practical Guide (JosseyBass, 2016, https://educationdesignsinc.com/book/ ). Separately and together, they have presented over 500 workshops on effective teaching, course design, mentoring and supporting new faculty members, and STEM faculty development, on campuses and at conferences around the world. More about them is given below.
Proposed Workshop Series
It is, therefore, proposed to launch an online workshop series called “Brent-Felder Effective Teaching and Learning Online Workshop Series” with the mission to identify, nurture and promote an international cadre of engineering professors who use student-centered teaching methods that have been shown to facilitate students’ development of certain specified skills. A global call for speakers will be sent out and speakers will be selected by a panel including Brent and Felder. The online webinars will be delivered in an interactive format. Each webinar will be 1.5 hours duration. Presenters should be skilled at student-centered teaching and should model it in their presentations. Participants of this workshop series will be faculty from around the world who aspire to be outstanding teachers, Assignments will be given to participants at the end of each webinar, so that participants can fully absorb and implement the webinar content. Certificates will be given to participants who complete assignments. The Webinar Series will be integrated with mentoring of teaching and learning programs at each participating institution, during the period between the webinars. The Webinar Series will be assessed by surveys of participants and institutions, after each webinar.
Efforts will be made to ensure representation from around the world. This global community of outstanding teachers will become the beacon to guide engineering educators. The webinar series is expected to commence in May 2022. Funds will be generated in order to provide honoraria to speakers, for grading assignments as well as administration of the program. The program will be for a 2-year period followed by re-evaluation.
A global call for participants will be sent out. Participants will be expected to register in teams of three from any given institution. The institutional leadership must commit to strengthening the ecosystem for teaching and learning in their institution by enabling their team of three faculty to play a leadership role in this process. This can be in the form of support for an existing Teaching and Learning Center or the formation of a new Center if one does not exist.
Meet the Workshop Leaders
Meet the Speakers
