This autumn we are so fortunate to have Gerald Feldman, professor of Physics, visiting to work on how we can make good active teaching lessons work. He has many years of experience in making Physics teaching active with the help of the method SCALE-UP and we will have a REAL prat about what he thinks is important to get learning activities going when there are many people in the room.
Program
14:15 - 15.00 - SCALE-UP by Gerald Feldman
To improve critical thinking and develop problem-solving skills, collaborative group learning environments have proven to be very effective. In the SCALE-UP pedagogical approach, students sit at round tables in groups of three, where they perform a series of pencil/paper exercises ("ponderables") using small boards and carry out practical activities such as demos and laboratories ("tangibles"). Formal lectures are reduced to a minimum and the instructor acts more like a "coach" to facilitate the academic exercises that the students perform.
Gerald Feldman will present an overview of the SCALE-UP concept and describe its implementation at George Washington University over the past 15 years. He will also discuss empirical data collected from assessments given to the SCALE-UP collaborative classes and the regular lecture classes at GWU to make a comparative study of the effectiveness of the two methodologies.
15.00 - 15:15 - Break
15:15 - 16.00 - Discussion:
Many find that the large classes are more challenging to activate, and find it difficult to see how learning activities can be organised. We discuss and share experiences: How can we make the large classes more active?