The Center for Teaching and Learning held a kickoff event in December for its new CTL Fellows for Innovative Teaching program. The event included remarks from Laura Jolly, vice president for instruction, and CTL director Eddie Watson, who welcomed Peter Doolittle, assistant provost for teaching and learning at Virginia Tech, as the featured speaker. Doolittle is best known for his viral TED Talk regarding working memory, but his recent research focused on flipping the classroom.
A flipped classroom is a pedagogical strategy in which students review concepts outside the classroom and instructors help reinforce the subject through activities in class.
The Fellows for Innovative Teaching program is a new faculty development opportunity funded by the Office of the Vice President for Instruction and the CTL for those who are employed full time at UGA and teach challenging and high-demand courses. The program provides instructors with support and collaboration to institute robust flipped teaching practices in their courses as well as an opportunity to share ideas with other innovative teachers from a variety of disciplines who have similar interests and face similar teaching challenges.
The program will change focus each academic year to align with topics of strategic importance for the university. The 2015 activities for the CTL Fellows for Innovative Teaching, which began last month and conclude in December, will focus on “Flipping the Classroom.”
The first two cohorts of faculty are focusing on a flipped instructional project designed to strengthen courses and teaching methods in each participant’s academic department. They also are integrating research about how people learn in key courses at the university, reinforcing an instructional environment that honors and recognizes dedicated teaching scholars and promotes a learning-community spirit on a large campus.
The two cohorts of 12 selected to participate in the inaugural year of this program and who were on-hand for the kickoff event are Norris Armstrong, genetics; Nicholas Berente, management information systems (co-participant with Mark Huber); Charles Byrd, Germanic and Slavic studies; Joel Caughran, chemistry; Kara A. Dyckman, psychology; Janet Frick, psychology; Connie Marie Frigo, music; April K. Galyardt, educational psychology; Andreas Handel, epidemiology and biostatistics; Mark Huber, management information systems (co-participant with Nicholas Berente); Rodney Mauricio, genetics; Cory Momany, pharmacy; Julie M. Moore, infectious diseases; Patricia Moore, entomology; Diann Moorman, financial planning, housing and consumer economics; Michele A. Monteil, GRU/UGA Medical Partnership; Gregg Thomas Nagle, cellular biology; Maria Navarro, agriculture leadership; Siddharth Savadatti, engineering; Scott A. Shamp, New Media Institute/journalism; Ajay Sharma, veterinary biosciences; Bjorn F. Stillon Southard, communication studies; Martina Sumner, chemistry; and Kacy Welsh, psychology.
The cohorts meet once a month throughout the calendar year at a combination of roundtable discussions and workshop activities. Each fellow also meets monthly with members of the CTL faculty to address questions that are unique to his/her context. Each participant receives $2,000 to support a flipped classroom development project.