Congratulations to Stetson University’s 2015-2016 Brown Innovation Fellows.
Fellows participate as a cohort in the year-long intensive Brown Innovation Institute from September 2015 to April 2016. Faculty fellows participating in this year’s institute hone their teaching skills in ways that promote integrative student learning in an atmosphere of continuous improvement.
DESIGNING SIGNIFICANT LEARNING EXPERIENCES
During the institute, Fellows engage monthly in innovative course-building to design significant learning experiences at the course, program, department, and/or general education level. Each of the eight sessions meets for four-hours through either face-to-face [f-2-f] or virtual means with teaching and learning coach, Dr. Cynthia Alby (pictured left front row). Fellows study the literature on two of the following topics at each session and apply research-based methods to course (re)design:
- Designing significant learning experiences
- Course design
- Authentic assessment
- Formative assessment and feedback
- Lesson design
- Student Engagement
- Warming the brain
- Improving discussion
- Flipping the classroom part 1
- Flipping the classroom part 2
- Encouraging students to prepare well for class part 1
- Encouraging students to prepare well for class part 2
- Developing intrinsically motivated students
- Classroom Assessment Techniques
- Putting it all together part 1
- Putting it all together part 2
Each Fellow received the following books:
- Fink, D. (2013). Creating significant learning experiences: An integrated approach to designing college courses
- Angelo, T., & Cross, K. (1993). Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers
- Barkley, E. (2010). Student engagement techniques: A handbook for college faculty
- Pink, D. (2011). Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us
2016 Brown Fellows Symposium
As part of the yearlong program, faculty fellows will participate in a special Brown Fellows Symposium during spring 2016 as part of the annual Teaching & Learning Colloquium. The Brown Fellows Symposium will feature the work of Brown Innovation Fellows, Brown Teaching-Scholar Fellows and other faculty work supported by funding from the Brown Center for Faculty Innovation and Excellence.
Schedule
Note: The March 25 date has been moved to March 18, 2016.
Institute Facilitator
Cynthia Alby, Ph.D.
Professor of Education, Georgia College & State University
Dr. Cynthia Alby has spent most of her career immersed in what could most accurately be described as “avid cross-discipline idea mongering.” She studies pedagogy, sociology, psychology, neuroscience, and economics – anything that might yield some useful clues. She describes her research as, “scholarship of teaching and learning through scholarship of integration and application” (Boyer, 1990). Her primary research question is, “What does it look like to study the research on best practices in higher education pedagogy, make informed decisions about what to actually use, and then try to implement that amalgamation? Her goal is to explicitly examine this complexity in order to help herself and others negotiate the intricate terrain of teaching. In order to address such questions she has engaged in a systematic examination of teaching activities such as giving feedback, leading discussion, questioning, implementing formative assessments and feedback, flipping the classroom, and a host of others. Dr. Alby received her Ph.D. in language education from the University of Georgia in 1998. She is currently professor of secondary education at Georgia College, Georgia’s public liberal arts institution, where she works with the Innovative Course Building Group. She has taught in the Governor’s Teaching Fellows Program since 2002 after she herself became a Fellow. This highly selective program chooses 24 professors each year from Georgia’s public and private institutions of higher education for a series of intensive workshops on best practices in higher education pedagogy.
Read more about Dr. Alby’s current work on the Renewing Our Focus on the Liberal Arts.