Richard Felder & Rebecca Brent

are back After a very successful visit to Denmark in 2003 Richard Felder and Rebecca Brent will be back in Scandinavia in April 2006

to give a series of workshops.

Rebecca Brent

Rebecca Brent is President of Education Designs, Inc., a consulting firm in Cary, North Carolina. She taught for seven years in the Mobile, Alabama and Jackson, Mississippi public school systems prior to undertaking her doctoral program, and after receiving the doctorate, she taught undergraduate and graduate courses in classroom organization and management, instructional planning, and language arts methods at Florida Southern College and East Carolina University in Greenville, NC. She received the 1990 Research Article Award from the Organization of Teacher Educators in Reading and the 1993-94 East Carolina Alumni Association Teaching Excellence Award. She left ECU in December 1996 as a tenured associate professor to go into private consulting. Dr. Brent has published articles on uses of writing in undergraduate courses, classroom and computer-based simulations in teacher education, the promotion of listening skills in students, the incorporation of technology into K-12 education, peer review of teaching, and mentoring and supporting new faculty members.

For more information on Felder and Brent se their very interesting homepage:

http://www.ncsu.edu/effective-teaching

2

Richard Felder

Richard Felder is the grand old man in engineering education in USA. He is a splendid lecturer and has together with his wife Rebecca Brent given numerous very successful workshops on effective teaching, course design, mentoring and supporting new faculty members, and faculty development throughout the United States and abroad. Felder is Hoechst Celanese Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina. He has been very involved in teacher teaching development and is a specialist on Active and cooperative learning and learning styles. He has published extensively on educational issues incl. co-authoring the very interesting series of six papers on "The future of Engineering Education" appearing in Chemical Engineering Education in 2000. Since 1991 he has co directed the National Effective Teaching Institute under the auspices of the American Society for Engineering Education.

4 workshops • Helping New Faculty Members Get Off to a Good Start (1/2-day) • 1 day Effective University Teaching • Active and Cooperative Learning (1 day) • 11/2-day Effective University Teaching 3

Helping New Faculty Members Get Off to a Good Start 1

/2-day Workshop April 21, 2006; Learning Lab DTU

Robert Boice has shown that most new faculty members take roughly four years to become reasonably productive in research and effective in teaching. Appropriate mentoring and support can help new faculty members become what Boice calls "Quick Starters," reaching full productivity and effectiveness in 1-2 years. Mentoring is itself a skilled and complex craft, however, and when poorly done it may do more harm than good. This workshop is designed to help administrators and senior faculty members develop effective support programs for their new faculty members, increasing the likelihood that they will become quick starters. For Whom Intended University administrators, deans, department heads, supervisors, and experienced teachers who might be in a position of mentoring new faculty colleagues. Topics Addressed • What are the attributes that distinguish most new faculty members from quick starters? • What constitutes good mentoring? What pitfalls should be avoided? • How should mentors be prepared and supported? • What types of programs other than mentorship's have been found effective for supporting new faculty members? • What incentives can be offered to motivate new faculty members to make the effort to become effective teachers? What incentives can be offered to motivate experienced faculty members to serve as mentors?

When

Friday April 21, 2006, 10.30 - 15.30

Where

LearningLab DTU, Technical Knowledge Center (DTV), 2nd Floor, Building 101, DTU

Price

500 Danish Kroner incl. a light lunch (teachers from the four organizing institutions may qualify for pre-paid participation)

Registration

Before March 21, 2006 - please use the online registration at www.learninglab.dtu.dk/kurser/universitet.aspx

Further Information www.learninglab.dtu.dk/kurser/universitet.aspx or course secretary Anne Marie Bech [email protected] +45 4525 7350

4

Effective University Teaching 1-day Workshop April 24, 2006; SDU, Odense

University teaching may be the only skilled profession that does not routinely provide its practitioners with prior instruction or on-the-job training. The assumption seems to be that getting a Ph.D. in a discipline somehow equips people with the knowledge and skills to design courses, motivate students to learn and equip them with well-developed problem-solving, communication, and lifelong learning skills, lecture effectively, write good assignments and tests, and deal with the hundreds of problems that routinely arise when dealing with a class full of individuals. The assumption is false, and it typically takes new teachers 4-5 years to learn to teach effectively by trial-and-error, and some never learn. Unfortunately, the ones who pay the penalty for the errors are usually not the ones making them. As it happens, a great deal is known from both research and experience about what makes teaching effective. Most of it does not require innate teaching ability or a particular type of personality, but simply involves a combination of easily implemented strategies and common sense. This workshop draws on this material to provide faculty members and graduate students with (a) tools to make them more effective teachers and (b) good sources of information for further study. For Whom Intended All teachers. Topics Addressed • How do students learn? How do teachers teach? What often goes wrong in the process? • How do I plan a course? What do I do on the first day? • How can I be a better lecturer? • How can I get students actively involved in learning, even if there are 150 of them in the class?

When

Monday April 24, 2006, 9.00 - 17.00

Where

Lecture Hall 100, The University of Southern Denmark, Odense

Price

800 Danish Kroner (teachers from the four organizing institutions may qualify for pre-paid participation)

Registration

Before March 24, 2006

Further Information Eivind Skou, Department of Chemistry, [email protected]. +45 6550 2540

5

Active and Cooperative Learning 1-day Workshop April 25, 2006; Aalborg University

Active learning is classroom instruction that involves students in activities other than watching and listening to a lecturer. Cooperative learning is instruction that involves students in team projects under conditions that meet several criteria, including positive interdependence and individual accountability. Both cognitive science and empirical classroom research have repeatedly demonstrated that when properly implemented, these techniques motivate students to learn, increase the extent and quality of their learning, lower attrition from academic programs, and improve attitudes of students toward their education. This workshop is designed to provide participants with (a) guidance and practice in methods of active and cooperative learning; (b) a summary of the research that confirms the effectiveness of these methods; and (c) information about possible pitfalls associated with the methods (including student resistance to them) and strategies for overcoming them. For Whom Intended All teachers. Topics Addressed • How can students be actively involved in class, even if there are 200 of them in the room? • What are the defining criteria of cooperative learning and how can they be met? • What are productive ways to involve students in teams in lecture, laboratory, and project courses? • What has the research shown regarding the effectiveness of cooperative learning? • How should cooperative learning teams be formed? • How can individual contributions to team projects be assessed and taken into account in grading? • What skills are required to work effectively in teams? How can students be equipped with those skills, and how can teams be prepared to function more effectively? • What forms might student resistance to group work take and how might the resistance be minimized or eliminated?

When

Tuesday April 25, 2006, 9.00 - 17.00

Where

Aalborg University. For further information: www.viol.plan.aau.dk

Price

800 Danish Kroner inclusive a light lunch (teachers from the four organizing institutions may qualify for pre-paid participation)

Registration

Before March 24, 2006. Please use the online registration at www.viol.plan.aau.dk

Further Information viol.plan.aau.dk or please contact Marianne Nyborg [email protected]

6

Effective University Teaching 11/2-day Workshop April 27-28, 2006; LTH, Lund

University teaching may be the only skilled profession that does not routinely provide its practitioners with prior instruction or on-the-job training. The assumption seems to be that getting a Ph.D. in a discipline somehow equips people with the knowledge and skills to design courses, motivate students to learn and equip them with well-developed problem-solving, communication, and lifelong learning skills, lecture effectively, write good assignments and tests, and deal with the hundreds of problems that routinely arise when dealing with a class full of individuals. The assumption is false, and it typically takes new teachers 4-5 years to learn to teach effectively by trial-and-error, and some never learn. Unfortunately, the ones who pay the penalty for the errors are usually not the ones making them. As it happens, a great deal is known from both research and experience about what makes teaching effective. Most of it does not require innate teaching ability or a particular type of personality, but simply involves a combination of easily implemented strategies and common sense. This workshop draws on this material to provide faculty members and graduate students with (a) tools to make them more effective teachers and (b) good sources of information for further study. For Whom Intended All teachers. Topics Addressed • How do students learn? How do teachers teach? What often goes wrong in the process? • How do I plan a course? What do I do on the first day? • How can I be a better lecturer? • How can I get students actively involved in learning? How can I get them to learn from each other (cooperative learning)? • How can I create tests that are both rigorous and fair? • What student-related problems am I likely to face (classroom management, emotional crises, cheating, etc.)? How should I deal with them?

When

Thursday April 27, 2006, 9.00 - 17.00 & Friday April 28, 2006, 9.00 - 13.00

Where

Lund Institute of Technology, Lund University, Sweden

Price

1000 Swedish Kroner (teachers from the four organizing institutions may qualify for pre-paid participation)

Registration

Before March 27, 2006.

Further Information Please contact Pernille Hammer Andersson by mail [email protected] +46 46 222 70 31 or www.lth.se

7

• Aalborg University • Learning Lab DTU, Technical University of Denmark • Lund Institute of Technology, Lund University, Sweden • University of Southern Denmark, Odense In cooperation with Pedagogical Network for Engineering Education in Denmark (IPN)