Sherryl A Broverman, Associate Professor of the Practice, Biology, Arts and Sciences
Project description
Dr. Broverman participated in a Faculty Fellows group focused on teaching large classes. This fellowship group discussed a number of techniques, described in McKeachie’s Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers and Angelo and Cross’ Classroom Assessment Techniques.
Broverman has been teaching very large (200-300) lecture courses and was concerned that students were passive learners. She also wanted to include more formative assessment projects to benefit both the students learning and her understanding of their needs. She was particularly interested in group work (beyond “think, pair, share” using PRS), portfolios, and peer education to promote students abilities to synthesize and make connections.
For the Spring 2006 Fellows program, she explored concept maps, one minute summaries, and structuring team based presentation assignments in preparation for teaching a large class. She found the self-assessment by the students, where they summarized concepts of a lecture or presentation, helpful in understanding what students were learning at various points in the course. Students also felt that the creation of a concept map would be helpful when structuring a paper, but thought the process of creating them was difficult. Broverman restructured her presentation assignments, based on her work in the past, to be more manageable in a 300 student course.
Project start date: January 1, 2006
Funding awarded: $1,000