The Michael V. Drake Institute for Teaching and Learning is pleased to announce 17 recipients of the institute’s Research and Implementation Grant Program for the 2021-22 academic year.
Now in its fourth year, this program awards faculty engaged in scholarly teaching, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) or Disciplinary-Based Educational Research (DBER) with funds and expertise to support projects that advance instructional best practices. Since its inception, the program has supported 53 research projects aimed at understanding and improving student learning at Ohio State.
Among many excellent proposals, this year’s awards will support projects including, "Art...
LGBTQ+ students benefit from increased classroom support year-round. Professor Maurice Stevens from the Department of Comparative Studies shares their strategies for creating LGBTQ+ inclusive learning spaces with the Drake Institute.
A new asynchronous short course initiative from the Drake Institute will draw upon the expertise of local, national and international experts to share resources for implementing evidence-based teaching practices.
Starting on July 6 , Dr. Benjamin Wiggins from the University of Washington will share insights about the use of active learning in large lecture settings. Dr. Wiggins has extensive experience in both practicing and researching active learning in large lectures. In this short course, he will provide guidance for planning and implementing multiple research-based active learning strategies.
Ohio State instructors can complete this short course asynchronously in Carmen at their own pace, with options for weekly online conversation and discussion. There is no set deadline for completion. Participants should expect approximately 4 to 6 hours of work involved in each of the four steps of the course, for a total of approximately 16 to 24 hours of professional learning.
Last autumn, Associate Professor Subbu Kumarappan, PhD, initially planned to take attendance using the polling feature in Zoom. This proved difficult however, especially for students who logged in late, had poor internet connections, or couldn't attend synchronous sessions due to illness.
Kumarappan needed a more meaningful way to engage student participation. In experimenting with TopHat and asking students to reflect briefly on key lessons at the end of each class, he saw knowledge retention and engagement increase throughout the semester, so much so that he plans to use these techniques for the rest of his teaching practice.
Assistant Professor Kelsey Thiem and Professor Mary Kite , both of the Department of Counseling Psychology, Social Psychology, and Counseling at Ball State University, are conducting a study that explores faculty views and practices around sharing teaching materials. They are hoping to collect responses from a cross-disciplinary group of faculty and welcome the participation of faculty across Ohio State.
Dr. Ann Marie Davis, an assistant professor and Japanese Studies librarian, describes how she modified an annual summer seminar for K-12 teachers during COVID-19. Usually held in person, the one-week course has always emphasized student-centered, experiential and collaborative lessons. In light of the pandemic, Davis and her colleagues pivoted to virtual learning labs and mailed materials to participants in advance of the seminar.
“In our unit on tea, for example, we sent five different samples to five different groups respectively. During the lecture, the groups were sent to breakout rooms to brew, smell, taste and discuss the properties of their respective teas,” Davis says. “Similarly, for our unit on paper-folding, students received origami paper by mail. During the lecture, they went into breakout rooms to practice folding specific origami objects and discuss. Like with the tea exercise, this activity emphasized interactive, hands-on learning in small group settings.”
Dr. Melissa Quinn, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Education and Anatomy at the College of Medicine, describes how she modified in-person, hands-on anatomy labs for virtual and hybrid delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We wanted to maintain our dedication to our students and did not want them to completely feel like they would be losing a significant part of their medical education," Quinn says. "We needed to find a way to continue active participation in a virtual lab where the students would not be dissecting."
The Michael V. Drake Institute for Teaching and Learning seeks Arts & Humanities faculty to serve as subject matter experts for a Carmen-based Instructional Redesign short course to support Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice (DEIJ) in lectures, discussions, performances and studio-based teaching and Instructional Redesign efforts at Ohio State.
This short course will be a scalable, sustainable, asynchronous professional learning opportunity that both highlights the voices and experiences of a broad range of Ohio State instructors and students and evidences the value of a diverse, cross-disciplinary team of scholars.
The Drake Institute's Melinda Rhodes-DiSalvo, associate director, and Larry Hurtubise, curriculum and instructional specialist, presented at McMaster University’s 14th Annual Day in Faculty Development, hosted by the university’s health sciences faculty.
The theme of this year’s conference was Academia Disrupted: Innovations and Dilemmas Prompted by the COVID-19 Pandemic. Rhodes-DiSalvo and Hurtubise shared outcomes from virtual communities of practice sponsored by the Drake Institute last spring.
Professor Craig Gibson of University Libraries recently presented at the Conference on Postsecondary Learning and Teaching , hosted by the University of Calgary Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning in May. The theme of this year’s conference was Mentorship in Higher Education, and the Drake Institute’s Faculty FIT mentoring program was highlighted throughout, including during the conference’s keynote address.
Faculty FIT offers year-long programming and support for Ohio State instructors at any level in their careers – from new faculty seeking to infuse evidence-based teaching practices into their classrooms to more experienced faculty interested in developing their expertise in educational pedagogy and mentorship skills.
