Faculty schooled on new teaching styles to fit the digital age

A.T. Miller and Margaret Frey
Mark Vorreuter
A.T. Miller, associate vice provost for academic diversity, and Margaret Frey, Human Ecology associate dean for academic affairs, participate in a faculty discussion on active learning.

With the rise of massive open online courses (MOOCs) and other online learning models, what good is a brick-and-mortar classroom these days?

Taking this as a challenge, Cornell design and environmental analysis students, working with professional architects and college administrators, conceived and built two new classrooms equipped for the digital age in Martha Van Rensselaer Hall’s west wing. Outfitted with ergonomic, mobile furniture, plentiful power outlets and wired whiteboards and writable surfaces for sharing ideas and resources, the rooms configure easily for group projects, traditional lectures or “flipped” lessons where students take the helm.

Problem solved. But the new digs present a fresh challenge: How do professors update their teaching style to make full use of these connected, convertible classrooms?

With this in mind, the College of Human Ecology and Center For Teaching Excellence (CTE) hosted a daylong Teaching and Learning Workshop April 17, leading a multidisciplinary group of Cornell faculty to tour the spaces and explore hands-on teaching techniques. Faculty themselves became active learners, forming small groups to weigh the pros and cons of the updated classrooms and anticipate their instructional needs for the decade ahead.

“Human Ecology faculty are constantly innovating around teaching to ensure that our students can apply skills and knowledge from our courses in their lives and careers,” said Margaret Frey ’85, M.S. ’89, the college’s associate dean for undergraduate affairs. “Designed with feedback from students, professors and administrators, these new spaces can shift the classroom dynamic and help students to think critically and direct their own learning.”

Weill Cornell Medical College professors Dr. Susan Bostwick and Dr. Jennifer DiPace helped guide the sessions and concluded the day with an interactive workshop on fostering meaningful class activities. The pair explained ready-to-use ideas for student engagement – case-based learning, reflective writing, impromptu quizzes and other strategies they’ve used to lead more effective lessons for medical students.

“Faculty are very interested in teaching but often don’t have time to discuss what they are doing with other colleagues,” said event co-organizer Kim Kenyon, CTE associate director. “The number one thing we hear from faculty is that taking the opportunity to share ideas about teaching with colleagues yields amazing ideas for their classes.”

Throughout the day, Frey, Kenyon and other speakers praised the legacy of the late Carole Bisogni ’70, M.S. ’72, Ph.D. ’76, whose vision for student engagement originally sparked the classroom renovation project.

“The two new innovative learning spaces really broaden your imagination as an instructor of what is possible in class,” said workshop attendee A.T. Miller, associate vice provost for academic diversity and senior lecturer in the Department of English. “Having physical spaces like this frees an instructor to do more inventive, varied and innovative things that keep the learning alive and flowing between members of the class and throughout the time period of the course.”

Ted Boscia is director of communications and media for the College of Human Ecology.

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