‘STEM’
Teaching with MOOCs: Four Cases
Nov. 26, 2012—by Derek Bruff, CFT Director Last month in a blog post titled “Better Than a Textbook?“, I noted that some faculty find it easier to think about the massive open online courses (MOOCs) provided by vendors like Coursera as “super-textbooks” than as actual courses. Earlier this month, Vanderbilt computer science professor Doug Fisher wrote a...
CIRTL Online Coffee Hour: Teaching at a Primarily Undergraduate Institution, 9/27 at 1pm
Sep. 24, 2012—See below for this week’s offering from the CIRTL Network’s online coffee house series on building academic careers in science, engineering, and mathematics. This week’s coffee house features two Vanderbilt alumnae, Tara Davis (Mathematics) and Heather Whitney (Physics). Teaching at a Primarily Undergraduate Institution Thursday September 27, 1-2pm Central Where do you want to teach? ...
Leveraging Student Interests through Social Bookmarking
Aug. 29, 2012—by Derek Bruff, CFT Director I have a new guest post over on the CIRTL Network website describing my use of social bookmarking tools like Delicious and Diigo in my math courses. The post is titled “Leveraging Student Interests through Social Bookmarking.” Here’s an excerpt: As with the cryptography course, social bookmarking contributed to the...
Please Take Out Your Cell Phones
Jul. 24, 2012—by Derek Bruff, CFT Director I have a blog post on mobile learning (using mobile devices like phones and tablets in education) posted over on the CIRTL Network website today. Here’s an excerpt from the post, “Please Take Out Your Cell Phones.” My theory is that if all students are expected to do with their...
Student-Created Infographics and a Seated Poster Session: Two Experiments in Teaching Statistics
Jun. 4, 2012—by CFT Director Derek Bruff This past spring I taught Math 216, an introduction to statistics for engineering majors, for the fourth time in recent years. In order to make the course a bit more lively for me and for the students and to reflect the growing importance of visualization techniques in statistics, I added...
Episode 30 – Student Learning on Display: Spinach-Powered Solar Cells
May. 4, 2012—In an effort to better understand student learning, particularly deep learning, as it occurs at Vanderbilt, the CFT is producing a special series of podcasts highlighting student projects across a variety of disciplines. In this episode we join CFT Director Derek Bruff as he reports on-location from the floor of the poster session at the...
Two Talks: Digital Devices in the Classroom & Upper-Level Physics Reform
Apr. 24, 2012—by CFT director Derek Bruff Vanderbilt is part of the CIRTL Network, a 25-institution group of universities collaborating on the preparation of science, engineering, and math graduate students and post-docs for future teaching roles. One of the CIRTL Network programs is the CIRTL Network Exchange, in which a grad student from one CIRTL campus visits...
Norman Fortenberry to present Engineering Lecture
Mar. 19, 2012—Norman Fortenberry, executive director of the American Society for Engineering Education, will deliver a lecture titled “Engineering Excitement” Tuesday, March 20, 2012 at 4 p.m. in Jacobs Believed In Me Auditorium, Featheringill Hall. A reception in Adams Atrium follows the lecture. Fortenberry was appointed executive director of the ASEE in May 2011. He is a...
VU Student Develops Math App for Visually Impaired Students
Mar. 8, 2012—This week, the Vanderbilt VUCast and the Research News at Vanderbilt site feature the work of Jenna Gorlewicz, a graduate student in the Medical and Electromechanical Design Laboratory (MED Lab) at Vanderbilt University, and her adviser Robert Webster, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, who directs the lab. Gorlewicz has developed and is testing a new Android app, one...
A Few Examples of Teaching with Clickers
Feb. 14, 2012—by CFT Director Derek Bruff I’m teaching a statistics course for engineering students in the math department this spring. With 73 students in the course, it’s keeping me busy, but I think it’s important that the CFT director (and assistant directors) are in the classroom here at Vanderbilt. Teaching lets us directly support the teaching...