ABSTRACTS - Room 124

All sessions take place in Butler-Carlton Hall on the Missouri S&T campus

THURSDAY, MARCH 16, 2017

Do Educational Taxonomies Lead to Excellence in Teaching…?

LEARNING STACK SESSION (15-25 minutes)

Presenters:
     Dr. Ian Ferguson - Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering; Missouri S&T
     Dr. Bonnie Bachman - Professor of Economics; Missouri S&T

Tags: taxonomy; Bloom's; SOLO; experiental learning ; entrepreneurship

Audience: Higher Education

Time, Date, and Location: 1:00 - 2:00 p.m., Thursday, March 16, BCH 124

A number of taxonomies exist to help quantify educational aims and objectives, but their connection to excellence in teaching is not well understood. One of the first and most used is Bloom’s taxonomy which has identified three types of learning; cognitive, associated with mental skills; affective, associated with growth in feelings or emotional areas; and psychomotor, associated with manual or physical. Other educational taxonomies such as SOLO (Structure of Observed Learning Outcome) have also been proposed and investigated. This taxonomy proposes that learning complex material such as that often seen in disciplines needs to be broken down into less complex tasks and later integrated to form a solid understanding of the subject. In most of these taxonomies the traditional lecture typically only addresses the lower levels of learning and has a very stylized interaction between the student and the professor. The transition to higher levels of complexity in student's learning ability typically requires a more dialectic approach with an individualized interaction with the professor. It is through this individualized contact that student learning and the continuous improvement needed for excellence in teaching occurs. This presentation will investigate if hierarchical transitions delineated in taxonomies are important for the student’s journey of learning and can they be used as a framework for a broader based understanding of excellence in teaching.

   Do Educational Taxonomies Lead to Excellence in Teaching...? [ PDF ]


Effective Teaching Strategies for English Language Learners

LEARNING STACK SESSION (15-25 minutes)

Presenter: Karen Sprous - English as a Second Language Teacher; Rolla Public Schools

Tags: second language acquisition; academic strategies; technology and reading and writing in a second language

Audience:  K-12 Education

Time, Date, and Location: 1:00 - 2:00 p.m., Thursday, March 16, BCH 124

In the interest of finding ways to help their students succeed in mainstream classes, teachers have endeavored for years to define the nature of academic reading and writing tasks when taught to ESL students. Recently, research has focused on how to be an effective teacher of reading and writing to students learning in a second language (L2). They need coherent perspectives, principles, and models—tools for thinking about second language reading and writing in general as well as the metacognitive processes. This presentation will cover beginning language emergence whether in kindergarten or 12th grade and how technology can be used to enhance language learning.

Effective Teaching Strategies for English Language Learners [ PowerPoint ]


Even the Lone Wolf Seeks Out a Pack Now and Then: Learning How to Work with a Group

LEARNING STACK SESSION (15-25 minutes)

Presenter: Dr. Diana Ahmad - Curators' Distinguished Teaching Professor of History & Political Science; Missouri S&T

Tags: trying new things; adjusting to new situations; running with the pack; group work

Audience: Higher Education

Time, Date, and Location: 2:20 - 3:20 p.m., Thursday, March 16, BCH 124

The Lone Wolf is often considered the symbol of resistance, an animal that goes it alone.  Like professors, Lone Wolves sometimes realize that they must expand their territory in order to grow. This entails joining a pack, albeit for a short time, in order to succeed. The Lone Wolf often refuses to become a follower of others, but occasionally, the smart Lone Wolf knows when it is necessary to mellow and join a pack. Learning to take advice, learning to trust others, and learning to expand the boundaries of the Lone Wolf’s territory can be difficult at first, but the smart Lone Wolf knows that in order to grow, he or she must accept new things and work with a group.  


Developing Pedagogically: A Case Study in Pedagogy and the App Development Process

LEARNING STACK SESSION (15-25 minutes)

Presenters: 
     Rachel Clark - Educational Technologist; Purdue University
     Margaret Wu - Educational Assessment Specialist; Purdue University

Tags: student motivation; student engagement; formative assessment; app development; institutional collaboration

Audience: Higher Education

Time, Date, and Location: 2:20 - 3:20 p.m., Thursday, March 16, BCH 124

This session highlights how developers and educational technologists from Purdue University’s Teaching and Learning Technologies (TLT) collaborated to develop Replay, a formative assessment app. Specifically, this session focuses on how the piloting process informed design and decision-making around future improvements in the app to focus on student motivation and engagement. This is a unique case study illustrating how pedagogy can inform the development process.


Writing Your Hypothes.is: Collaborative Annotation in the Classroom

LEARNING STACK SESSION (15-25 minutes)

Presenter: Dr. Rachel Schneider - Assistant Teaching Professor of English & Technical Communication; Missouri S&T

Tags: course design; technology tools; assessments; methodology

Audience: Higher Education; K-12 Education

Time, Date, and Location: 3:40 - 4:40 p.m., Thursday, March 16, BCH 124

In the digital age, it can be difficult to get students to take notes during class, let alone while they're reading class material. This session will present an online annotation tool, hypothes.is, and the different uses for this technology can serve in homework and in-class activities. Specific lessons and examples will be discussed.

Writing Your Hypothes.is [ Word ]
Writing Your Hypothes.is - Collaborative Annotation in the Classroom [ PowerPoint ]

Computer-Assisted Grading System For Large Classes

LEARNING STACK SESSION (15-25 minutes)

Presenters:
     
Amy Skyles - Instructional Designer; Missouri S&T
     Dr. Nicholas A. Libre - Assistant Teaching Professor of Civil, Architectural & Environmental Engineering; Missouri S&T

Tags: assessment; large sections; automated grading; educational technology

Audience: Higher Education; K-12 Education

Time, Date, and Location: 3:40 - 4:40 p.m., Thursday, March 16, BCH 124

As large section classes or massive open online courses, continue to generate interest, there is more demand for implementing automation in teaching curriculum. A computer-assisted grading tool that has been developed and tested at Missouri S&T will be presented and discussed in this presentation. The objective of this software is to automatically grade multiple choice assignments and exams using image processing technology. Such an automated tool can speed up the grading time, increase grading accuracy and enables instructors to focus on students learning instead of spending time for grading massive assignments and exams. The pros and cons of the developed tool in a case study course will be presented and potential applications in other courses will be discussed.


FRIDAY, MARCH 17, 2017

Teaching STEM to Middle School Students through Robotics and Arduino

LEARNING STACK SESSION (15-25 minutes)

Presenter: Dr. Nana Dikhaminjia - Visiting Assistant Research Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering; Missouri S&T

Tags: STEM, robotics, Arduino, coding, engineering, k-12

Audience: K-12 Education

Time, Date, and Location: 9:00 - 10:00 a.m., Friday, March 17, BCH 124

During recent years engineering and coding became part of many other scientific fields, therefore it is important to instill and develop these interests from childhood. Public school curriculum cannot incorporate constantly developing educational technologies sufficiently fast, making extracurricular STEM activities invaluable for education of children. I’d like to share my experience of teaching engineering and coding through Robotics and Arduino to Middle School students with help of EMC Laboratory graduate students, as well as my vision of expanding these kind activities with the inclusion of other departments of Missouri S&T. 

Teaching STEM to Middle School Students through Arduino and Robotics [ PowerPoint ]


Assessing our Learning Commons Implementation with Library Data

LEARNING STACK SESSION (15-25 minutes)

Presenter: Shelly McDavid - Access Services and Learning Commons Librarian; Missouri S&T

Tags: 

Audience: Higher Education

Time, Date, and Location: 9:00 - 10:00 a.m., Friday, March 17, BCH 124

Have you ever wondered how libraries make decisions?  I mean librarians are logical, rational people that like to make informed decisions based on evidence, right?  

Join me as I walk you through some of the various ways the Curtis Laws Wilson Library at the Missouri University of Science and Technology obtain, analyze, and interpret the data we collect.  The emphasis of this presentation will be on how the library has effectively collected and utilized data to make evidence based decisions to successfully implement a learning commons in the library.  The mainstream guiding principles of a learning commons include, but are not limited to:

Access to a physical, virtual environment, and online tools or resources that invites and fosters participatory, active, engaged learning and creative collaboration, led by a team of professionals that can provide support and expertise to the learning commons users at their point of need, to effectively support positive learning outcomes and academic success.


EdTech Tips & Tricks - Qualtrics, Flipsnack, & Scoop.it

STANDARD SESSION (45-60 minutes)

Presenters: EdTech Staff

Tags: 

Audience: Higher Education

Time, Date, and Location: 10:15 - 11:15 a.m., Friday, March 17, BCH 124

Missouri S&T has purchased campus licences for several technologies designed to help faculty add some extra potential for active learning in courses. EdTech staff will demonstrate some of the possibilities of how these technologies can be used to enhance your course.

  • Qualtrics is an extremely powerful, flexible, and fun survey tool. Qualtrics is a leading industry standard in supporting academic research involving surveys. Find out how you can obtain an S&T Qualtrics account and how to get started builing surveys for your students!
  • Flipsnack lets you easily create online course materials. Basically, you can make your own textbooks for your course! Materials are both web and mobile friendly, so it's easy to make content that can be used anywhere, anytime!
  • Scoop.it allows you to curate content from a wide variety of sources into a digest of relevant articles and links. Viewers can comment on your curated content, leading to lively discussions over the material you want students to know. This tool is great for content that relies heavily on current trends and current events to keep students up-to-date.

Although these tools do have free options (with limited services), as an S&T instructor, you have full access to all of the features of these remarkable tools. We'll tell you how to sign up and get started with the S&T version of these tools!