The TIP Blog is excited to kick off the 2024-2025 academic year celebrating the outstanding achievements of our faculty members who have recently been honored with excellence in teaching, research, and service awards. These educators have demonstrated an exceptional commitment to student success, innovative teaching methods, and passion for their subjects. Join us in congratulating them on their well-deserved recognitions. Please also join us on Wednesday, August 28th from 12:45-1:45PM in Admin 202 for a lunch (provided) and learn panel to hear more about practical insights on planning, designing, and delivering course content that have proven highly effective in their classrooms.
Continue reading “Faculty Awards 2023-2024”Faculty Spotlight: Colby King
By fall semester, Forbes, Reddit, the NYT, and Berkeley Engineering were among the legions describing 2023 as the soft launch of the “the AI revolution”. CAIFS (Center for Academic Innovation and Faculty Support) also anticipated the permanence of AI and kicked-off the fall semester with faculty guidance and discussion on the emerging multitudes of AI tools. Some particular attention was given to how to use AI to streamline, standardize, and improve aspects of our own practices. (see TIP blog from September 7 for more information about ways faculty can use AI).
Continue reading “Faculty Spotlight: Colby King”
Faculty Spotlight: Chris Bender and Flipped STEM Courses
Email academicinnovation@uscupstate.edu!
Even before COVID-19 forced us all online, Chris Bender, Associate Professor of Chemistry, was already rethinking his Chemistry 111 course in Spring 2020. The Smith Building was being closed for renovations and CHEM U111 had a long history of high withdrawal rates. With building renovations forcing courses to become hybrid due to space limitations, would the withdrawal rate climb even higher? To prepare for a transition to a hybrid course in Fall 2020 (at least what was supposed to be in Fall 2020), Dr. Bender applied to the inaugural Engaged Pedagogy and Hybrid Course Design Institute with CAIFS in Summer 2020. After a few months of training and course planning to implement a flipped classroom with active learning, the course went live in Fall 2020…and has remained flipped, active, and collaborative ever since.
Dr. Bender presented findings from the new CHEM 101 course at the Fall Course Showcase. Watch the 15-minute video below to find out what happened to the W rate after the transition and to learn about students really think about those 6-minute videos!