Open house events highlight active learning opportunities on campus

For some, stepping into a classroom in the Wilmeth Active Learning Center can be a bit overwhelming.

With seven different classroom types – everything from a traditional lecture hall to classrooms with rearrangeable tables and chairs – WALC gives instructors the opportunity to tailor their teaching style to a learning environment. It also means that the best way to use a room isn’t always obvious.

“There’s a lot of technology and opportunity for innovation in WALC that you can’t find elsewhere on campus,” says Daphene Koch, an associate professor in the School of Construction Management Technology.

To help instructors get acquainted with WALC’s classrooms, a series of walk-in open house events is scheduled the week of Aug. 13-17, the week before classes start.

Hosted by ITaP Teaching and Learning Technologies, the Center for Instructional Excellence and Purdue Libraries, the come-and-go events are designed to demonstrate the available technology in the different classrooms, as well as to familiarize instructors with the nuances of the building’s various classroom types.

“Even if you’re not teaching in the building, attending one of the WALC open house events is a great way to learn about what’s available on campus to enhance student learning,” says Koch.

Koch, who employs active learning methods in her courses, says the open house events are helpful to people teaching in any of the campus’s active learning classrooms, not just those in WALC, and to anyone interested in hearing more about active learning in general.

For more information about the times and classroom locations for the WALC open house events, visit the ITaP training calendar.

Classroom videos 

For those unable to make the open house, but who still have questions about teaching in specific style of classroom, a series of informational videos has been created to highlight the distinctive features of WALC’s learning spaces. Each video shows how different faculty take advantage of a classroom’s design to enhance student learning.

To watch the video series, click here.

Active Learning Community of Practice

Although the WALC open house events are a great way to learn about active learning, Koch says she encourages faculty to become active in the Active Learning Community of Practice, a faculty-led group that meets monthly to network and share ideas about active learning best practices.

“You can network with other faculty across disciplines, share your ideas and collect creative concepts for your classroom,” says Koch, the community of practice’s faculty facilitator. “It’s a great environment to validate new ideas.”

The community of practice meets monthly during the semester, with the first meeting scheduled for Sept. 10. To register, or to learn more, click here.

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Have questions about teaching in an active learning space, the WALC open house or the many classroom technologies available on campus? Contact tlt@purdue.edu.

 Writer: Dave Stephens, technology writer, Information Technology at Purdue, 765-496-7998, steph103@purdue.edu

 Last updated: August 1, 2018