Converting an open-ended challenge into a solved problem

Jenny Amos is a Bioengineering teaching professor committed to bringing active learning to her classes. She has a unique mindset that allows her to seamlessly blend both pedagogical and engineering disciplines, an approach that is shared and reinforced among fellow faculty members in her department.

Her favorite classroom in Everitt is an IFLEX active learning space equipped with tablets, projectors, and tables arranged in small groups (i.e., teams of 6). Her classroom delivery format is fairly consistent: a brief lecture followed by a problem-based or case-based learning activity that emphasizes active engagement and teamwork. To improve group interactions, students are assigned one of several roles emphasizing different skill sets which vary according to the class. Students rotate through these roles so that everyone gains practice and experience in both leadership and fellowship positions, underscoring the value of shared efforts, differing opinions, and working toward consensus. One of the overarching goals for her class is to guide students through the process of converting an open-ended challenge into a solved problem by leveraging interdisciplinary knowledge from other courses and just-in-time lectures as necessary. These open-ended problems encourage students to engage cognitively and emotionally with current events such as the pandemic, cancer research, and other scientific topics. Because students are deeply supported by their teams and by Jenny herself, who continually moves about the classroom having short, pointed conversations with each team, these courses are defined by exceptionally high levels of engagement, empathy, and trust. Students themselves say they feel motivated by the classroom environment, which supports team-based learning so well, and by the cultivated learning that emphasizes self-regulation.

Due to the pandemic, and the inability to use the IFLEX classroom, Jenny adopted a variety of technologies to make online activities both collaborative and reminiscent of an in-person experience, as well as to explore ways of creating paperless artifacts (not including exams). Some of the tools she has been using include Jamboard (an online collaborative learning tool similar to Miro), Gradescope (she is currently publishing papers regarding this), CATME (an online group forming tool that matches students along set criteria), Google products, Canvas, and more. Because they have been successful in the remote classroom and helpful for facilitation and workload management, she plans to continue implementing some of these tools regardless of modality. As an aside, although students’ overall classroom performance did not seem to change between the face-to-face and online settings, Jenny herself found that she needed to put more effort into making the online classroom run as smoothly as the in-person classroom.

Resources: IFLEX classroom , Google Jamboard ,  Miro , Gradescope , CATME