Yale Bulletin and Calendar

March 16, 2001

Volume 29, Number 22

Innovation is focus of this year's
Spring Teaching Forum

As it has for the past three years, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences will hold a special event this spring to celebrate teaching at Yale and to provide graduate students with opportunities to explore new approaches in pedagogy.

This year's Spring Teaching Forum will take place noon-4 p.m. on Friday, March 23, in the Presidents Room of Woolsey Hall, corner of Grove and Prospect streets. The event was organized by the Graduate School's Office of Teaching Fellow Preparation and Development (TFPD) and the program of peer-led workshops and consultations called Working at Teaching (WAT).

The topic of the forum will be innovation in the classroom -- specifically, computer technology. Yale faculty will demonstrate their web-based e-learning, e-discussion groups and software-driven pedagogy.

"This is an exciting opportunity for graduate students and faculty to share innovations in teaching methods and strategies, including those that take advantage of new digital technologies," says Ed Kairiss, director of Instructional Computing and Instructional Technology at Information Technology Services, who has joined the forum's planning team.

But technology is only one piece of the overall landscape of teaching innovation that the forum will address.

"We're defining innovation broadly," says Bill Rando, director of the TFPD. "It's more a matter of cultivating the spirit of creative teaching than of following any particular technique. Use writing to teach math, use small discussion groups in a class of 100 students, ask students to play a game, solve a case or re-enact an event -- these are innovations that reach students."

The opening speaker will be Calvin Kalman, professor of physics at Concordia University. His talk is titled "The Classroom of the Future: Human Interaction in an Age of Technology." Then Phyllis Blumberg of the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia will speak on "Problem-based Learning Across the Disciplines."

At an "Innovation Fair," faculty and graduate student instructors will present their favorite classroom techniques informally, as forum participants go from table to table. The afternoon will conclude with a panel titled "New Classroom, New Forms, New Learning," featuring Thomas Arnold, assistant professor of history at Yale; Dan Lloyd of Trinity College, speaking on service learning; and Ellen Beatty of Southern Connecticut State University, discussing distance learning.

All WAT and TFPD programs are free and open to anyone teaching at Yale.

For more information, see the website at www.yale.edu/graduateschool/mcdougal/tfpd.

T H I SW E E K ' SS T O R I E S

Economist will develop better way to measure economic activity in U.S.

Yale SOM to establish database for study of world's financial history

F&ES to create industrial ecology program in Asia

Greene and Brisman awarded DeVane Medals

Professor Lane explains the economics of happiness

Scientist Thomas Steitz honored with Sterling Professorship

Goldman-Rakic is Eugene Higgins Professor of Neurobiology

Joan Steitz cited as outstanding woman scientist

Student actors 'take flight' in comic version of 'The Birds'

Exhibition examines photographers' contrasting images of Saarinen designs

'Faces of Hope' offers portraits of people living with HIV

Model urges students to take pride in their bodies

'Cities and Buildings' pays tribute to urban works . . .

Forum to explore fate of U.S. 'melting pot'

Discovery boosts understanding of hereditary blindness

Grants will support Yale researcher's study on how to quell the 'voices' . . .

Women under 60 more likely to die after heart attack, says study

Renowned nuclear physicist to discuss 'Science, Technology and Politics'

'A Taste of Inequality' explores issues still on feminist frontline

Love songs will be dramatized in workshops

New fund will support activities for teachers of religious studies

New ways of funding environmental enterprises to be examined

Film series focus on the banned and Brazilian

Innovation is focus of this year's Spring Teaching Forum

Annual Pride Week celebration will feature talks, comedy night and film

Campus Notes