“And I have been flipping the
classroom in immunology
and virology without the
technological support, so
I am looking forward to
using technology to make
it easier for the students
to share with one another
and work in groups in the
classroom. It should also give
everyone access to the best
technology.”
Working behind the scenes on COSAM’s behalf to
ensure the new EASL classroom came to fruition
was Vince Cammarata, COSAM’s associate dean
for academic affairs. He was first charged with
locating a space for the classroom’s construction.
He then worked to ensure COSAM faculty are
taking full advantage of the new classroom by
recruiting professors to teach in the space.
expectations and how to address them immediately,
it lets students know what the faculty member
expects on day one, then the class is
more successful.”
Kuhn also offered tips on how to incorporate
group work into the classroom, the best ways to
successfully implement the flipped-classroom
model, and how to assess whether the new
approach is successful.
Sharon Roberts, associate professor in the
Department of Biological Sciences, is one of the
COSAM faculty members who is using the new
classroom this fall. She is teaching a freshman
Learning Community called, “Disease Hunters,”
and in spring 2015, she will utilize the new EASL
classroom to teach virology. Roberts was involved
on the planning committee for the original EASL
classroom in Haley Center, and has already
experimented with flipped-classroom techniques
and concepts, particularly in her immunology class.
“Immunology requires a lot of synthesis of material,
and a subtopic can take many lectures to cover. In
the past using lectures, we’ve left the student to do
the hard part of learning, the synthesizing, on their
own. So I set aside five ‘Pulling it All Together’
or ‘PIT’ review sessions where we could work in
groups and synthesize the material in class. I gave
a tiny bit of extra credit to students who attended
all five review sessions, and all but nine out of
197 students participated. The sessions required
the students to review the content on their own
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beforehand, take a quiz, and then in class they
worked together on assignments that promoted
synthesis of the material, so it was a fair amount of
work,” said Roberts. “This voluntary group-work
incentive was the most successful technique I have
used in the classroom in terms of the success of
student learning, and the grades were definitely
shifted up during that semester. I am not sure I can
claim the PIT project made all the difference in the
grades, and even if it didn’t, it definitely changed
student attitudes. Working in groups helped
them think differently about the material because
they were really engaged. It was a wonderful way
to teach, I had fun, I was getting a lot if insight
into learning, and the students asked really great
questions and learned to apply their knowledge to
different situations. At the end of the class, we gave
them a survey to gauge student attitudes, and it was
overwhelmingly positive.”
Roberts noted that even though she has
implemented flipped-classroom techniques in
traditional classroom settings, the design of the
new EASL classroom in the Sciences Center
Classrooms Building will provide a more conducive
environment for group learning.
“One of the problems with collaborative work in a
traditional classroom is everyone is facing forward,
in a row, which makes it hard to work together. I
actually had students sitting on the floor wherever
they could find space, as well as standing up to
work with students in the row behind them,” said
Roberts. “Now, with this new EASL classroom, we
have created a physical space for groups to work
together and talk to one another.
“For a professor to utilize the new space, it means
totally changing what one does in the classroom.
Taking what you do in a regular lecture class
and making it an ‘engaged class’ means rewriting
the lesson plan from scratch. All of the lectures
professors have traditionally given now go online,
so you have to record them. And all the homework
assignments have to be rewritten to be completed
in the classroom,” said Cammarata. “We call it
‘flipping the classroom’ but really it means rewriting
everything. You almost have to start from scratch,
and it is very labor intensive, but worth it.”
Cammarata calls the new EASL classroom a
“grand experiment” in learning.
“What happens when you give the students the
Internet to go and learn from, and whatever
resources they find, they can go ahead and use
them? Can they Google? Do they understand
the limitations of Wikipedia? Can they find
authentic information that’s trustworthy? That’s
not something you can learn in a lecture when
someone else has already cultivated the material,”
said Cammarata.
The EASL classrooms in Haley Center and
Sciences Center Classrooms Building will serve
as prototypes for future classroom buildings
constructed on Auburn’s campus, such as the one
slated to eventually replace Parker Hall.
“Like I said, it’s a grand experiment, and like any
experiment, it will have some growing pains,” said
Cammarata. “The first semester might not be all
that smooth, but eventually, people will figure it out
and in the long term, it will work out. Now we have
to figure out how to properly assess whether the
classroom works. Do the students learn better? Are
they truly engaged more? Do they like it? Do they
get more out of it? That’s the next step in
this process that ultimately places COSAM
at the cutting edge of teaching techniques
and technology.”
Cammarata understands firsthand the work
involved on the part of COSAM faculty to
engage in the new teaching technique presented
by the EASL classroom. He will teach analytical
chemistry in the EASL classroom in spring 2015,
which is a class he has taught for 22 years.
“I think we have some very enthusiastic faculty
who want to work in there, and one of the things
we are trying to do, early on, is move the COSAM
honors courses to the EASL classroom. Honors
courses should be a little different experience than
non-honors courses, and moving them to the
EASL classroom will provide an opportunity to
learn the material a little differently as opposed to
sitting in another lecture class,” said Cammarata.
“It’s exciting because what students can learn in
this type of setting that they can’t learn in a lecture
setting is how to work together in groups, and
when you go out and do science in the real world,
it is done by groups of people; it’s not done by lone
researchers in a lab. To learn to communicate ideas
amongst one another is an important skill that
needs to be developed.”
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