Upcoming Events

Food for Thought Luncheons, 2008-09

To reserve a meal for lunch, WPI community members should use our event registration process. (Note to non-WPI attendees: Please e-mail CEDA instead.) All are welcome at all events, but we order food based on pre-registrations received up to three business days before the event. If you are not able to pre-register, please come anyway! There is often surplus food, but to be safe you may wish to bring your own lunch.

Presentation slides and handouts, when available, are archived on CEDA's myWPI (Blackboard) site. To access, log on to myWPI, go to the Community tab, do an organization search for "CEDA", and enroll in the site.

Suggestions are welcome!

Faculty, staff, and students with ideas for events should call (x5707) or email CEDA to discuss ideas and timing. Please consider the following criteria for a Food for Thought luncheon:

The topic should be of general interest, stimulate broad discussion, and contribute to better teaching and learning at WPI.
The session should be scheduled in one of the middle five weeks of the term-- not the first or last weeks, or during the break.
You will be asked for a title and a brief abstract for use in advertising the session.

The Challenge of Moving from Prescriptive to Open-Ended Labs

Tuesday, September 9, 12-1:20pm, Campus Center Hagglund Room

Kristen Billiar (BME), Moderator; Panelists: Sharon Johnson (IE), Bob Kinicki (CS), Fred Looft (ECE)

Current educational literature suggests that challenge-based laboratory learning (i.e., inquiry- or problem-based learning) increases student motivation and retention of key concepts. On the other hand, prescriptive (a.k.a., cookbook) lab assignments are, or are perceived to be, simpler to implement and grade and require less time for the students and instructors alike. The goal of this workshop is to discuss the general concept of open-ended lab assignments and to generate ideas of how participants can modify current prescriptive labs to make them more open-ended without requiring excessive additional resources including precious instructor time.

Project Advising Tool Swap

Tuesday, September 23, 12-1:20pm, Higgins House Great Hall

Holly Ault (ME), Chrys Demetry (ME), Allen Hoffman (ME), John McNeill (ECE), Kent Rissmiller (IGSD), Rick Vaz (IGSD), Sue Vernon-Gerstenfeld (IGSD)

In this session presenters will share documents, rubrics, assignments, and assessments that they have developed over many years of project advising. Participants will come away with some concrete ideas to apply in both IQP and MQP advising, including various ways of structuring weekly meetings and progress reports, communicating with students about the quality of their work, and monitoring teamwork and individual contributions.

Helping Students Write from Sources: Strategies for "Reframing" Information

Writing Across the Curriculum Series

Thursday, October 2, 12-1:20pm, Campus Center Hagglund Room

Lorraine Higgins, Director of Writing Across the Curriculum

College students are often asked to develop written arguments that address the questions and problems raised in their courses and projects. This intellectually demanding task requires them to research information from multiple sources and to "reframe" that information around their own claims and organizing structures. This workshop explores some of the difficulties students face as they work with and write from sources texts, and it introduces a number of notetaking, planning, and other pre-writing strategies that can support students and help them avoid the unfocused knowledge dumps and list-like summaries we sometimes see in their drafts. Specifically, the workshop introduces how annotated bibliographies, notetaking matrices, mind maps, and peer planning techniques can be used productively when writing from sources.

Using Clickers to Engage Students and Enhance Learning

Thursday, October 9, 12-1:20pm, Campus Center Hagglund Room

Kate Beverage (ATC), Jon Abraham (MA), Kristen Billiar (BME), Mike Buckholt (BB), Jill Rulfs (BB)

Clickers can be used to...

Promote active learning
Check for student understanding
Encourage discussion
All of the above and more!

Classroom response systems (or "clickers") are being used in many WPI classrooms. Clickers allow instructors to ask questions and gather students' responses during a class. Come learn about the Classroom Performance System (CPS) and how faculty at WPI are using it in their classes.

Grading Flexibility at WPI

Thursday, November 13, 12-1:20pm, Campus Center Hagglund Room

Joseph Fehribach (MA) and other members of the Committee on Academic Policy

Over the past year or so, the Committee on Academic Policy (CAP) has received a number of requests to, for example, allow +/- grading, allow F as a failing grade, or allow multiple grades for single-term, one-unit projects. All of these ideas come under the general heading of giving the instructor/advisor more choices in how to assign grades. This Food for Thought is a general discussion of these and other ideas for how to improve grading flexibility.

Writing Recommendation Letters

Tuesday, November 18, 12-1:20pm, Campus Center, Mid-Century Room

Peter Hansen (HU) and Jill Rulfs (BB)

College faculty and staff are routinely asked to write recommendation letters for students applying for employment, graduate school, or nationally competitive scholarships. This workshop is intended to help faculty and staff improve their skills in writing these letters of recommendation. In particular, the workshop will discuss common ethical and practical dilemmas for the writers (and readers) of recommendation letters, use case studies to frame a discussion of letter writing by participants in the workshop, and provide practical materials to help faculty and staff write more effective letters of recommendation.

Food for Thought Luncheons, 2007-08

Putting Classroom Lectures Online: The ATC's "Course Capturing" Pilot

Mary Beth Harrity, Director, Academic Technology Center; Amy Ricci, Assistant Director, Academic Technology Center

This year the ATC has been piloting new "course capturing" technology that records video, audio, and the projector output in live classes and posts the lectures to a website for access by students after each class meeting. This technology has been used in a handful of undergraduate courses this year. At this session, the results of the pilot will be discussed, including the impact on student grades and attendance in class and feedback from faculty and students in the courses where the technology has been used.

Teaching Technology Potpourri: Facilitating Collaboration of Virtual Teams and Side Effects of a Classroom Experiment

Bob Kinicki and Gary Pollice, Computer Science Department

SourceForge is a software product that enables virtual teams to collaborate on projects using Web-based technology for sharing materials, planning projects, and tracking a project's progress. WPI has a site license for SourceForge and students and instructors in mainly CS and ECE have used SourceForge for coursework and other projects including MQPs and IQPs. Professor Pollice and collaborators have been looking at how to leverage the capabilities of SourceForge for a broader cross-section of the WPI community. Surveys have been conducted to examine the needs of students, faculty, and external sponsors and how SourceForge might help them achieve their goals for course and project work. They have also been developing training materials and tools to add capabilities to SourceForge that will facilitate a broader use of the product at WPI. Gary will discuss the progress of this work and explain how to get started with SourceForge.

Together with Professor Claypool, Professor Kinicki recently completed a Teaching Technology Fellowship (TTF) project that involved integrating a wireless network measurement experiment into the curriculum of CS4514, Computer Networks, during the B06 term. The results of this project are published in the WPI CS Technical Report TR-07-05. This report assesses the B06 experience against a B05 offering of CS4514 that only contained a wireless design assignment. Bob will briefly discuss the comparative assessment of the two offerings with respect to introducing hands-on technology into the course and provide anecdotes about how some of the unexpected side effects of the TTF have resulted in changes in how he is currently using technology in the class and adjusted his viewpoint on adding topics to the curriculum of a seven-week course.

Teaching with Case Studies

Sharon Johnson, Industrial Engineering Program, Management Department

Case studies provide a setting in which to explore the applications of theoretical methods or models, and can be used to highlight realistic issues encountered in that application. Such issues might include taking into account broader business or social considerations, poor quality or insufficient data, or limitations/assumptions of the model or method. In this session, Sharon Johnson will explore case study teaching based around quantitative and engineering problem-solving, based on her experience both writing and using such cases in her teaching. She will also describe case studies she is developing as part of a project funded by NSF, as a Phase 2 project in their CCLI program.

Responding to Student Drafts
Writing Across the Curriculum Series

Lorraine Higgins, Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric and Director, Center for Communication Across the Curriculum

Writing is an excellent way for students to learn both the content and conventions of their disciplines, but many instructors blanch at the thought of reading and commenting on stacks of student papers. Responding to student drafts can be time consuming and frustrating, especially when students repeatedly seem to misunderstand or ignore instructor comments. In this workshop, participants will review several styles of written commentary, considering how the type, placement, and quantity of comments on student drafts can affect their revision and learning. Participants will learn and practice with a “reader-based” approach that has the potential to 1) reduce the time you spend “marking” student papers, 2) model for your students how to better anticipate and respond to a reader'’s needs, and 3) help your students become less dependent on your editing and directive feedback.

The Revised Humanities and Arts Degree Requirements
Offered Jointly by Academic Advising and CEDA

Dale Snyder, Director of Academic Advising

How much do you know about the Humanities and Arts degree requirement? Do you know that the requirement know as the "Sufficiency" has been modified? Do you know that there is a new breadth and depth requirement? The answers to these questions will be important as you have conversations with your advisees about their course selections and degree requirements on Academic Advising Day in February.

Great Problems Seminars: Laying a New First Year Foundation at WPI

Brian Savilonis, David Spanagel, Rob Traver, Kris Wobbe

The Great Problems Seminars are an experimental program designed to bring the challenge of project work into the first year and engage first-year students with current events, societal problems, and human needs. Four WPI faculty developed and delivered two Great Problems Seminars in AB2007.

Kris Wobbe and Rob Traver developed and presented Feed the World. This seminar explored the chemical, ethical, physiological and psychological dimensions of a (simple) question: Why do we eat what we eat? The students completed projects on subjects ranging from hunger in Worcester to controlling fertilizer runoff.

Brian Savilonis and David Spanagel presented Power the World. The seminar focused on the physics and history of energy technologies. The students completed projects ranging from an energy cost analysis of green roofs and photovoltaic systems for WPI to air pollution in China.

The presenters will describe the final projects that the students completed. They will also discuss the ways that they worked to help students develop the intellectual skills needed for professional work, including clear, succinct writing, oral presentation, pair and small group discussion, and the ability to take and understand multiple perspectives.

Recognizing and Responding to Students in Distress

Michelle (Herman) Poverman, M.A., Counselor, Student Development and Counseling Center

The WPI Student Development and Counseling Center (SDCC) will be leading sessions on this topic for groups of faculty and staff over the next two years. This program, grant funded and run by SDCC staff, is set up to increase awareness of warning signs of significant student distress, provide information on managing student distress in the moment and information on assisting students in accessing help from key resources within the WPI community. This interactive and engaging program is designed to help faculty and staff better understand and support WPI students, particularly those students who most need our help.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and Its Impact on WPI Faculty, Students and Parents

Kent Rissmiller, Associate Professor, Social Science & Policy Studies; Kristin Tichenor, Vice President of Enrollment Management; and Alaina Wiehn, University Registrar

Effective this academic year, WPI has modified its policies that respond to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). When do parents have the right to review their students' academic records? What information can faculty and staff disclose to family members and under what circumstances? If your TA posts grades or discloses confidential information on students in your classes, are you legally liable? Can WPI or a WPI employee be subject to a law suit as a result of a FERPA violation? Please join us for this important update and for an interactive discussion of FERPA and how it affects us in our work at WPI.

Teaching the Literature Review
Writing Across the Curriculum Series

Lorraine Higgins, Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric and Director, Center for Communication Across the Curriculum

"Reviewing the literature" is a critical component of academic research writing. Whether presented in a comprehensive review article or embedded in a proposal, research report, or argumentative essay, literature reviews accomplish several goals. They help writers to pay homage to the work of others, to demonstrate their membership in a scholarly community, to contextualize and justify their own line of research, and to direct their readers to relevant resources. If researchers fail to achieve these goals in their writing, they —and their work —may be deemed irrelevant, unconvincing, and even unethical.

Despite the importance of this complex literate practice, many students misunderstand it as a tedious collection and regurgitation of sources. Instructors frequently complain that students’ literature reviews are mere "knowledge dumps," disconnected summaries of information. In this workshop, participants will work with professional and student examples, identifying the purposes, conventions, and strategies of writing effective literature reviews. In doing so, they will develop definitions and exercises for teaching literature review writing in their own classrooms and projects.

Teaching Undergraduate Engineering Students to Reason and Communicate about Complex Design Decisions
Writing Across the Curriculum Series

Jennifer Craig, Lecturer, Program in Writing & Humanistic Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

In design courses, undergraduate engineering students are introduced to the multi-dimensional tasks of complex design. The design course also is often the student’s introduction to the ways that engineers reason and communicate about design choices in their professional community. Understanding the process of engineering is pivotal for students who may have adequate technical and theoretical knowledge but still not grasp how evidence and methodology are used to support engineering decisions and good design choices. Moreover, without the clarity of reasoned thought that optimal design requires, high quality communication is not likely.

This session describes a pedagogical strategy designed and implemented to strengthen student reasoning about design choice.

Working Successfully with Graduate Students on Research

Terri Camesano, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering; Elke Rundensteiner, Professor of Computer Science; Venkat Thalladi, Assistant Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry

Copyright & Fair Use for the Campus Community

Christine Drew, Manager of Instruction & Outreach; Laura Hanlan, User Services Librarian

Explore issues relating to the use of print and digital materials in the classroom and online. Join us for a discussion of scenarios related to copyright issues in teaching and learning at WPI.

Food for Thought Luncheons, 2006-07

Materials for many of these seminars can be found on CEDA's myWPI site. Just log into myWPI and search for "CEDA" under the Community tab.

How Many Engineers Does It Take To...?

Charles Gammal and Sanjayan Manivannan

According to Educating the Engineer of 2020, a work compiled by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in 2005, scientific and engineering knowledge presently doubles every ten years. A main trend that is noted that Engineer of 2020 is that engineering is becoming more multidisciplinary in nature as a response to the increase in complexity of technology and its applications. More engineering projects today involve the analysis and/or design of complex systems, thus requiring engineers from different disciplines to work together on problems at the interface of traditional engineering fields. What can WPI do as an institution to respond to this paradigm shift in engineering practice? The seminar will explore the main recommendations from an Interactive Qualifying Project that was completed in A06. In particular, the feasibility of introducing a new major at WPI in Computer Systems Engineering (CSE) will be discussed.

Where Is Ethics in the WPI Curriculum?

Fred Hart, George Pins, John Sanbonmatsu, Lance Schachterle, Meghan Cockerill and Alison Leflore (SGA Committee on Academic Issues)

One of WPI's undergraduate learning outcomes states that our graduates will "be aware of personal, societal, and professional ethical standards." Yet a number of outcomes assessment indicators show that our graduates perceive less attention to ethics in their education in comparison to graduates of comparable institutions. Following an overview of these outcomes assessment results, several faculty members and students will discuss their or their discipline's view of ethics, and how ethical development is being or could be addressed in our academic programs. Discussion will follow.

Laying a New First Year Foundation at WPI

Brian Savilonis, David Spanagel, Rob Traver, and Kris Wobbe

Commission A1 and the CAP Subcommittee on the First Year Experience described goals for a new first year that will engage students in the study of current events, societal problems and human needs while developing critical thinking, information literacy, and evidence-based writing. Guided by these goals, four WPI faculty are developing Great Problems Seminars. In this Food for Thought, they will share their initial plans for "Feed the World" and "Power the World" pilot seminars for Fall 2007.

Should WPI Podcast Lectures?

Jeff Potocki, Software Support Specialist and Training Coordinator, Fairfield University; and Richard Regan, Assistant Professor of English and Chair of the Educational Technologies Committee, Fairfield University

Many colleges and universities are starting to record live lectures and make them available online as podcasts that students can download and listen to over and over again. Software tools are now available to make this "“coursecastin"” an easy, and in some cases seamless process for faculty and technology staff. Other tools make it easy for students to access these podcasts and download them to their portable MP3 players or computers. Faculty and staff from Fairfield University will present and tell us why they decided to start podcasting lectures. They will explain the benefits they see of podcasting lectures from a teaching and learning perspective, their outcomes, and issues they ha’ve encountered.

Leveraging technology and cognitive theory on visualization to promote students' science learning and literacy

Janice Gobert, Visiting Associate Professor, Department of Social Science & Policy Studies and Senior Research Scientist, The Concord Consortium

In the talk I will characterize visualization as it is used in cognitive psychology and science education. The role of visualization in science education, as being primarily concerned with external representations, and how to best support students' while learning with visualizations will also be presented. Two technology-based science education projects, namely, Making Thinking Visible (mtv.concord.org) and Modeling Across the Curriculum (mac.concord.org) will then be described as exemplars of projects that leverage both cognitive theory and technology to support students' science learning and scientific literacy.

What Can Writing Do for Me? Designing Writing Assignments to Promote Student Learning in Your Course

Kristin Billiar, Chrysanthe Demetry, David DiBiasio, Krystal Parker, Lorraine Higgins

How might faculty across the disciplines use writing as a tool for student learning? Join faculty from several disciplines and a student writing tutor as they discuss writing assignments that have helped them achieve course goals. The presenters will illustrate the challenges, resources, and benefits of assigning writing, ways they prepare students for this work, and the evaluation and feedback methods they have used. Learn how effectively designed assignments can promote student learning in your discipline.

Blended Learning: What Does This Trend in Higher Education Mean to WPI?

Stephen Flavin and Amy Ricci

Graham Spanier, president of Penn State, calls blended learning "the single greatest unrecognized trend in higher education today." Blended learning is growing in institutions of higher education as faculty and students both realize new ways in which they can use technology to enhance learning and make more productive use of their time. The most common definition of blended learning is the replacement of some face-to-face learning activities with online learning activities, which may reduce the amount of time spent in the classroom or allow for classroom time to be spent on different types of activities. This session discusses the implications of blended learning, pedagogical models for blending, and a few examples of blended classes. We also hope to start a discussion about where blended learning fits in at WPI and how it can be supported.

When Can Students Assess Themselves, and What's to be Gained?

Chrys Demetry and Rick Vaz

The term sustainable assessment has been coined by educator David Boud as “assessment that meets the needs of the present and prepares students to meet their own future learning needs.” Boud argues that exclusive use of instructor-constructed assessments does not enable students to practice creating and refining their own assessment schemes—identifying appropriate standards and making judgments about quality—which is essential to their development as independent lifelong learners and as professionals. Shifting some responsibility for assessment from instructors to students is also sustainable in the sense of lessening faculty work in an educationally beneficial way.

In this workshop we will contrast two approaches we have used for assessing the teamwork process of IQP groups: an advisor-constructed peer and self-assessment process and a process wherein teams were asked to propose and implement their own formative and summative teamwork assessment method. Participants will review examples of the outcomes, suggest improvements in the process, and discuss possible extensions of the "sustainable assessment" approach beyond the evaluation of teamwork.

Students' Perspectives on Effective Use of myWPI

Members of the Academic Issues Subcommittee, Student Government Association

Did you know that in the spring of 2006, the Student Government Association (SGA) asked CAP to investigate ways of promoting use of the BlackBoard course management system (myWPI)? In this seminar, members of the Academic Issues Subcommittee of the SGA will discuss the benefits of myWPI from a student perspective, while also acknowledging potential detrimental effects and how they can be overcome. An overview of research on the influence of course management systems on student behavior and achievement will also be presented.

Lessons Learned from REU Programs

Terri Camesano, Arthur Heinricher, Jeanine Plummer, and Suzanne Weekes

Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) programs, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, have multiple objectives. For the faculty advisors, REU students can assist on research projects and potentially enhance the productivity of a faculty research group. For students, the REU experience brings graduate level research and graduate school opportunities so they can make informed decisions about their education and career paths.

WPI is the perfect place to run an REU program. Think of it as a small project center where the students come from all over the country to work on an 8-week MQP. The students are outstanding. Imagine that you get to pick the 10 best students from 100 very well-qualified applicants. Our MQP experience provides raw material for summer REU projects. The summer REU projects lay the groundwork for new MQPs.

Is the reward worth the effort? For WPI, REU programs certainly increase the university's national visibility. For the students, the experience can be life-changing. For the faculty advisors, the program can be exhausting. The presenters will talk about the REU experience, both the good and the bad.

Is an REU grant right for you? Come to the FFT lunch to hear experiences from several PIs with REU programs in differing fields and with differing objectives.

Making Connections: Wheaton's Curricular Architecture for Interdisciplinary Collaboration

Kersti Yllo, Professor of Sociology and Associate Provost for Curriculum, Wheaton College

This seminar will focus on a curricular model that puts interdisciplinarity at the center of the curriculum. Students acquire breadth by taking Connections that bring together at least two of the following areas: creative arts, humanities, history, social sciences, natural sciences, math/computer science. Special attention is given to ways in which Connections can promote global learning and the integration of the sciences.

Kersti Yllo is Professor of Sociology and Associate Provost at Wheaton College. She received her Ph.D. from the University of New Hampshire and has conducted extensive research on domestic violence. She chaired Wheaton's recent curriculum review and serves as Director of the Kollett Center for Collaborative Learning. She disagrees with Woodrow Wilson's assessment that "changing the curriculum is like moving a cemetery."

Educating Engineers for the 21st Century

Jonathan Barnett, John Orr, and Gretar Tryggvason

Extensive discussions are currently taking place nationally about how engineering education must change to meet the challenges of the new century. Just as engineering was transformed around the middle of the last century by an increase in the scientific content of engineering education, engineering must now change to prepare students to work globally, in a world where skill is in abundance and every student must have the ability to innovate. WPI, with its tradition of a project based education in a global setting, has a unique opportunity to take a leadership role in this change. If we want to assume this leadership---rather than being an "also ran" participant---we need to state our position "with attitude" and move rapidly to implement the necessary changes.

Is it time to reconsider our SAT admissions requirement?

Kristin Tichenor, Melissa Leahy, Ann McDermott

Several highly selective colleges have made the SAT optional for admissions applicants. How does WPI use the SAT in its review of admissions candidates and what impact would an SAT optional policy have on our admissions process? Join Kristin Tichenor, AVP for Enrollment Management and Ann McDermott, Director of Admissions at Holy Cross, for an in-depth discussion of the issues.

Preventing Plagiarism

Lorraine Higgins, John Trimbur

This workshop takes a proactive approach to the problem of plagiarism. Although we will touch upon ways to detect and deal with plagiarism when it happens, our focus will be on prevention. We'll discuss different types of plagiarism, suggest ways that instructors can design written assignments that make it difficult for students to plagiarize, and introduce research and writing strategies that will help students learn to acknowledge sources appropriately.

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Last modified: Oct 03, 2008, 13:52 EDT