Smock, Phillips to Present on Active Learning Catalysts at ELI Annual Meeting

Project leads Matt Smock and J.D. Phillips will be making a poster presentation at next week's EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative annual meeting (the third project lead Jill Leonard, just back from her own poster presentation at the TUES conference, also contributed to the poster but is staying home for Super Bowl Sunday). 

If you're in Denver for the ELI conference, stop by to see J.D., Matt, and their poster, "The Active Learning Catalysts Project: Increasing Adoption of Active Learning in STEM Disciplines"

Catalysts Project to be Highlighted at ET4 Symposium

Project team member Matt Smock is traveling to Las Vegas, NV the week of July 23rd for the Sloan-C/MERLOT Emerging Technologies for Online Learning symposium. He will be participating in a panel participation called "MERLOT on the Table," where he and other representatives from MERLOT partners will discus how their institutions have utilized MERLOT in projects. 

Matt's part of the presentation will focus on the Active Learning Catalysts project and how MERLOT is being used as a dissemination channel and community building tool via the Teaching Commons and Voices site.

Teaching Commons (almost) Ready to Go Live (finally)

After several months of sporadic development, the MERLOT Teaching Commons for the NMU Active Learning Catalysts is almost ready for its official debut. We will be adding a bit more information over the weekend, then if all goes well next week the site will be added to the list of Partner Communities on the MERLOT web site.

Studio Classroom Fully Booked for Fall 2012 Semester

NMU's Active Learning Studio classroom has a very full schedule of courses for the upcoming Fall 2012 semester.  The room is booked almost solidly from 8:00 a.m. - 6:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and there is an additional evening course on Thursdays.  Friday has a long open stretch between 11:30 a.m. and 3:00 p.m.  We'd like to see more even scheduling, but over the years many NMU courses have fallen into a Monday-Thursday scheduling pattern that is a challenge to change. The good news is that we'll be able to use that time slot for training sessions and maintenance as needed.

All six Catalysts and both PIs will be teaching in the room:

• Robert Legg, GC 235 Quantitative Methods
• Mike Martin, MET 420 Fluid Mechanics
• Alec Lindsay, BI 111 Introductory Biology: Principles
• Tom Getman, CH 112 General Chemistry II
• Quinghong Zhang, CH 112 General Chemistry II
• Will Tireman, PH 201 College Physics I
• J.D. Phillips, MA 312 Abstract Algebra with Applications
• Jill Leonard, BI 310 Ecology Theory and Methods

In addition, three additional biology courses, a nursing course, and an information science course will be offered in the room.