9:15 Keynote Session: Mind Sparking with 720
Dr. Richards joined us to talk about the possibilities of faculty engagement with huge lecture hall classes. I really enjoyed the presentation as it was a compelling example of a faculty member willing to take risks to reach out to his students.
One of Sam’s suggestions is to sit down and ask faculty, what is interesting to them? What makes them “come alive” about their course? What excites them? His point is that by asking these questions, the possibility of creating deeper levels of engagement with students becomes possible.
He had an interesting point that most of education isn’t interesting… We should always consider how can we add interesting and “edgy” things into our content. We should always think about pushing the envelope: “let the flag touch the ground”-an anecdote from Sam related to his curiosity as a child/adolescent to test traditional mores. (Personally, I do not advocate letting the flag touch the ground as a matter of respect to what it represents.)
Learning happens on the fringes.
Note to self: Never dare or ask Brian to scratch his balls like Sam did in front of the audience.
The final point I wrote down was a great point to video tape faculty to have them look at themselves and assess what they are doing in class. This is a no brainer. I use video to improve my disc golf throws. What is might be difficult is to get faculty to agree to get themselves on tape.