Workshop Implementation

I chose to implement and idea from Dr. Barbi Honeycutt’s workshop entitled “Introduction to Teaching.” I implemented some of the ideas from this workshop for a specific lecture in Fall 2011 and then again for the same lecture in Spring 2012. Throughout the Introduction to Teaching workshop, I noticed that Dr. Honeycutt did an excellent job at never lecturing for more than 15-20 minutes at a time. She was very effective at including in-class activities and using these to keep our focus and attention, and I particularly noticed that I was able to pay attention for longer than I might in a normal lecture without interaction. At that point I realized these “in-class activities” were something that could improve the learning environment in my classroom.

I really implemented this idea throughout both of my semesters of teaching, but I first put the idea into action about 5 lectures in to the Fall 2011 semester for the one-week topic of simulation with spreadsheets. By that point in the semester, the course is really a hybrid lab-lecture environment. I teach by introducing and describing an example problem to the students on the board or through PowerPoint, and then the students build a simulation model along with me using the computers at each seat in the classroom. However, it can be difficult to determine which students are following along and understanding the material and which students are not. Also, some students are able to follow along when I do it with them, but then when left to do a similar problem on their own they really struggle to apply the concepts. Thus, I created a lesson plan that included two in-class activities, linkage to material in other ISE classes, and I made the point that while these types of models are frequently used in industry, they have many drawbacks and are very limited. I have included a copy of the learning outcomes and the lesson plan below

Introduction to Teaching Workshop – Simulation with Spreadsheets Lesson Plan

Learning Outcomes:
1. Students will be able to list and define the different components of a spreadsheet simulation model.
2. Students will be able to determine when to build a spreadsheet simulation and when to use Arena modeling software.
3. Students will be able to construct spreadsheet simulations to model a variety of problems.
4. Students will be able to analyze and interpret the results of spreadsheet simulation models.

Feedback from the class on these in-class activities was positive. Many of the students in the class did better on the spreadsheet simulation homework assignment than in previous semesters when I served as the TA. This evidence leads me to believe that the students appreciated the opportunity to attempt problems before they were being formally graded, and the process of working on this problem with others in the class, but independently of me, reinforced the concepts in the students minds. Thus I included in-class activities and assignments throughout the rest year.