Open Class Celebration

Open Class Celebration: Faculty Visiting Faculty Program

Key Dates | How to Participate

Do you ever feel stuck in the same teaching routine? Are you interested in seeing how your colleagues engage students in challenging subjects? Would you like to share how you teach?

Open Class Celebration: Faculty Visiting Faculty (OCC) is a two-week program to provide faculty members with opportunities to open their classes and to visit their colleagues’ classes. The purpose is to promote collaboration, learn from each other, explore effective ways of teaching and engaging students, discuss challenges, and share experiences. The program is part of CETL’s intent on “Making Teaching & Learning Visible."

Potential benefits for participants include opportunities to:

• See your colleagues in action in various learning environments
• Share how you incorporate effective and evidence-based teaching techniques and tools
• Learn new approaches to teaching and engaging students
• Experience what students feel as they are in class as learners
• Engage with other colleagues in a pedagogical community
• Prompt self-reflection

Key Dates for the 2022 Program
Open Class Visits will be held on February 7-9 and February 14-18.

• January 18-31: Sign up to open your class
• February 1: Open Class Celebration schedule announced
• February 1-15: Sign up to visit a class.
  Note: sign-ups will close 3 days before the open class date, and each class has capacity limits.
• February 7-9 and February 14-18: Open Class Celebration. Visits will not be scheduled during the Celebration of Teaching and Learning Symposium on February 10.
• February 18 and 22: Discussion sessions for OCC participants

Preliminary Open Class Visit Schedule

• Monday, February 7, 12:00-12:50 pm: Kent Scheller, PHYS 101 Conceptual Physics. Notes: Large lecture, incorporation of demos.
• Tuesday, February 8, 10:30-11:45 am: Nicolas Jankuhn, MKTG 332 Consumer Behavior. Topic: The American Society: Families and Households
• Tuesday, February 8, 12:00-1:15 pm: Trent Engbers, POLS 332 Statistics and Data Analysis. Notes: Flipped class.
• Wednesday, February 9, 10:00-10:50 am: Rob Carroll, EDUC 221 Diversity and Equity-Education
  
  
• Tuesday, February 15, 12:00-1:15 pm: Trent Engbers, POLS 332 Statistics and Data Analysis. Notes: Direct instruction.
• Tuesday, February 15, 1:30-2:45 pm: Kevin Valadares, IPH 356 Ethics and Health Care
• Thursday, February 17, 10:30-11:45 am: Sabinah Wanjugu, MKTG 355 Digital Marketing. Topic: SEO
• Thursday, February 17, 10:30-11:45 am: Xue Han, CS 321 Computer Organization and Architecture. Topic: Exam Review via Zoom using an iPad.
• Thursday, February 17, 1:30-2:45 pm: Jill Oeding, BLAW 263 Legal Environment of Business. Topic: Introduction to Contracts
• Friday, February 18, 11:00 am-12:50 pm: Rob Millard-Mendez, ART 104 Design in Materials. Topic: All-class critique of the first project using a gamified approach.
• Friday, February 18, 1-1:50 pm: Reflection discussion for all participants (hosts and guests)
• Tuesday, February 22, 12-12:50 pm: Reflection discussion for all participants (hosts and guests)

How to Participate

For faculty members opening their classes:

• Sign-up to open your class. This will let us know that you invite faculty colleagues to visit your classroom or synchronous online class. The sign-up form requests brief information about the class topic, instructional strategy or class context, and visitor capacity. It is important to keep in mind safety and your students’ learning; please adhere to the physical and Covid-19 capacity and balance the number of visitors with class enrollment.
• A list of participants will be emailed to you 2 days in advance.

For faculty members visiting classes:

• Sign up in advance to visit a class. Registration closes 3 days before the open class date.
• Faculty members (full-time, part-time, adjunct) interested in collaboration, learning new ways of teaching, discussing challenges, and sharing experiences are invited. You are encouraged to visit classes outside of your department/program. The OCC is not for evaluating or critiquing the instructor.
• Visit open classes during the designated dates. You will receive an email confirmation of the class time and location.
• During your visit, please take care to minimize disruption to the learning environment. Engage in the discussion and activities only if invited by the host instructor. Learn something new from the lesson and take note of interesting teaching approaches.

For all faculty participants:

• Attend a session to discuss and reflect on the OCC experience for faculty who opened their classes and those who visited.

The Open Classroom Celebration program is sponsored by the Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning (CETL) at the University of Southern Indiana. It is based on programs at Vanderbilt University and Northwestern University.