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2.1: Welcome Session

  • Page ID
    144552
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    Workshop Overview

    The Welcome and Introduction workshop introduces participants to the MIST approach and rationale, promotes community building, models scientific teaching in action and orients participants to the Libretext platform that will be used for asynchronous content delivery.

    Learning Outcomes

    Participants will be able to:

    • Describe the rationale and approach of the Mobile Institute on Scientific Teaching (MIST)
    • Implement relationship and community-building approaches on the first day of class
    • Identify current teaching challenges
    • Compare and contrast, at a broad level, in-person and remote teaching approaches
    • Navigate the MIST asynchronous content-delivery platform, Libretext

    Key Terms

    • Scientific teaching
    • Evidence-based teaching
    • Inclusive teaching
    • Student-centered learning
    • Backward design
    • Active learning
    • Formative assessment
    • Synchronous/asynchronous delivery

    Active Learning/Formative Assessment Strategies

    • Small group discussion/breakout rooms
    • Polling questions
    • Think-pair-share

    Pre-Workshop

    Background

    Since its inception in 2014, the Mobile Summer Institute has trained nearly 1000 faculty at 35 institutions across 6 countries in scientific teaching. This program is a place-based iteration of the successful National Academies Summer Institute (SI) on Undergraduate Education (founders: Drs. Jo Handelsman (UWisconsin), Bill Wood (CU Boulder), Sarah Miller (UWisconsin) and Chris Pfund (UWisconsin)). The original SI was developed in response to a National Research Council report, Bio2010, that called for an intensive training program to promote adoption of active learning strategies to improve student learning and success. While the original summer institute was focused on life sciences, the current regional and mobile iterations have expanded to other STEM and many non-STEM disciplines over the past decade. 

    Like the original model, the MIST is an intensive 5-day pedagogical workshop focused on evidence-based teaching practices and curricular design strategies intended to improve learning for all students and reduce the disproportionate loss of underrepresented students from higher education. Research shows that use of active learning increases performance and decreases failure (Freeman et al., 2014) and reduces the performance gap for underrepresented students (Theobold et al., 2020).

    Scientific teaching is a condensation of effective, evidence-based teaching strategies targeted at faculty who understand the importance of evidence-based approaches but may not have any formal pedagogical training. It is a student-centered learning approach embedded in Backward Design, a curricular approach that places the focus on what students learn rather than what teachers cover.  

    Tasks

    Please complete the following tasks prior to the workshop:

    1. Getting to know you: Visit the Introduction/Welcome Session Google Folder then go to the folder for your institutions
      • Fill out the Getting to know you Google Doc according to the instructions in the document.
    2. Watch this 3-minute video overview of Scientific Teaching, the organizing principle of the MoSI, created by Dr. Jessamina Blum (UMinnesota). 
    3. Watch the first 2 minutes and 40 seconds of A Private Universe - a documentary on the persistence of misconceptions.
    4. Optional - watch Father Guido Sarducci's 5-minute University for a humorous look at the failings of passive, lecture-based education. Father Guido was a recurring fictional character developed by comedian Don Novello for Saturday Night Live in the 1970s. 

     


    During Workshop

    Activity

    1. Hopes - What do you hope to get out of this week? Visit the Introduction/Welcome Session Google Folder then go to the Google folder for your institution.
      • Record your answers in the Hopes & Gains Google Doc.

    References



    2.1: Welcome Session is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.