Lucas Faculty Fellow Experience: Miles Mancini

June 08, 2020 / Miles Mancini, MA / Tags: Lucas Faculty Fellow, fellows

The Lucas Center is an exceptional resource that all faculty should take advantage of. My experience as a Lucas Center Fellow explored active learning approaches in various classroom environments. While I focused primarily on the humanities and civic engagement courses, there are so many other ways in which faculty from across the university may incorporate active learning techniques. The seven good principles for undergraduate education are important in any course offered at FGCU. Though dated, I encourage my colleagues to read this piece by Chickering and Gamson. While there is a great amount of recent literature on active learning it seems the most helpful and applicable way to utilize active learning strategies is through various educational websites. Here are two that are particularly helpful:

1. Active Learning Strategies by the Berkeley Center for Teaching and Learning. This particular site jumps right in to the strategies listed in much of the literature on active learning. Do you want to try an activity where students sit and talk with peers nearby? This site offers nearly a dozen active approaches that work in this format. Would you like students to move around? The site offers these strategies as well. There is something for any teacher. https://teaching.berkeley.edu/active-learning-strategies

2. Active Learning by SERC (Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College). I like that this site tends to focus on science instruction with active learning components. There’s a belief that active learning is easier to do in a humanities course (it is not) than a science course. This site caters to those that instruct in the sciences. It also builds from the “seven good practices” from Chickering and Gamson with a modern approach.
https://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/gallerywalk/active.html