PETAL

A Look Ahead to Fall

Fall is going to be a busy time around the new PETAL offices (read more about that here). We are going to have our regular schedule of New Faculty Seminars and Technology Workshops, but we are also going to increase the number of Brown Bag Lunches this semester.

The PETAL New Faculty Seminars have been redesigned this year to bring in a broader coverage of teaching techniques and strategies. In September, Dr. Brenda Litchfield will lead a seminar on Learning and Teaching Styles on the 10th and 11th and one on Motivating Students on the 24th and 25th. In October, I will lead a seminar on Teaching with Technology on the 8th and 9th, and Dr. Litchfield will hold a seminar on Collaborative Learning on the 22nd and 23rd. For the last New Faculty Seminar this Fall, I will conduct a seminar on Evaluation and Assessment on November 5th and 6th. Note: These are the seminars that are mandatory for all new faculty.

PETAL will be offering a nice mix of new PETAL Technology Workshops with some of the more popular standards. We will hold workshops on The Clicker on September 3rd and 4th, as well as on October 29th and 30th. We will also offer our popular workshops on Better Teaching with PowerPoint on September 17th and 18th and Extending the Classroom with the Web on October 1st and 2nd. In addition, we will be offering new workshops on Using Blogs in Your Classroom on October 15th and 16th and Teaching in Second Life on November 12th and 13th.

We have redesigned our Roundtable and Brown Bag Lunch series in hopes that these events will be at times when more faculty can attend. We are going call all of the events Brown Bag Lunches and hold them at 12:15 to reduce conflict with class times. We have one scheduled approximately every two weeks, rotating them between Fridays and Tuesdays. Our first Brown Bag will be on Friday, September 5th, when Dr. Peggy Delmas and Kelly Byrd will discuss The First Year Experience for Students. On Tuesday, September 9th, Dr. Julio Turrens will hold a discussion on the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR), and then we have the Violence Prevention Alliance giving the program on Tuesday, September 23rd.

We have two exciting Friday programs planned for October, including Dr. Bret Webb giving a talk on Teaching Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics on the 3rd and Dr. Zohair Husain presenting on Inviting Guest Speakers to Class on the 31st. We have also made an effort to hold technology-based discussions on Tuesdays so that we can follow them on Wednesday and Thursday with a Technology Workshop on the technologies discussed. For example, Dr. Robert Gray will be facilitating a discussion Web 2.0 - Blogs on October 14, just before our workshops on Using Blogs in Your Classroom. Also, Dr. Jack Dempsey will be discussing the exciting possibilities of Teaching in Second Life on November 11, just before our workshops on Second Life.

A few other things are in the works for the Fall Semester, and details will be released as soon as they become finalized.

We hope to see you all in the new PETAL Space soon!