The annual Active Learning Institute helps faculty members develop and refine their skills as learner-centered course designers and teachers. The ALI faculty designs this two-day workshop around the challenges identified by each year’s group of participants. These challenges may include (but are not limited to) the following:
Every ALI focuses on designing courses that take full account of how people actually learn and we set aside plenty of time for participants to workshop each other’s new designs and strategies.
Participants in ALI receive a stipend for full participation in the two-day institute. Anyone holding a faculty teaching appointment at Dartmouth at any rank (Arts and Sciences, Engineering, Tuck and DMS) is eligible to apply.
The ALI faculty will read applications and select participants based on:
We strive for a group diverse in disciplines, schools and departments or programs.
Here is what your colleagues have said about previous ALIs:
“ALI is a phenomenal asset to this college. I not only learned valuable practical content, but I also find myself sharing these ideas with my colleagues in informal discussions. It's rare to have a two-day workshop have such a strong positive impact.”
“All in all, the Institute ranks among my most productive professional education experiences.”
“I do not think I could overstate how much the experience, authority, authenticity, intelligence, commitment, and enthusiasm of the facilitators and other participants defined my ALI experience. They helped me see how these techniques could be used and gave me the sense that it would be OK to try using them.”
“The ALI was a transformative experience for me. With no formal training in teaching methodology, the most useful component was overall, big picture, course design. ”
“Great program! I wish it had been available when I started teaching.”
Thanks to a generous new gift from the Judith and Allen Zern '65 Fund, we are pleased to announce the creation of a new position at DCAL: the DCAL Faculty Fellow. This position formalizes and expands what has been until now a volunteer effort fulfilled most recently by chemistry professor F. Jon Kull. In consultation with Associate dean of the Faculty for Science, David Kotz, we have selected Professor Kull to serve as the first DCAL faculty Fellow for a renewable term of two years. As the first DCAL Faculty Fellow he will take responsibility, along with the director and associate directors, for planning and carrying out the activities of DCAL's Teaching Science Seminar (TSS).
The Teaching Science Seminar meets monthly during term-time to pursue the following:
The DCAL Faculty Fellow will receive an annual stipend as recognition of his services as a leader of the Teaching Science Seminar. He will also command a small fund for the purchase of books and experimental teaching aids.
Dartmouth has been awarded $2.5 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to give Dartmouth graduate students opportunities to work with middle school teachers in the Upper Valley region of Vermont and New Hampshire. The program promotes science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) among middle school students.
The five-year award is part of NSF’s Graduate STEM Fellows in K-12 Education Program, also referred to as GK-12.
The GK-12 Team includes a current DCAL Associate Director for Future Faculty, Cindy Tobery PhD and Former DCAL Associate Director, Vicki May PhD.
Read the full release.
Have a look at the recommended books page on the DCAL website at http://www.dartmouth.edu/~dcal/resources/books.html. Books recently added to our collection include Peter Filene's The Joy of Teaching, Eric Mazur's Peer Instruction: A User's Manual, and Academic Dishonesty: An Educator's Guide by Bernard. E. Whitley, Jr. and Patricia Keith-Spiegel. Also featured is a new edition of Teaching American Students: A Guide for International Faculty and Teaching Assistants in Colleges and Universities by Ellen Sarkisian of the Derek Bok Center of Harvard University.
