IMPACT Live!

As instructors look to improve their courses to foster student success, it is often difficult to know how to start.  For active learning, attending a Summer Institute  (or the upcoming National Math Summit) is a great start.  Faculty also can learn a lot from visiting each other's classrooms and observing active learning in action.  A site visit to another college that has experience can be life changing.  Also having the right tools to discuss the methods or style of engagement that happen in an active classroom is vital.  The Observation Protocol for Active Learning (OPAL) is that tool. 

What methods or tools have you found that have helped you transition your usage and implementation of active learning in your classroom? In your department? At your college?

If you have not implemented active learning, but would like to, what resources would you like to see AMATYC provide?

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Scot Pruyn
Mathematics Faculty & Learning Center Coordinator
Clackamas Community College
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A few colleagues from my institution and I had an opportunity to participate in a SITE VISIT last spring to see how other instructors were implementing ACTIVE LEARNING in their math classes.  We all felt that we learned more in those few days than we had learned in any professional development event or activity before.  There was something about being able to see multiple examples of "active learning facilitation" that helped us bump our own teaching to the next level.