EFFECTIVE PRACTICES IN UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION
Everything is relative: Best practices in instructional uses of technology  136 EGRC
Joanne Dehoney (Director of Learning Technologies Services, NCSU)
Using examples from undergraduate science instruction, this interactive session explores the interconnections among goals, audience, and resources in defining instructional technology "best practice". Participants will have a chance to contemplate their own instructional activities from this perspective, clarifying the scale and potential benefits of their efforts. We will also briefly discuss LTS initiatives to support faculty at NC State.

How students learn, teachers teach, and what usually goes wrong in the process  246 EGRC
Rich Felder (Chemical Engineering, NCSU)
Students learn in a variety of ways: by seeing and hearing, working alone or in groups, reasoning logically and intuitively, memorizing and visualizing and modeling. Teaching methods also vary: some instructors lecture, others demonstrate or discuss, some focus on principles and others on applications; some emphasize memory and others understanding. How much students learn in a class depends on the match between their preferred learning styles and the instructor's preferred teaching style. When there are serious mismatches, students do poorly and get discouraged, instructors get frustrated by low class performance and poor evaluations, and society may lose some potentially excellent professionals.

Three questions are explored in this presentation: (1) Which aspects of learning style are particularly significant in higher education? (2) Which learning styles are preferred by most students and which are favored by the teaching styles of most professors? (3) What can be done to reach students with a wider variety of learning styles than are now being reached with standard instructional methods?

Dealing with large enrollment classes  246 EGRC
Bob Beichner, John Hubisz, Bob Patterson (Physics, NCSU)
Techniques and tips will be shared for keeping students actively engaged in the material, even though there are more than 100 students in the class.