Felder-Brent Workshop

Richard Felder and Rebecca Brent are coming to Australia to run a dedicated two-day workshop on effective teaching immediately after the 2011 Australasian Association for Engineering Education conference in Fremantle this coming December.

Richard and Rebecca are world-renowned for their workshops on effective teaching. Richard has been a world leader in chemical engineering education and engineering education research for decades.

The workshop will be held at the historic Esplanade Hotel (the conference venue) on Thursday 8th and Friday 9th December. The registration fee is $480 per person, including all materials, refreshments and lunch on both days. Staff from institutions that have co-sponsored this workshop must register through their faculty deans or associate deans to obtain a discounted registration fee: a list is provided below.

This workshop provides tools and strategies for faculty members to make their classes more effective. Topics addressed include the following:
• How do students learn? How do teachers teach? What goes wrong in the process?
• How do I plan a course? What can I do in the first week to get it off to a good start?
• What do I need to do to be an effective lecturer?
• How can I get students actively involved in learning, even if there are 200 in the class?
• How can I assess learning and skill development? How can I design tests that are both rigorous and fair?
• How can new faculty members become fully effective in teaching and productive in research in 1–2 years instead of the usual 4–5 years?
• What are common student problems and problem students? How can I deal with them?

The workshop has been given on campuses throughout the United States and in South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the Far East. It has been exceptionally well received by the participants, despite the skepticism many professors feel toward teaching workshops. Of the 4616 participants who submitted evaluations since 1996, 81% gave the workshop the top rating of "Excellent," 19% rated it "Good", fewer than 1% rated it "Average," and none rated it "Fair" or "Poor". The presenters received "Excellent" ratings from 88% of the participants, "Good" from 11%, and "Average" from fewer than 1%. Following are representative participant responses.

• "Lots of good ideas - not a lot of fluff. Presenters are knowledgeable on the subject and use well-documented evidence to support their positions."
• "The presenters were competent, confident, and VERY comfortable. They did a good job of using the audience's expertise."
• "Great collection of resources in the notebook."
• "The ideas presented in this workshop are among the best and most useful that I have ever heard. I appreciate the fact that, while they represent a great change in the way material is presented, they do not involve throwing out what I am doing now."
• "The workshop was presented in a way that was very noncritical. Instead of feeling like you are a 'bad teacher', you felt more like you now have tools to be a more effective or a 'great' teacher."
• (From a Dean) "Your previous visits were extremely productive. The number of faculty members engaged in collaborative learning activities keeps increasing [and] our faculty members are also increasingly engaged in a number of novel educational projects. The level of awareness, enthusiasm and commitment to learning is very gratifying and owes much to your workshops."

Richard M. Felder, Ph.D., is Hoechst Celanese Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina. He is coauthor of Elementary Principles of Chemical Processes, which has been used internationally as the text for the introductory chemical engineering course for over three decades, and he has authored or coauthored over 300 articles on chemical process engineering and engineering and science education. His honors include the R.J. Reynolds Award for Excellence in Teaching, Research, and Extension, the ASEE Chester F. Carlson Award for innovation in engineering education, the ASEE Chemical Engineering Division Lifetime Achievement Award for Pedagogical Scholarship, and the inaugural Global Award for Excellence in Engineering Education from the International Federation of Engineering Education Societies. Most of his publications can be viewed at ncsu.edu/effective_teaching.

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Rebecca Brent, Ed.D., is President of Education Designs, Inc., a consulting firm in Cary, North Carolina. She has 30 years of experience in education and teacher training, and holds a Certificate in Evaluation Practice from the Evaluators' Institute at George Washington University. Her specialties include staff development in engineering and the sciences, teacher preparation, evaluation of educational programs at both precollege and college levels, and classroom uses of instructional technology, topics on which she has published roughly 100 articles. Prior to her work in consulting, she was an Associate Professor of Education at East Carolina University. She received a Research Article Award from the Organization of Teacher Educators in Reading and the East Carolina Alumni Association Teaching Excellence Award.

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Separately and together, Drs. Felder and Brent have presented well over 600 workshops and seminars on effective teaching, course design, mentoring and supporting new faculty members, and faculty development in science and technology on campuses throughout the United States and in Europe, Asia, South America, South Africa, and Australia. They co-direct and facilitate the annual National Effective Teaching Institute under the auspices of the American Society for Engineering Education.