On Wednesday, February 24, 2016 from 4 – 5:30 p.m. in List Art Auditorium (120), Maud Mandel, Dean of the College and Professor of History and Judaic Studies, will moderate a panel of four Brown faculty members who will discuss their own “Experiments with Digital Education at Brown.” This event is free and open to the public. A reception will follow.
These faculty members have integrated digital tools into their teaching in different ways, including the substantial inclusion of digital technology in the classroom as well as the development of fully online and blended courses. Panelists will consider how this technology has changed their teaching and what opportunities and challenges they have faced in creating and delivering these courses. The discussion will also consider student responses and how learning outcomes have been affected by the introduction of online and digital components. The panel inaugurates a new lecture series entitled Teaching and Learning in the Digital Environment.
Faculty Participants:
- Pedro Dal Bo, Associate Professor of Economics
- Gita Pensa, Clinical Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine
- Elizabeth Taylor, Senior Lecturer in English and Co-Director of the Nonfiction Writing Program
- Andy van Dam, Thomas J. Watson, Jr. University Professor of Technology and Education, Professor of Computer Science
Bios:
Pedro Dal Bó, Associate Professor of Economics, received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2002. He works in the areas of game theory, experimental economics, and political economy. Recent work has examined the relationship between violence, corruption, and the quality of politicians; the effect of economic shocks and policies on social conflict; the determinants of cooperation in repeated games; and the effect of democracy and moral suasion on pro-social behavior.
Gita Pensa attended the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and completed her residency in emergency medicine at George Washington University. She was the chief resident from 2000-2001. Dr. Pensa returned to academics in 2014 after 13 years in community emergency medicine practice. She is currently Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine (Clinical) at Brown Medical (Alpert School of Medicine), directing the “Asynchrony” course in Emergency Medicine (online emergency medicine curriculum) for the Brown emergency medicine residency. She created the new Brown Emergency Medicine residency educational blog (and serve as chief faculty editor): http://blogs.brown.edu/emergency-medicine-residency/ and won the Brown Emergency Medicine Residency Award for Innovation in Education in 2015. Dr. Pensa is interested in the Free Open Access Med-ucation Movement (‘FOAMed’), and the intersection of digital/traditional/bedside learning in medical education. You can find her on Twitter at @GitaPensaMD.
Elizabeth (Beth) S. Taylor received her B.A. in American Studies at Smith College, earned her PhD in American Literature from Brown, then taught at Harvard for five years before returning to Brown in 1994. She teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program in the Department of English at Brown. She teaches creative nonfiction — personal and academic essay, literary journalism, historical narrative, and memoir. She has published flash nonfiction, essays about writing and the teaching of nonfiction, and about the Vietnam War era. Her most recent book is The Plain Language of Love and Loss: A Quaker Memoir. She has a particular interest in mentoring students interested in all forms of nonfiction writing.
Andries van Dam is the Thomas J. Watson Jr., University Professor of Technology and Education and Professor of Computer Science. He has been a member of Brown’s faculty since 1965, is a founder of Brown’s Computer Science Department, and was its first Chairman from 1979 to 1985. From 2002 to 2006 he was Brown’s first Vice President for Research. His research includes work on computer graphics, hypermedia systems, post-WIMP user interfaces (including pen-centric computing), and educational software. Over the last four decades he has worked on systems for creating and reading electronic books with interactive illustrations for use in education and research.
He is the co-author of nearly a dozen books, including Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice with James D. Foley, Steven K. Feiner, and John F. Hughes (Addison-Wesley 1990). He received a B.S. degree (with Honors) in Engineering Sciences from Swarthmore College in 1960 and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 1966. He is a Fellow of ACM, IEEE, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and is a member of National Academy of Engineering. His awards include the ACM Steven A. Coons Award for Outstanding Creative Contributions to Computer Graphics and the IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal. He holds honorary doctorates from Swarthmore College and Darmstadt Technical University.
Maud S. Mandel (Ph.D., University of Michigan, 1998; A.M., University of Michigan, 1993; B.A. Oberlin College, 1989) is Dean of the College and Professor of History and Judaic Studies. Her monograph, In the Aftermath of Genocide: Armenians and Jews in Twentieth Century France, was published by Duke University Press in 2003. Her book, Muslims and Jews in France: History of a Conflict, appeared with Princeton University Press in January 2014 and has been awarded fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the American Philosophical Society. Her most recent article, “Simone Weil and Thinking Jewish Modernity after the Holocaust” will appear in the volume Thinking Jewish Modernity in 2014. She teaches courses on many aspects of modern Jewish history, including history of the Holocaust, Zionism and the birth of the state of Israel, and antisemitism.
Date: Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Time: 4 – 5:30 p.m.
Location: List Art 120, 64 College Street, Providence