Professor Christopher Weyant Selected as 2013 National Distance Learning Week Award Winner

Teaching associate professor Dr. Christopher Weyant
Teaching associate professor Dr. Christopher Weyant

Teaching associate professor Christopher Weyant has been selected as a Drexel University Online 2013 National Distance Learning Week Award Winner

Weyant is being recognized for his innovative approach to looking into the impact of online learning on the freshman/sophomore ENGR common course sequence.  Faced with a large class size, Weyant’s spring 2013 ENGR 220 sophomore-level Fundamentals of Materials class was split into two courses, with one being taught in a traditional lecture style class and the other taught as a “flipped classroom.”  With a “flipped classroom,” all of the formal content lectures were recorded with Camtasia and placed on Drexel Learn for students to watch on their own time, but prior to specific lecture topic dates.  In class, a short review of the lecture material was given followed by the bulk of the lecture class time being spent on answering student questions, problem solving, in-class mini-experiments, and video clips.

The impact of the online learning component is currently being assessed with results ultimately being presented by Weyant at the Materials Research Society Fall 2013 conference in December and through a research paper that will be submitted to the Journal of Engineering Education.

The annual awards ceremony will be held on Tuesday, November 12, 2013 at the Philadelphia History Museum.


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