MSU URP's Kassens-Noor receives AT&T Competition in Instruction Technology Award

This year, a series of awards were given to outstanding educators at Michigan State University (MSU).

Eva Kassens-Noor, assistant professor, Urban & Regional Planning Program in the MSU School of Planning, Design and Construction

By: SPDC Communciations

This year, a series of awards were given to outstanding educators at Michigan State University (MSU) as part of the 2014 AT&T Award Competition in Instructional Technology. Faculty and staff were eligible to submit innovations for MSU courses they had developed and implemented in the classroom between Summer semester 2013 and Spring semester 2014. The awards are designed to recognize MSU educators that have increased the effectiveness of courses taught using the integration of technology, and to share these successful measures with other colleagues, with the hope that they shall too implement similar strategies to their teachings.

Assistant Professor Eva Kassens-Noor, PhD, from the Urban & Regional Planning Program at the MSU School of Planning, Design and Construction, received the Award of Excellence for Best Blended Course for her UP 488, a course on Sustainable and Climate Resilient Cities. The central guiding question of this course is “How do you create a sustainable and climate resilient city?” The goal of this course is to synergistically integrate three innovative teaching practices to enhance the students learning experiences through applied learning and enable them to gather real life learning experiences. This course was supported through the Lilly Teaching Fellowship program at MSU

There are three main teaching practices Kassens-Noor implemented in her course in order to enhance student learning experiences through active learning and to allow them to gain real-life experiences. These practices include flipping, moving and tweeting.

Flipping the classroom entails delivering classroom content, such as lectures and presentations, online. Students are required to review knowledge content and complete tasks before the classroom meeting time to prepare them for participation during class.

Moving is built upon the idea that students learn better when they walk, exercise, etc. Students are guided on routes throughout campus for experiential learning purposes, which allows them to see examples of sustainability first hand.

The tweeting aspect of this course is used to communicate and engage students during the outside class. Questions were posted on Twitter to invoke participation and discussion on this microblog, aiding in course communications between the instructor and their peers.

According to Kassens-Noor, these practices are important to the student learning experience as it encourages them and others to live more sustainable lives.

“I believe it is important to experience—in real life—how unsustainable we are currently living and to offer students more sustainable practices,” she said.

For her achievements, Kassens-Noor and the other recognized MSU faculty winners, were granted this award, including a stipend that will be used to contribute to their professional development and to advance their use of technology in instruction. Please join us in congratulating Eva Kassens-Noor for her achievements!

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