Events

All members of the University community are welcome in Drake Institute activities, programs, services, and employment —regardless of age, ancestry, color, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity or expression, genetic information, HIV/AIDS status, military status, national origin, pregnancy, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, or any other bases under the law.

Event Tag Information

Drake Institute-led events focus on one or more core competency areas, which are indicated as a "tag" in the event description.

Introduction to Drake Institute Programs/Services:

The Drake Institute offers a variety of programs and services designed to support all who teach and support instruction at Ohio State. Individual instructor consultations, student feedback collection services, pedagogy-focused workshops, learning communities, and other structured engagements are offered throughout the year to foster learning and to enhance adoption and implementation of effective, evidence-based approaches to instruction.

Throughout the year, the Institute offers events, programs, and services that introduce the OSU community to these offerings and help participants identify opportunities that align to their own professional learning goals and needs.

 

Active Learning:

Active learning involves engaging students in meaningful exercises and activities designed to aid their learning process. Active learning opportunities can range from brief, silent, independent thinking exercises to long, complex, and/or group-based learning activities. The "active" component of active learning is not intended to suggest a required connection to physical movement, but instead is related to the idea that as active, engaged participants in the learning process, students can more effectively construct new knowledge and connect that knowledge to their experiences.

The Drake Institute strives to support the infusion of active learning strategies across all instructional contexts. Events, programs and services are offered in support of the design, planning, implementation, and evaluation of active learning practices.

 

Assessing Student Learning:

Assessment is the process used by educators to understand, document, and respond to changes occurring in learners. This process should be considered continuous; steps are taken to collect information on the degree to which knowledge has been transferred or skills have been developed through a combination of efforts. Gauging prior knowledge/ability, monitoring student progress toward desired outcomes, encouraging student reflection on their progress, providing timely and actionable feedback to students, and offering sufficiently numerous and diverse opportunities for students to demonstrate achievement of desired outcomes after the learning has occurred are all critical steps in the assessment process.

The Drake Institute is committed to advancing the design and implementation of effective, evidence-based assessment of student learning practices and provides support for both classroom and program-based assessment needs.

 

CIRTL (Program-specific tag)

The Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL) is a National Science Foundation (NSF) originally funded center and current network of over forty research universities across the United States and Canada aimed at supporting teaching excellence in higher education through, “…development of a national faculty committed to implementing and advancing evidence-based teaching practices for diverse learners." The Ohio State University became an official institutional member of the CIRLT Network in 2021. CIRTL provides teaching professional development support, particularly, to graduate students and postdocs interested in a career in higher education.

 

Curriculum & Course Development:

Curriculum and Course Development leverages a “backward design” process resulting in the constructive alignment of learning goals with assessment and instructional methods. In Drake Institute events, programs, and services, participants learn how to combine evidence-based instructional practices such as determining instructional needs, developing goals and outcomes, designing formative and summative assessment, creating opportunities for active learning, and evaluating the course or program to build effective, student-centered curricula and courses.

 

Educational Technology:

Educational technology is the integration of web based, classroom and mobile technology into the teaching and learning process to enhance educational outcomes, improve access to learning resources, and facilitate communication and collaboration among students and instructors.

The Drake Institute centers pedagogy in its events, programs, and services focused on educational technology. We encourage the constructive alignment of technologies with learning goals and outcomes as well as assessment and teaching methods.  

 

Inclusive Teaching:

Students bring varying identities, experiences, and perspectives with them into the classroom. Whether diversity is visible or invisible, it shapes student learning, often in positive ways. Drake Institute events and programs focused on inclusive teaching broadly investigate teaching strategies to create more equitable, inclusive, and just classrooms, including strategies for offering more transparent and flexible instruction and empowering students. Research shows that these methods improve learning outcomes for all students, and especially for those who have been historically marginalized.

 

Professional Development Support:

Continuous reflection on teaching practices and teaching philosophy is a highly effective way in which an instructor can improve their teaching. Documenting these reflections can also be useful for the academic job market, annual reviews, teaching awards, and for promotions and tenure. The Drake Institute offers events, programs, and services on composing effective reflections on professional development, such as teaching statements, diversity (DEIJ) statements, and teaching portfolios.

 

SoTL/DBER Research:

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is an evidence-based exploration of teaching and learning process. The goal of SoTL is to improve teaching and learning, and can include using evidence-based strategies, scholarly teaching, and adding to the evidence of scholarship of teaching and learning. In STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields DBER (discipline-based education research) includes developing generalizable theories and models.

The Drake Institute strives to support the use of evidence-based teaching practices and adding to the evidence by introducing educators to SoTL/DBER practices, supporting the development and completion of projects, and elevating the dissemination of SoTL/DBER projects and educational innovations developed at Ohio State.

 

Using Feedback to Improve Teaching:

Gathering feedback midsemester or throughout a course, creates opportunities for instructors to have conversations about teaching and learning with their students and add transparency to instructional methods and course design. It also presents an opportunity to implement small changes to the course before the end of the semester. To support instructors in understanding and using student feedback, the Drake Institute offers events, programs, and services designed to help instructors gather, interpret, and make use of student feedback through the duration of the course and beyond.