About Dr. Rekha Srinivasan:

Dr. Rekha Srinivasan is the James S. Swinehart Professorial Teaching Fellow and senior instructor in the Department of Chemistry at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), Cleveland, OH. She obtained her PhD from CWRU with research focused on biophysical properties of amyloid peptides. Her postdoctoral work in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at CWRU involved the design and synthesis of peptide-decorated drug delivery devices for cardiovascular applications. Dr. Srinivasan has distinguished herself as an outstanding educator and mentor. She has received numerous awards for teaching and mentoring, including the Carl F. Witke Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching, Bruce Jackson Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Mentoring, and Women in Science and Engineering Roundtable Advisor of the Year Award for four consecutive years. Dr. Srinivasan’s current focus involves designing and implementing video-centric, active learning pedagogy in classrooms. She has obtained grants from the Nord Foundation and the American Chemical Society (ACS) to present her educational research on topics such as student attitudes toward blended instruction in biochemistry, active learning videos in lecture courses, student-derived experimental procedures for organic laboratory, and designing curricula for Seminar Approach to General Education in Sciences at the ACS and American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology national meetings.

About the talk:

Title: DESIGNING ACTIVE LEARNING CLASSROOM (ALC) for STEMM: A BRIDGE BETWEEN TEACHING AND LEARNING

Description:

Undergraduate education in India has undergone rapid expansion with the education sector valued at USD $91 billion in 2018. This explosion in the education sector is projected to continue this upward trend with India’s increasing youth population. Dr. Srinivasan’s research project identifies current teaching practices and barriers faced for implementing teaching innovation in host institutions. She is then applying a plan-do-check-act (PDCA cycle) philosophy by mentoring host educators to redesign and implement active learning classrooms. She is assessing the effectiveness of novel methods and repeating the cycle to optimize best teaching practices.

The lecture-discussion is tailored to STEMM (Science - Technology - Engineering - Mathematics - Medicine) Faculty and will include ideas around integrating active learning strategies in the classroom, using some common and simple active learning strategies in teaching and instructional technologies to support the use of active learning.