Events Registration: Registration required

lunch&LEARN: Using forums for promoting student diversity at EPFL

In this lunch&LEARN session, Patrick Jermann (CEDE) and Alexandra Niculescu (LEARN) will present the results from a study aimed at investigating to what extent online forums help students with diverse levels of mathematics ability succeed in the first year at university. 

This research relies on quantitative methods to investigate the intended aim. More precisely, it takes on an explorative secondary data analysis in order to process data already available in Piazza Forums.

The results shared in this talk could be relevant for different stakeholders at EPFL: it could inform first year teachers and feed into the first year commission with potential for improved feedback practices. It might also be relevant for pedagogical advisors, in the training of teaching staff active in this transition period.

Register online! This session will be hybrid. 

lunch&LEARN: improving retention of non-traditional STEM students at EPFL

Prior research shows that time pressure impacts the way students address problem-solving, revealing a tendency to revert to the use of habitual and intuitive problem-solving rather than attempting to work through a more procedural approach. Time pressure can also increase anxiety among ‘maths anxious’ students, negatively impacting on their performance. These impacts are likely to be strongest among those who have not previously studied Mathematics to a high level in high school, as is the case with many non-traditional STEM students.

In this session of lunch&LEARN, Simone Deparis, Adjunct Professor at the Mathematics Section and Executive Director of the Propaedeutic centre, will present the results of a study building upon previous work done at EPFL on the effect of the Flipped Classroom in Linear Algebra, using different students and a different mathematics class (Analysis rather than Linear Algebra) while giving extra 30 minutes during the exam.

Deparis will go over the findings which form a basis for reducing time pressure on students in the first year exams, enabling non-traditional STEM students to better demonstrate their learning in the exam.

 

lunch&LEARN: 3T PLAY designing an activity to teach transversal skills with tangible objects

In this lunch&LEARN session, Nicola Winzenried, lecturer at the College of Management of Technology, and the team behind the 3T PLAY project will present their model for teaching transversal skills.

Focusing on the micro level, participants will reflect on how to design an activity targeting the development of one specific skill tailored for a single class session.

Winzenried and colleagues will review the types of thinking that enable students to build up their skills « toolbox » through the demonstration of an experiential activity with tangibles.

Type: hybrid (zoom and in person)

About: lunch&LEARN sessions are hosted by the Center LEARN and geared towards all teachers and teaching assistants at EPFL. The aim of these lunch&LEARN events is to showcase interesting pedagogical approaches, opening possibilities for knowledge sharing and further collaborations.

*Note: this event is internal and registration is required to attend*

lunch&LEARN: The new and improved „No-Significant-Difference-Phenomenon“

The pandemic prompted significant shifts in the mechanisms of university teaching. 

Approaching the tail end of the pandemic, students have increasingly been given greater flexibility on how (and if) to attend lectures; whether on campus (in person), synchronously online, or asynchronously online (simply by watching recordings).

Faculty have thus rethought how they deliver lectures and blended, hybrid, or flipped scenarios are increasingly being considered.

The question now is where are we going with this, and what difference will it make? 

In this session of lunch&LEARN, Dr Gerd Kortemeyer, Director of the Educational Development and Technology (LET) department at ETH Zurich and Associate Professor Emeritus at Michigan State University, will present studies conducted with 285 students in an introductory physics course at MSU, and with 17,641 students and 639 faculty members at ETH Zurich. 

Kortemeyer will go over his findings, which indicate that there is no significant difference between in-person and online attendance, particularly when it comes to exam performance. 

Rather, the findings seem to indicate that it is our understanding of teaching and learning in higher education as we know it that may be undergoing subtle changes.

Please note that this event is internal and geared towards the EPFL teaching community. 
Registration is required to attend (click here to register)

Interaction between Moral Reasoning and Imagination: Critical Perspectives and Pedagogical Implications

 
To what extent do we treat imagination as an essential constituent of moral reasoning? 

In this session of lunch&LEARN, Yousef Jalali, Scientist from the Center LEARN’s internal mission team whose research focuses on ethical reasoning and imagination as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion, will briefly discuss the conceptual underpinnings of moral reasoning informed by liberatory praxis and theory, and pragmatism. 

In his presentation, Jalali will elaborate on the role of imagination in moral deliberation and reflect on ethics modules for science and engineering students that were designed and implemented to provoke moral imagination.

This lunch&LEARN session is an opportunity for the EPFL teaching community to discover examples and ideas for integrating ethics in the engineering curriculum.

Watch the recording of this session here and find all previous recordings here.

 

Teaching Sciences and Engineering with Jupyter Notebooks

Jupyter Notebooks are interactive documents that combine text with pieces of code and their execution results.
In this workshop, participants will experience learning discipline-specific content with a notebook in the EPFL centralized Jupyter Lab platform (https://noto.epfl.ch) and work on the design of a notebook-based interactive textbook or exercise worksheet for their course or their MOOC.

This is an on-campus workshop.
Participants will need a laptop with internet connection to participate in the activities proposed during the workshop.
Please register here for more details.

Swiss Robotics Days 2022

The Swiss Robotics Day is Switzerland’s most comprehensive exhibition on robotics for service sectors.

This year, exceptionally, to mark the ending of NCCR Robotics, the event will take place over two days on November 4 and 5, in the center of Lausanne at the Beaulieu Convention Center.

  • The first day, November 4, will be dedicated to robotics professionals, and will allow the Swiss robotics community to meet the experts, exchange ideas, create new business opportunities and attract talent.
  • For the first time, the event will open its doors to the general public for a second day (November 5), establishing itself as a platform to engage with the public and the younger generations.

This year’s special edition is opening up to Swiss robotics companies and start-ups active in all areas and fields of robotics related technologies.

Walking the walk – 2 practical workshops to align our practices and our ethical values

the Swiss Faculty Development Network http://www.sfdn.ch/ invites you to join our upcoming free event for higher education teachers about equity and ethics. This workshop will be held in person in Bern (BeLEARN hub, Depotstrasse 33a) on Friday October 7th with the following schedule:

Please sign up here to let us know if you are planning to join us: https://forms.gle/4ETJZUKi6i4X4FZe9
 

Jupyter Community Hybrid Event

Discover 3 different ways to use Jupyter notebooks for teaching and learning in 3 different disciplines, and meet your colleagues who use notebooks for education at EPFL!

Agenda:
16h30 presentations by EPFL teachers who use Jupyter notebooks (hybrid):
– Giovanni Pizzi and Sara Bonella: Interactive simulations to teach quantum mechanics with the OSSCAR framework
– Simone Deparis and Riccardo Tenderini: Interactive exercises and graded tests in numerical analysis
– Michele Ceriotti: Atomic-scale modeling – An example of interactive exercises mixed with graded assignments

17h30 networking apero (on site only)

To attend on site, please register before June 14 (limited to 40 persons): https://bookwhen.com/epfl/e/ev-sm85-20220616163000
To attend online, simply join us on Zoom: https://epfl.zoom.us/j/62058671522?pwd=K2dMVUZERVQ0V0FyWWg4TEJZR1lnZz09

Preparing to Learn Linear Algebra

Problem-solving before instruction (PS-I) designs, such as productive failure, have been shown to be effective for high school mathematics but have yet to be investigated for university mathematics courses.

In this session of lunch&LEARN, Vera Baumgartner, researcher at ETH’s Professorship for Learning Sciences and Higher Education presents the results of the implementation such of a PS-I design in the context of a linear algebra course for mechanical engineers.

Her findings reveal that including preparatory exercises for core linear algebra concepts in the course improved students‘ learning outcomes.

  • Registration: online 
  • All previous lunch&LEARN recordings can be re-watched here.

lunch&LEARN: Using web-based computational chemistry software to teach first-year students

In this session of lunch&LEARN, Luc Patiny, chemistry and chemical engineering lecturer at EPFL, will present a series of online tools he uses to teach interactive courses to his first-year students. 
 
Providing his students with the same web-based tools used in research and the industry, Patiny enables them to delve into exploratory learning while also acquiring practical experience by solving problems of increasing complexity.
 
After a brief introduction during the lecture, students solve series of online exercises supervised by teaching assistants. 
 
Over the years, Patiny and his colleagues have developed over 300 open-source javascript libraries allowing students to apply and understand a range of computational methods.
 
This lunch&LEARN session is an opportunity for the EPFL teaching community to discover examples and ideas of interactive teaching in line with the AVP-E’s flexible/hybrid teaching commission.
 
For the first time, lunch&LEARN will be hybrid!

Register to attend: 
 

All previous sessions can be watched here.

Teaching sciences and engineering with Jupyter Notebooks

Jupyter Notebooks are interactive documents combining text with pieces of code and their execution result. In this workshop, participants will experience learning discipline-specific content with a notebook in the EPFL centralized Jupyter Lab platform (http://noto.epfl.ch) and work on the design of a notebook-based interactive textbook or exercise worksheet for their course or their MOOC.