Date: October 26, 2021
Time: 10:00AM - 11:00AM Eastern
Presented by: Teun de Vries, Katie Crouwel, Amber Burke-de Wilde, Erica Vogelzang

The wish to implement active teaching and learning methods in the curriculum of the Academic Centre for Dentistry in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, has long been acknowledged. Last year team-based learning (TBL) was decided upon as the main teaching method and was implemented in the first year of the Bachelor’s programme in September 2020. More than with traditional teaching methods, TBL stimulates students to participate actively in their own learning process. This team-oriented method prepares future dentists for academic reasoning and clinical decision-making. In the webinar, we describe how we introduced TBL in the first year of the Bachelor’s programme. First of all we set up a TBL course for the teachers in order to prepare them for a new method of teaching. Subsequently, TBL teaching sessions for a total of seven courses were prepared by these same teachers. They received the help and support of four ACTA staff members, the so-called TBL team. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, TBL was introduced as an online variant, requiring close cooperation with IT-services. IT took care of the online test environment for individual readiness assurance tests (iRATS) and team readiness assurance tests (tRATS) and organised the breakout rooms. Since  TBL was new to everyone, the TBL team was present at all TBL application sessions, providing feedback to teachers at the end of each session and offering advice if necessary during sessions. Half-way through the academic year, the implementation of TBL was carefully assessed by panel groups of students and teachers. This was then followed by an evaluation by all first-year students at the end of the academic year. Both these procedures allowed for further fine-tuning. In September 2021, we will be continuing with the implementation of TBL in the second-year Bachelor’s at ACTA. The webinar is of interest for those that want to pick-up ideas for how to set-up and implement a new teaching method in all courses of a curriculum.

At the end of this webinar, audience will have knowledge on how to implement a new teaching method in all courses of a programme. 

Date: November 24, 2021
Time: 10:00AM - 11:00AM Eastern
Presented by: Micki Spiller

Even in an Art and Design studio, good listening and speaking skills are essential and getting students to verbalize their thoughts in small increments is key to successful productive end of semester critiques.  My current first year students are coming from diverse backgrounds while in the midst of making enormous social adjustments, and a large percentage of them are international. Methods established in ESL/ ELL language support education will be used as a central component in this session to explore concepts and vocabulary to draw students out and get them talking. This session will share successes and experiments employing images for in class 4S application activities.

Collaborative practice between student teams is one way to scaffold vocabulary to build the student’s communication skills.  Discussions will focus on the topic of listening and speaking in an internationalized foundation studio context, aiming to illuminate some key strategies and differentiated instruction methods arts educators can use to stay rooted in positive pedagogy. Since this will be a Zoom session, we will be engaging in activities using collaborative whiteboards such as Milanote and Mural. 

1. Demonstrate the understanding of basic and fundamental 3 dimensional design principles.
2. Demonstrate the ability to use a common vocabulary to analyze, evaluate, reflect on, critique and present work to others.