SIUE’s Gopalan Receives 2018 Teaching Career Enhancement Award
The American Physiological Society (APS) has presented its 2018 Teaching Career Enhancement Award to Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s Chaya Gopalan, PhD, to support the implementation of a novel teaching approach in classrooms across the country.
The APS allocated $10,000 for Gopalan to “explore elements associated with the successful implementation of Flipped Teaching and Retrieval Exercise (FT-RE) and develop a FT-RE model to expand in many more classrooms in the future.”
“I am extremely honored and earnestly grateful to be receiving such an important award,” said Gopalan, an associate professor in the SIUE School of Nursing’s Department of Primary Care and Health Systems, and the School of Education, Health and Human Behavior’s Department of Applied Health.
Under the flipped classroom approach, lecture content is introduced outside the classroom, allowing more time during class to process the information and practice the content through a variety of active learning strategies, including teamwork and instant feedback.
“This project is expected to increase faculty self-efficacy in student-centered teaching, which will not only lead to increased student success in analytical and collaborative skills, but also promote the retention of knowledge,” Gopalan explained.
Faculty participating in Gopalan’s study represent four institutions, including Rice University, the University of New Hampshire, Mt. San Antonio College and Maryville University. Her work with the participants will launch with a one-day workshop on Sunday, Sept. 16 at SIUE.
“Upon completion of the workshop, the participants will explore the design and execution of FT-RE and identify any obstacles in the implementation of this novel teaching strategy,” Gopalan explained. “In addition, the team will gather student data as a measurement of the effectiveness of the new teaching method. We hope to see enhanced student engagement and retention of knowledge.”
The award supports travel for all of the participants to present their results at the Experimental Biology conference to be held in April 2019 in Orlando.
Gopalan notes a similar project involving faculty members from SIUE and St. Louis Community College who teach in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines is in its planning stage.
Photo: SIUE’s Chaya Gopalan, PhD, has been presented the 2018 Teaching Career Enhancement Award from the American Physiological Society.
