The POGIL Spring 2017 Newsletter is Now Ready for Download

Wednesday May 5th, 2017

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Dear Friends,

This summer is shaping up to be an exciting one at The POGIL Project. We are in the thick of finalizing plans for our annual POGIL National Meeting, our regional summer workshops, and our inaugural National Conference for Advanced POGIL Practitioners (NCAPP).

At PNM, we will continue to work on refining our Project Strategic Plan, making sure it is ready for the challenges of the next five years. Our summer workshops are quickly filling up and we are excited to unveil some new sessions for our participants. And NCAPP is shaping up to be one of the most innovative events of the summer — a conference that is, in true POGIL spirit, for and by its participants.

We are also looking forward to the new book edited by Shawn Simonson that will delve into various aspects of the POGIL pedagogy and that will serve as a much-needed update to our 2008 ACS Symposium Series publication. Shawn's book should be available through Stylus Publishing later this year. Finally, as we celebrate 15 years of The POGIL Project, I want to thank all of you for your contributions as colleagues, educators, and valued members of the POGIL family.

The work of The Project is enriched by all of you.

Rick Moog

Rick Moog, Director of The POGIL Project

Ask The Mole

Q: What is OPTIC?

A: The Classroom Observation Working Group has been working on developing a classroom observation tool for use in a POGIL classroom. The instrument, which is modeled from TDOP (Hora, 2013), COPUS (Smith et al, 2013), and OPAL (Frey et al, 2016), is a behavior observation tool. OPTIC codes have been chosen to capture typical behavior of instructor and student behaviors in a POGIL classroom.

In OPTIC, both the instructor and student behaviors are marked in two minute intervals. One section of OPTIC describes the POGIL phase being used during that time interval, e.g., active reading, guided learning, or reporting out. The observation tool also focuses on the amount and type of interaction students have with each other and with the instructor; e.g., instructor talking to learning team, students interacting with each other within a learning team, or learning teams interacting with other learning teams. T

he group is also developing a visual timeline modeled from the OPAL timeline (Frey et al, 2016). This timeline is in the form of a chronological timeline displaying all the codes marked during the observation in the interval in which they occurred. This timeline is a “big-picture” view of the type and position of activities or events are occurring in the classroom. This visual timeline gives the instructor a snapshot view of the entire class session and is an intuitive way of reflecting on one’s teaching.

—Courtesy of Gina Frey