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Bryan McCabe is a lecturer in Civil Engineering at NUI Galway, and a winner of a President's Award for Teaching Excellenc e in 2011/12. About a year ago, Bryan was considering how he might use a flipped approach in his teaching and began planning such an approach for his 3rd year undergraduate course in Soil Mechanics, to be delivered starting January 2013. Bryan had a number of conversations with us in CELT during the year and we were keen to find out how his initiative had worked out. So, we invited him to give a CELT lunchtime seminar on March 21st. In advance of the seminar, Bryan was keen to point out that this was his first experience with flipped learning and he could only talk about initial findings. He didn't want to be perceived as an expert in the area, but was willing to share his experiences and thoughts. The seminar abstract is: First experience of a flipped learning approach to a 3rd year Engineering module Flipped learning is a form of blended learning in which ...

At this stage, #edcmooc is over, and I can say that I have finally completed a MOOC. Before I reflect on my own experience of being a student on #edmooc, I want to complete my musings on the resources provided. Week 4 continued the theme of Being Human, with a collection of videos, some readings on Transhumanism and some less challenging perspectives on Education. Of the four videos, the two that I connected with most are True Skin ( see it on Vimeo ) and Avatar Days ( watch on YouTube ). True Skin reminds me of some of the sci fi videos from week 1, and has a dystopian feel running through it. The idea of being able to upload your mind - memory backup - is fascinating and has clear beneficial aspects, for example, for early alzheimers sufferers. What does it mean for learning though? If you can upload a (brilliant) mind, can you download it, or part of it, multiple times to many people? Maybe we'll all become like our smartphones, downloading learning to our brains like apps. L...