Happy New Year! We’re excited to start another year of learning with you! As you prepare for the spring semester, check out updated courses and changes to progress tools, as well as tips and recommendation from the SolidProfessor community. Also this month, you’ll find an interesting read about how flipped classrooms better facilitate success among today’s increasingly diverse student base and an invitation to our SOLIDWORKS World event – hope to see you there!
Tips for your Classes and Assignments
As you’re updating your classes and assignments, keep in mind these tips to facilitate your students’ learning:
“Set up all your assignments ahead of time and use a staging area to hold assignments until you’re ready to share them with students.” – Tom Dollar, Northwestern Michigan College
Keep assignments short – microlearning improves student engagement and understanding of new material, so include only a few lessons in each assignment.
“Flip your classroom and spend previous class time talking with students and letting them practice – front load the material and let students learn where to click while they’re at home, then come to class with their questions.” – Darren Willis, Bakersfield College
Curious about what SolidProfessor looks like for students? Steve Huycke at Lake Michigan College uses the built-in student view to preview his assignments: just click the “Work on your assignments” link on the Dashboard to do the same!
You can also check out last month’s newsletter for tips for reusing previous courses and assignments and contact us if you need a quote or answers to any questions!
How Are Your Students Doing?
We’ve made some awesome improvements to tools available to track student progress!
— Use a pre-test to easily show student growth; just select “Include a Baseline Test in Assignments” on the Class Details tab of your Admin Tools.
— Gauge student understanding with review tests, which are now automatically added at the end of each assignment whenever available.
— Use the Reports tab in your Admin Tools to see your students’ progress on baseline tests, assigned lessons, and review tests all in one report.
If you have any questions about these changes, just reach out.
Updated Courses
We updated a few more courses over the last month. Click on the linked course titles below to check them out!
2016 Advanced Parts: this course is a comprehensive guide to the advanced features and options in SOLIDWORKS and is a great next step for students after Core Concepts.
Weldments: learn how to create welded structures and structural members, including 3D sketching, trimming, grouping structural members, and documenting weldments in 2D drawings.
Visualization and Appearances: learn how to use the appearance settings in SOLIDWORKS, including adding scenes, appearances, lighting, and decals.
DriveWorksExpress: this course teaches how to automate the design of parts using DriveWorksExpress by setting up design rules and parameters to generate new designs automatically.
Toolbox and Design Library: the Design Library stores reusable elements like parts, assemblies, and sketches. This course covers the capabilities of the Design Library, including adding features to the Library and editing toolbox hardware.
Advanced Assemblies: learn how to utilize sub-assemblies, assembly features, and configurations to their full extent, as well as how to design assemblies using the top-down method and troubleshoot mates.
Improve Student Performance with a Flipped Classroom
Active-learning strategies, like the use of flipped classrooms, significantly improve performance of all students, especially those who are female, minority, low-income, and first-generation college students. Using resources like SolidProfessor that allow you to move the lecture portion of your class online and spend class time on problem-solving activities facilitates improved exam scores. In a study of university math and science classes by researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Yale University, students’ exam scores improved by nearly 12%, and the gender gap in exam scores was nearly eliminated for students in flipped classrooms. Check out the full article for more of the benefits of flipping your classroom.
Join us at W XYZ Bar at SOLIDWORKS World 2016!
We’ll be at SOLIDWORKS World 2016 and would love to see you! Join us at X XYZ on Monday, February 1, 2016, from 7:30-9:30 p.m. We’ll be providing drinks and appetizers! Click here to RSVP – see you there!
Thanks for reading!
As always, I’d love to hear from you! Please don’t hesitate to reach out!
Megan Davidson Director of Customer Success mdavidson@solidprofessor.com (619) 376-1451
