Purdue Libraries Dean to Speak Feb. 11 in Free eEducation Lecture

Jim Mullins Will Focus on Purdue’s Active Learning Center

MELBOURNE, FLA. —Purdue University’s dean of libraries will speak about his institution’s planned Active Learning Center in a free public lecture at 2 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 11 in the Hartley Room at the Denius Student Center as part of Florida Institute of Technology’s eEducation lecture series.

James L. Mullins has over 40 years of library experience, including the last decade at Purdue as libraries dean and the Esther Ellis Norton Professor. He came to Purdue from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was associate director for administration.

Mullins will talk about Purdue’s experience with active learning, the instructional concept that involves offering lectures outside class time through electronic means, while using in-class time to work with student teams who are exploring and putting into practice what they are studying.

Five years ago, Purdue launched Instruction Matters: Purdue Active Course Transformation (IMPACT), which brought together specialists, including a pedagogist, a technologist and a librarian, who then work with a faculty member to help reshape their courses using the tenets of active learning.

Purdue also explored the use of rooms as active learning classrooms, opening up several in the undergraduate library to much success and then embarking on the more ambitious combined classroom and library building called the Active Learning Center, which is scheduled to open in 2017.

For more information on Florida Tech’s eEducation lecture series, contact University Professor Mary Bonhomme at bonhomme@fit.edu or (321) 674-8883.

###