Pell Center presents Educating the Innovators of the 21st Century

Can we teach innovation? Innovation requires whole-brain thinking — left-brain thinking for creativity and imagination, and right-brain thinking for planning and execution. Our current approach to education in science and technology, focuses on the transfer of information, developing mostly right-brain thinking by stressing copying and reproducing existing ideas rather than generating new ones. I will show how shifting the focus in lectures from delivering information to team work and creative thinking greatly improves the learning that takes place in the classroom and promotes independent thinking.

Eric Mazur is the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University and Dean of Applied Physics. He is a prominent physicist known for his contributions in nano photonics, an internationally recognized educational innovator, a sought-after lecturer, and successful entrepreneur. In education he is widely known for his work on Peer Instruction, an interactive teaching method aimed at engaging students in the classroom and beyond. Mazur has received many awards for his work in physics and in education and has founded several successful companies. Mazur is Chief Academic Advisor for Turning Technologies, a company developing interactive response systems for the education market. Dr. Mazur is author or co-author of 258 scientific publications and 23 patents. He has also written extensively on education and is the author of Peer Instruction: A User's Manual (Prentice Hall, 1997), a book that explains how to teach large lecture classes interactively. In 2006 he helped produce the award-winning DVD Interactive Teaching.

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