Harvard professor Dr. Eric Mazur will give the keynote speech, “Confessions of a Converted Lecturer,” at Missouri University of Science and Technology’s Teaching and Learning Technology (TLT) Conference 2011. His presentation will be held from 10:30 a.m.-noon Thursday, March 10, in Room 125 Butler-Carlton Civil Engineering Hall on the university’s campus.

Mazur is the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University and the author of Peer Instruction: A User’s Manual.

“I thought I was a good teacher until I discovered my students were just memorizing information rather than learning to understand the material,” says Mazur. He will explain how he discovered his teaching method caused students to fail and how he adjusted his approach to significantly improve his students’ performance.

See a brief YouTube video with highlights of Mazur’s method.

The two-day conference has a full schedule of events. Held on Thursday and Friday, March 10-11, this is a free opportunity for instructors to see how colleagues use technology to enhance their classroom instruction. Find out more about the conference and register online.

The TLT Conference 2011 is an annual event hosted by Missouri S&T’s educational technology (EdTech) department. Mazur’s appearance is sponsored by EdTech and Missouri S&T’s Center for Educational Research and Teaching Innovation (CERTI).