Karra Awarded CTL Blended Learning Grant
Mahesh Karra, Assistant Professor of Global Development Policy at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, recently received a fellowship grant from the Boston University Center for Teaching and Learning Blended Learning Challenge for his IR 602 course to be taught during the Spring 2017 semester.
The Center for Teaching and Learning initiative supports a cohort of faculty from across Boston University as they blend their courses. Faculty will learn evidence-based teaching strategies that best promote students’ learning in blended environments. Participating faculty will represent an array of disciplines and will receive support from CTL and Education Technology staff members for the (re)design, delivery, evaluation and reflection of their courses.
Blended classes deliver about 30-70 percent of their course online, purposefully align face-to-face and online components, and deliberately embed active learning techniques into all aspects of the course. A well-designed blended course engages and motivates students to learn outside of class as well as in the classroom, with in-class activities offering students significant intellectual engagement.
Karra’s academic and research interests are broadly in development economics, health economics, quantitative methods, and applied demography. His research utilizes experimental and non-experimental methods to investigate the relationships between population, health, and economic development in low- and middle-income countries.