Newsletter 17: Interview with Jeanne Parmentier, Head of the Educational Experimentation Center (CEP) of the Institut Villebon – Georges Charpak

What is the Educational Experimentation Center?

The Educational Experimentation Center, or CEP for short, is part of the Institut Villebon – Georges Charpak and is located on the Orsay Campus. It’s a 450 m² space where teaching staff from the Institute’s founding members
– which include ParisTech – can work on educational projects and resources. The facility offers multiple, flexible spaces to meet users’needs, including a pleasant reception area, co-working spaces, a workshop dedicated to the creation of learning objects, meeting rooms, video and design studios, and more.

We have three objectives:

• To create new training programs;
• To provide teaching staff with a space where they can meet with peers;
• To build bridges between teaching practice and research in various fields (education sciences, cognitive science, etc.) and, where applicable, support researchers who want to measure the impact of a new teaching method/program and publish the results in a scientific article.

How can staff from the ParisTech schools benefit from the teaching methods developed at the Institute?

Teaching staff from any of the Institute’s founding universities and schools are welcome to come to the CEP and work on educational projects. It’s an opportunity to talk to other CEP members and benefit from a workspace dedicated to teaching practice and materials. We also offer long-term arrangements for projects that fall within the center’s focus areas. For example, this year, Fabienne Bernard and Sébastien de Rossi from the Institut d’Optique have been granted special leave to develop an educational innovation, and have chosen to spend one day a week
at the center working on their project.

Two other lecturers/researchers, from the Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, also come here once a week to write research articles on teaching topics.

We run a number of activities too:

• The Journal Club, which is a monthly reflection group that looks at education-related research. Staff can take part online or in person.
• Communities of practice, including one for the teaching of mathematics, and another for chemistry. Here, teaching staff regularly meet up to discuss teaching issues within their field (e.g. why do students struggle in science subjects due to mathematics?) or attend mini-courses on specific topics (e.g. mathematical reasoning).
• One-off workshops, usually to provide training on new tools.

In addition, we publish a selection of resources on our website, such as recipe cards for teaching methods, videos, educational games, and a guide to evaluating teaching methods. The resources are available for staff to consult and download for free if they cannot come to the center in person.

Lastly, from time to time we take part in teaching events organized at our partner schools, where we lead workshops or conferences.

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