conceptual knowledge

(Feminist) Dreams Really Do Come True

by Anastasia Kayiatos, Slavic
As the students of the introductory course (many of them first-years) sift through these dense texts (for many, their first brushes with theory), it is easy for them to feel alienated by the language….My job is to make sure they know that feminist theory’s difficult lexicon is not an exercise in esotericism designed to disempower them. On the contrary, I strive to demonstrate throughout the semester, feminist scholars invent new vocabulary with a deliberate political aim of empowerment.

Free in Theory: Teaching Gender in Historical Perspective

by Gina Zupsich, French
For my students, gender was, and had always been, a personal choice. The queer literature we were studying was fantasy indeed to students in a post-feminist world on an LGTBQ-friendly campus….If we were to understand the radical messages of our texts, I realized that I would have to put these theories into historical perspective and in living color.

Using Prediction, Competition, and Reflection to Make Connections in Calculus II

by Danielle Champney, Education, SESAME
I view Calculus II as more than just a solution-finding mission or strategy game. Students will learn little or resort to untested pattern-matching if I simply tell them what method to use each time they encounter a new problem! Learning how concepts in class are reflected in procedures used to solve problems is, to me, a core principle of the course.

Teaching Young Scientists to Speak the Way They Think

by Seemay Chou, Molecular and Cell Biology
I found that the problem was not rooted in lack of comprehension but an imprecision in their scientific language, owing to their lack of experience in the field. They felt that they knew the answers but could not express what they were trying to say…They needed to think and speak in the same language as scientists.

Training Molecular MacGyvers Using the Immunologist’s Toolbox

by Nicholas Arpaia, Molecular and Cell Biology
I designed what I called the Immunologist’s Toolbox, a running list of techniques that the students could refer to when it came time for them to design experiments. They were able to draw from this list to act like molecular MacGyvers and use the reagents that they were given in particular scenario-based questions to answer them.

The Theory Scare: Teaching Students How to Grasp Abstract Ideas

by Polina Dimova, Comparative Literature
I needed to teach my students to trace complicated theoretical arguments and pinpoint and articulate the concepts that underlay them. I had to empower my students through theory and not let them despair by succumbing to the theory scare, to their assumption that theory is just too tough and they just don’t get it.

Searching for the ‘Big Picture’

by Ladan Foose, Chemical Engineering
My goal was to figure out how to address this lack of “big picture” understanding in my sections and office hours, while still getting to the material I was asked to cover by the instructor and the many homework questions that the students had. My favorite tool is actually very simple. Some of my students call it “storybook time.”

Using a Focal Organism as a Teaching Tool in General Biology

by Maria Goodrich, Integrative Biology
My goals when teaching Bio 1B are…to help [students] move beyond rote memorization of definitions … and to make [them] comfortable with using scientific literature and the scientific method to answer questions. I tried to meet these goals by assigning each of my students to find a focal organism that would help them connect to the course material throughout the semester.

Teaching Students with Diverse Backgrounds

by Matias Cattaneo, Economics
I was facing a big challenge: I had to teach highly technical topics to a very diverse audience. More importantly, I had to do this while following the pace of the professor’s lectures, attending to the demands of the students with strong technical skills, and preventing those students with relatively less preparation for this class from falling behind.

Solar System on a Laptop: Visualizing the Dynamic Universe

by Daniel Perley, Astronomy
In this case, words and diagrams were the problem, and no amount of them would solve it. My solution, instead, was to produce for my students an animated simulation of the motion of the planets around the sun, and display it on one wall using an LCD projector.