Teaching Causality through an Experiment

by Ashwin Mandakolathur Balu, Public Policy Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2021 Using experimental methods to establish causal relationships has been the holy grail of research in social sciences. However, it is a challenge to teach these concepts since it requires knowledge about sampling methods, statistics, and probability, as well as Continue Reading >>

Making it Matter: Connecting Theory to Reality in Economics

by Jonathan Schellenberg, Economics Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2018 In the social sciences, we seek to understand all types of human behaviors. Economics, my sub- discipline, formalizes these actions with mathematical models, both to reduce the complexity of the world and to highlight the rules that we believe govern human Continue Reading >>

How Research on Student Learning Explains the Effectiveness of Empirically Driven Classroom Activities

by Elise Piazza, Vision Science Recipient of the Teagle Foundation Award for Excellence in Enhancing Student Learning, 2014 Related Teaching Effectiveness Award essay: Achieving Widespread Participation through Evidence-Based Classroom Discourse As a GSI for Introduction to Cognitive Science, I developed several empirically driven activities to increase student participation by engaging Continue Reading >>

Developing Interactive Applets to Help Students Visualize Multivariable Calculus

by Thunwa Theerakarn, Mathematics
For many concepts in this subject, having geometric intuition is very helpful for a better understanding. However, many students struggle to visualize these concepts because they cannot actually “see” them…To help students develop geometric thinking, I used Mathematica to create interactive applets that can display multiple three-dimensional graphics at the same time and can overlay extra information on those graphics.

Problem Solving and the Random Number Generator

by Justin Hollenback, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Based on the mistakes the students were making, I felt that the example problems I presented weren’t conveying the material as well as I wanted. Students did not appear engaged or actively learning during lecture. In response, I developed a strategy … to make the process of working out example problems in class more interactive.