Posts by gsi

The End of Romance: Teaching Students to Rethink ‘Wild’ Africa

by Amy Wolfson, African American Studies One of the most poignant challenges I faced while teaching...was grappling with the preconceived notions and biases about Africa that students bring to the classroom. Romanticized and exoticized as wild, uncivilized, and mystical, Africa is often portrayed in the media as a homogenous space full of wild animals, warring tribes, and dictators...For most of [my students], Africa had modern problems, but no modern cultures.

Incorporating Active Learning and Technology into Teaching Economics

by Marquise McGraw, Economics I innovated by...creat[ing] an exercise that required students to integrate multiple concepts and skills to solve...This type of activity proved to be much more effective in promoting student learning than the standard “chalk and talk” delivery.

‘Is This Right?’ Building Confidence in Scientific Reasoning

by Francesca Fornasini, Astronomy I realized that they had little or no confidence in their answers and that they did not have any strategies for assessing the reasonableness of their solutions. Therefore, I tried to incorporate into my discussion sections a variety of strategies to help my students test the reasonableness of their answers.

Maximizing the Impact of GSI Feedback through Reflections on Writing

by Rebecca Elliott, Sociology In deference to the time they put into writing their exams, I spend considerable time writing up my reactions. I provide substantive feedback in the form of questions and comments, in both marginal notes and in a narrative paragraph...[but] how could I ensure that my students read, reflected, and internalized my feedback in a way that would improve their skills and enhance their learning?

Providing Skills, Not Summaries: Improving Reading Comprehension in Political Theory

by Mark Fisher, Political Science This...made me think quite differently about the GSI’s role in section...While our first impulse is often to try and “translate” the lecture into an idiom they are more comfortable with, this experience convinced me that the greatest service we can perform for students is to teach them the skills needed to speak our language.

References without Referents (Or, How My Class Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Thomas Pynchon)

by Sarah Chihaya, Comparative Literature How could I possibly communicate the intertextual quality central to the novel’s style to my students, when most of them didn’t have the exhaustive literary and historical background that Pynchon’s proliferating cultural references — which swing wildly from erudite literary digs, to Sixties-specific pop cultural allusions, to puerile humor — seem to demand?

Self-Portraiture as a Teaching Tool

by William Coleman, History of Art It was my hope that paintings that have meant so much to me could be made to speak anew...[that] canvases laden with allegorical references would become legible again, equipping our group of newcomers with crucial analytical skills for the course...Despite best laid plans, it became apparent early in the semester that many students found these complex paintings...utterly incomprehensible.

Understanding Long-Term Ecological Change with Tree Rings

by Kevin Krasnow, Environmental Science, Policy, and Management I decided to leverage my own research to devise an inquiry-based experience for students to explore the history of our own Sierra Nevada forests...This led to a lively discussion...[and the students] were engaged in a way that they never would have been if I had merely told them the history of fire in the Sierras.

Using Students’ Design Work to Teach Design Theory and Criticism

by Shawhin Roudbari, Architecture When students brought their own work to this “theory class” they crossed a threshold...It’s one thing for students to read that postmodernism in architecture was partly a post-Fordist reaction to a modernist ethos. It’s another thing for them to situate their own work in an un-periodized historical context of the present.

Anatomy of an Essay

by Lynn Huang, English I realized that students did not understand the difference between evidence and analysis in their own writing....I introduced the idea that we can “dissect” and analytically color-code an essay in order to make its internal structure visible, and to determine what makes it an effective (or ineffective) paper.