by Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan, Rhetoric [A]sked to write an essay that deals with more than one primary text, [students’] tendency is ... to either illustrate the ways in which the texts make equivalent arguments, or to pit one text/author against the other… I realized that I needed to do more to teach students what it means to bring two texts “into conversation.”
by Jesse Cordes Selbin, English I believe that education functions best when students are not merely passive recipients, but collaborative creators, of knowledge. To that end, I designed an ongoing assignment wherein students used online software to contribute to a collective historical timeline of the nineteenth century...The function of the timeline was primarily informational: it was intended to give a deeper understanding of a historical era. But its crucial secondary function was to ask students to reconceptualize their own role as creators and perpetrators of historical narrative.
by Naomi Leite, Anthropology The first section presents a double challenge...Simply put, how can a GSI use the first section to engage a disparate group of students who are not necessarily enthusiastic about their enrollment in a course whose topic they don’t yet understand?
by Carolyn Sparrey, Mechanical Engineering Due to the restrictions of the classroom I could not simply bring in tissue for the students to experiment with. Rather, I needed something tissue-like but without the mess and, because I was supplying the materials myself, at minimal cost. The solution was chewing gum.
by Wendy Sinek, Political Science I have my students play "Political Challenge," an interactive game that I designed...During the course of the game, teams debate possible approaches to a question, and then explain the material in their own words in order to earn points. Harder questions are not only worth more points, they also require more active participation, such as staging a mini role-play or debate.
by Timothy Randazzo, Ethnic Studies Last summer I made the decision to alter my approach to teaching radically, and the result was the highest level of analytical thinking and enthusiasm among my students that I have ever seen in my six years of teaching...I decided upon three principles to guide my formulation of class activities and assignments: 1) there will be no lectures, 2) there will be no exams, and 3) whenever possible, student work will be reintegrated into the class, rather than being just “for the instructor.”
by David Radwin, Political Science Learning by doing has a long history in educational theory, even if it is uncommon in practice...The analysis and rearrangement of facts which is indispensable to the growth of knowledge and power of explanation and right classification cannot be attained purely mentally-just inside the head...The challenge for undergraduate education is how to create activities, within the constraints of the university setting, that challenge students to discover answers on their own.
An overview of behaviorism, cognitive constructivism, and social constructivism.
Key points from talks given by Arthur Shimamura and John Kihlstrom, professors in the Department of Psychology.
Research in the field of psychology can help GSIs better motivate their students. Based on a talk by Martin Covington (Psychology).