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.
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.
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?
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.
by Jessica Smith, Chemistry
Prepared students are slow because they meticulously follow the directions rather than thinking critically about the purpose of each step…Students of science become scientists as they begin to comprehend how different steps contribute to an experiment rather than blindly following directions.
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.
by Shanthi Nataraj, Agricultural & Resource Economics (Home Department: Economics)
I noticed that the students’ analyses of environmental issues in their problem sets improved. Most students still stated strong opinions about environmental issues – but now, they were able to back up their opinions with economic reasoning.
by Justin Underhill, History of Art
After 20 minutes of excited measurement and discussion, the groups disbanded and I led a very successful discussion about San Francesco della Vigna. Students challenged one another and made observations that I had not noticed. I always know I have succeeded when my students teach me how to look anew.
by Laurel Westbrook, Sociology
In order to give every student the chance to learn, I always try to present important concepts in multiple ways. In my seven semesters of teaching, I have found that drawing concepts and theories has been the teaching technique that reaches the largest number of students.
by Jelani Mahiri, Anthropology
The production of “field notes,” descriptive writings about one’s field research, is an ambiguous enterprise for most students, yet an important part of anthropological methodology. Thus a key issue for professors and GSIs is: How do we build on students’ previous writing experiences, but move them beyond the notion of field notes as a personal journal, for example, to conceptualizing field notes as concrete description of events, interactions, people, and places within their research setting?