Learning Why and not just How

by Anamika Chowdhury, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2019 “I practiced all the homework questions, attended all classes, and even went over lecture notes multiple times… still failed to score well. I give up!” I was rather perplexed to hear such distraught statements from several students in Continue Reading >>

Contextualizing Social Theory with Collaborative Timelines

by Nicholas Anderman, Geography Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2019 In Geography 112, a challenging, upper-division course, students read canonical social theory (Marx and Engels, Antonio Gramsci, Franz Fanon, etc.) alongside historical texts that show how these thinkers’ key concepts emerged out of particular events. A key learning outcome of the 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 >>

Why Am I Doing What I Am Doing?

by Varsha Desai, Chemistry Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2018 Experiments in chemistry laboratories often have complex protocols where students perform several steps sequentially to obtain a “correct” product. Seemingly small mistakes can result in a domino effect that leads to inconclusive end results. For example, students forget to “mix” a Continue Reading >>

Teaching the Politics of Representation in Development Studies

by Brittany Meché, Geography Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2017 “Introduction to Development Studies” is a lower division survey course tackling some of the world’s most pressing issues. From refugee resettlement to gender-based violence to humanitarian famine relief, the course teaches students to evaluate reports from international organizations like the World Continue Reading >>

First Contact: Getting Things Done on Day One

by Claire Duquennois, Agricultural and Resource Economics Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2017 The first meeting of section is extremely important as it sets the tone for the rest of the semester. Despite this, it can easily turn into a hodge-podge of administrative activities that can leave students disinterested. Going over Continue Reading >>