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 Sean Tanner, Public Policy I experimented with a method of collecting student feedback that would force the students to make tradeoffs in my time and effort. I gave them a list of the potentially alterable activities I perform as a teacher...All told, I had eighteen hours per week to distribute across nine teaching activities. Each student reapportioned my time to suit his needs.
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 Sarah Macdonald, Sociology While teaching Sociology 5: Evaluation of Evidence, I encountered a problem that is not unique: how, as GSIs, can we prepare our students for challenging final exams without teaching exclusively to the exam?
by Jennifer McGuire, Integrative Biology Despite my efforts, the students continued to struggle with the exam material. It seemed to me that, despite my making the study material available to them, most of the students would not take advantage of it or study in a timely manner unless they had some graded incentive. The next semester when I taught the course, I decided to try to help my students achieve better test results by getting them to study for the exams earlier. To do this, I changed the way in which I quizzed the students.
by Robert Held, Bioengineering My goals were to gauge the students' comprehension of the material, provide an assessment of the professor's effectiveness for the class as a whole, and help everyone understand the concepts more thoroughly. I adopted a three-tier solution to the issue of uneven experience. Brief quizzes, multimedia presentations, and interactive study sessions were employed.
by Veronica Herrera, Political Science I thought that many of these students would go on to teach, facilitate presentations in future careers, give public speeches, or otherwise coordinate and instruct a group of colleagues, students, etc. The way sections were commonly taught did not allow for them to be constructors of the material in order to prepare for such a career, but rather the students were often passive digesters.
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 Elizabeth Shank, Molecular and Cell Biology It was not necessary to understand the reasoning behind doing any single step, since the protocols in the laboratory manual made it easy to simply "follow the directions." Because most of my students were reasonably adept at performing the mechanical aspects of each lab...it was all the more difficult to ensure that they understood why they were doing something.
by Lyn Paleo, Public Health I believe that students in a practice-based field...should receive a combination of theory and skills development. Theory-based lectures are critical; however, they alone are insufficient to the task of teaching people how to design and conduct evaluations for health promotion programs.