by Catherine Becker, History of Art I, the eager GSI, launched into an examination of Jomon pots and Yayoi bells; however, so many of the students’ basic questions had no answer that the class became frustrated and uninterested...I wanted to encourage more student participation. How could I engage my students in a productive and thoughtful conversation about objects from the distant past?
by Kimberly Cassibry, History of Art I wanted my students to recognize the urban impact of such monuments as the Colosseum and Trajan's Column, and to do that, I had to help them imagine the way Rome looked before these structures existed.
by Lael Gold, Comparative Literature Despite in-class instruction and a detailed handout on the subject of thesis and essay construction, the first batch of essays from students in my comparative literature course on literary depictions of woman warriors shared some fundamental shortcomings...I aimed at remedying [their] writing problems in a manner that would simultaneously deepen our engagement with the work presently under consideration, the fantastical Renaissance crusader epic Jerusalem Delivered.
by Alexander Diesl, Mathematics The ability to write mathematical proofs is not a result of genius but rather of an understanding of the language of mathematics. Students think that they lack fundamental understanding when they in fact lack only the ability to translate their intuition into mathematically precise statements.
by Amanda Heddle, Environmental Science, Policy and Management In the semester I taught...there were twenty-eight students enrolled which, in a content intensive course, presents a problem for developing activities that are inquiry-based. The immediate problems I faced as a teacher for this class were how to take the content of the class and facilitate learning through inquiry rather than memorization, and how to make sure that students received personal assistance with specific problems they faced when trying to identify their specimens.
by Meredith Thomsen, Integrative Biology My students' papers clearly reflected the problems they had with group writing. For some, the sections appeared to be written by different individuals and then pieced together, with big swings in quality between sections; other papers seemed to be the work of a single student who had taken over the entire project...Spring semester, I decided to break the assignment into two sections.
by Ana Villa-Lobos, Sociology "Showing" students how sociology is done, letting them witness the process of the sociological analysis of raw data, live and uncensored, is almost universally absent from the classroom. This leaves a shroud of mystery over the process, with many students intimidated and confused when it comes to their own research projects. I decided to try to incorporate this missing component into my own teaching.
by Francesca Rivera, Music Without the terminology or solid knowledge of the historical context in which the composers worked, students can't move beyond simplistic taste statements...or value-laden judgments. My problem, then, was to help them quickly memorize key musical concepts with sufficient depth of understanding to recall the term and apply it effectively, and, to help them connect the works of individual composers with the larger time period in which they lived.
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.
by Sarah Cunningham, Integrative Biology The basic evolutionary and ecological concepts and principles are not difficult to understand...However, in order to tie them together and apply them in the solution of novel problems, students must learn to think scientifically and within an evolutionary framework. It is another kind of common sense that the students must develop, and it often runs contrary to the assumptions they are used to making.