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.
by Gretchen Purser, Sociology Not unlike Dante in the first canto of The Inferno, the students "found [themselves] within a shadowed forest," clutching these maps, but unable to translate the signs, symbols, and pathways of each map to the actual structures, systems and institutions that make up the social world.
by Ajeet Shankar, Computer Science I quickly realized that it was imprudent simply to hope that they would develop an intuition about reductions; it had taken me years to nurture my own intuition, after all, and I would be expecting my students to cultivate theirs in a matter of weeks! So I formulated a method for my students that made solving reductions easier.
by David Gard, Psychology Diagnosis is mistakenly perceived as a tool to separate our (normal) behavior from their (abnormal) behavior. Thus, without careful consideration of how diagnostic categories help and hinder our understanding of being human, it is easy to slip into a tautological position: a behavior is abnormal if it falls within a mental disorder diagnostic category. I tried a number of strategies to underscore the fuzzy boundaries between normalcy and abnormality.
by Antar Bandyopadhyay, Statistics The most important part was to make the students realize that what they were learning was not just some abstract nonsense but, some part of an universal language, which would give them necessary skills to “communicate” among themselves irrespective of their backgrounds and interests.
by Melina Esse, Music I wanted the students to understand the difference between listening and hearing. In order to succeed in the course, they would need to practice directed listening: "listening for" rather than "listening to."
by Terry O'Brien, Integrative Biology In my experience, no matter how much students practice...skills, few are able to develop a clear conceptual matrix for those skills without significant guidance from the instructor. A direct approach to this problem means that the instructor first provides students with the scaffolding of concepts for each skill.