by Charles Scott Combs, Film Studies Though I teach Roland Barthes’ “Death of the Author” as an illustrious example of how criticism broadens our regard of fictional works, the essay threatens to plunge class thought and discussion into an abyss...The problem I face is the temptation students have to read Barthes’ criticism (and the majority of criticism in general)...as an overly-simplified polytheism of reader pleasure.
by Kathryn Pearson, Political Science It became clear that students were not absorbing the readings or lectures outlining the process nor my repeated explanations of the differences between a budget resolution, an authorization bill, and an appropriations bill. The congressional budget process presented a greater challenge than did any other topic covered in the U.S. Congress class.
by Edith Replogle Sheffer, History I distributed piles of arrows, blank paper, and colored markers, and announced we would construct our diagram of the Revolution on the table. Following a rough chronological order, we built the map one index card at a time. A student would read their card aloud; the group then discussed its significance and debated where to place it.
by Viswanath Sankaran, Mathematics Integral Calculus poses a new challenge. Here, most problems involve a crucial "guessing" step (called the substitution) that transform them into more amenable problems. An "insightful" guess leads to the solution, a "wrong" guess can get one stuck. So the question is: How can a teacher communicate this insight?
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 Helen Boucher, Psychology I felt that any discussion of culture and ethnicity had to include an understanding of the prejudice and discrimination that can occur as a result of them. Discussing these topics is understandably difficult, however, and what usually happens is that students clam up and won’t participate, usually out of embarrassment and fear of offending other students. I tried to solve this problem in a somewhat controversial way.
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 Laura Basini, Music I wanted to bring a seemingly abstract concept to life by placing students in an unfamiliar position: that of the composer. They would have to engage more actively with each passage of music, working out what each did in musical terms, and how each led to and from its neighbors.
by Susan Schwab, Molecular and Cell Biology The professor asked me to give a section about the complement pathway (for killing bacteria)...to my horror, I found that the textbook had 20 pages of "C4bC2b cleaves C3, and then..." So I divided the section into three parts based on a play, each of was designed to reach different students and add another layer to the discussion.
by Kimberly Johnson, English My students approached the readings for my course with a combination of resentment and trepidation...They were reluctant to believe that these alien, stiff, wrought verses could be understood by a 21st-century readership, much less that they could provoke any passion other than boredom.