by Mathew Gelbart, Music I feel strongly that a course of this nature should not give musically experienced students an unfair advantage, especially since it is nominally geared toward those with little to no musical background. I want the less experienced students to come away not with an inferiority complex, but rather, with a new interest in some exciting music.
by Paul Dosh, Political Science Encouraging diverse forms of participation began on the first day of class with the tone that I set and the grading system I presented...[and] required persistent and explicit efforts throughout the semester.
by Brian Current, Music We recreated the ambient sounds I recorded by "performing" the piece as a class. Dividing the parts up as one would for a choir, we assigned some students as the "chair-squeakers", some as the "sighers", some as the "inhalers", and one...as the "pencil-clicker". With myself as conductor, we proceeded to perform our twenty seconds of music, producing a sound world not unlike that which I had heard the week before...I asked them: "Is this music?"
by Steve Dawson, Astronomy Any physical problem, as well as all of the associated formalism, can be rendered not only intelligible but even pleasurable if the student first achieves a gut sense of the physical situation. Put plainly, all of the math in any science class makes sense if the student first has an intuitive mental picture of exactly what is going on.
by Kate Elkins, Comparative Literature In presenting a very "postmodern" novel, I wondered what approach to take to ensure that students did not become frustrated. One of the challenges in teaching composition classes is that students bring to the classroom a wide variety of interests and backgrounds. Few will go on to study literature, and many embark on the study of literature with a fair amount of skepticism. I therefore hesitated to approach the work using a standard "literary approach."
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.