by Michael Song, Integrative Biology Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2021 The coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing changes to campus life have posed severe challenges for undergraduate instructors. Adapting to remote instruction was especially difficult for classes traditionally taught using in-person laboratories, which focus on the hands-on investigation of objects of…
by Skyler Wang, Sociology Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2021 In a 2020 midterm evaluation form I sent to my students, I included the question: “What makes writing a course paper challenging for you?” Aside from the usual suspects such as work overload, lack of motivation, procrastination, etc., I noticed a…
by Andrew Estrada Phuong, Education Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2021 A key national and campuswide issue is low persistence and retention rates for underrepresented students in STEM disciplines. Serving as Head Graduate Student Instructor for Computer Science (CS) 370 and 375 pedagogy courses with faculty members Christopher Hunn and Dan…
by Victor Reyes-Umana, Plant and Microbial Biology Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2019 A game of hot potato, borrowing a book from the library, and how a crowd of people enters a room may not sound like relevant topics to bring up during a Biology 1A discussion—but for my students, these…
by Rachael Olliff Yang, Integrative Biology Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2019 At the beginning of every class, instructors are faced with the challenge of encouraging participation. I was able to successfully increase class participation using phenomena-based inquiry. In Fall 2018 I co-taught the field section and lab of General Biology…
by Sonia Travaglini, College of Engineering (Home Department: Mechanical Engineering) Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2018 Working to support the Masters of Engineering capstone projects, my hardest challenge was teaching students to communicate the value and significance of their highly technical work. Students had to learn science writing; how to use…
by Varsha Desai, Chemistry Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2018 Experiments in chemistry laboratories often have complex protocols where students perform several steps sequentially to obtain a “correct” product. Seemingly small mistakes can result in a domino effect that leads to inconclusive end results. For example, students forget to “mix” a…
by Jingxun Chen, Molecular and Cell Biology Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2018 Challenge: Genetics is a difficult subject for many students because of its abstract concepts. In other MCB classes, students often learn biology through descriptive narratives—each step of a cellular process is drawn out, organisms’ morphologies are compared, or…
By Alexandra Courtois de Vicose, History of Art When confronted with a Monet water landscape last spring and asked, “What do you see?” [my students] rightly answered, “A boat.” “You understand this shape as a boat because, culturally, you know what a boat looks like. Keep in mind, however, this is but an amalgamation of pigment on a two-dimensional surface. So, really, what do you see?”
by Jordan Greenwald, Comparative Literature I...came to realize that this lesson could not be learned through class discussion alone, since asking these questions while leading discussion is pedagogically less effective than getting students to ask those questions themselves. I therefore decided, with the encouragement of my co-instructor, to design a group assignment that would familiarize students with the choices one makes when bringing a dramatic text to life.