Permission to be Confused

by Samuel Nicholas Ramsey, Group in Logic Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2017 In my first year of graduate school, a math professor confessed to me that it was only late in their graduate school career that they learned that most mathematicians spend their time feeling completely confused. This should be Continue Reading >>

Teaching Students to Value Hands-on Signal Processing Skills

by Frank Ong, Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2017 The undergraduate digital signal processing class, EE123, was a class that introduced mathematical theory about data processing together with a series of hands-on programming assignments. These programming assignments were based on real-life applications and demonstrated the principles Continue Reading >>

Reading Quizzes: a Mild Technological Innovation

by Jeffrey Kaplan, Philosophy Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2017 In my experience, there is one problem that plagues higher education, especially in the humanities and social sciences. It is not a subtle problem. But it prevents progress in virtually every area of the educational and classroom experience. If this one Continue Reading >>

First Contact: Getting Things Done on Day One

by Claire Duquennois, Agricultural and Resource Economics Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2017 The first meeting of section is extremely important as it sets the tone for the rest of the semester. Despite this, it can easily turn into a hodge-podge of administrative activities that can leave students disinterested. Going over Continue Reading >>

Ethics Beyond the Textbook

by Alexandria Yuan, Business Administration (Home Department: Goldman School of Public Policy) Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2016 The Problem: There are two things that I have to actively fight in the classroom: complacency, and its closely related cousin, a kind of superficial motivation for students to participate in class simply Continue Reading >>