by Ko-Ay Timmy Siauw, College of Engineering E7 students...spend a great deal of time on their homework but have very little to show for it at the end of the week...I recognized a teaching problem that could be remedied, and thus I created a solution that would allow..students to learn MATLAB in a fun — yet challenging — environment: the E7 Robot Tournament.
by Zoe Harris, Public Health One morning, my classroom was abuzz with a debate over whether to vote yes or no on Proposition 2...Instead of my original lesson plan, carefully typed up with several handouts, I sat and listened to their debate. Students who only spoke when I cold-called them were the center of the discussion. “STOP!” I raised my arms while students glared at me nervously. “Today, we are going to apply Wilson’s theory of concentrated versus diffuse interests to decide which way you would vote on Proposition 2.” (Stunned looks all around.)
by Molly Babel, Linguistics I find the largest problem in teaching a class like Linguistics 110 is keeping the intellectually split student body focused, interested, and comprehending the material at hand. I have found the key to this problem is to provide students with theoretically relevant real-world linguistic examples.
by John DeNero, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science The course’s original syllabus began with a conceptual roadmap of how various problems related to each other. But since our students didn’t understand the individual problems yet, they didn’t understand the purpose of the framework...To infuse continuity into the course, I designed a series of projects around Pacman, a classic video game with lots of retro charm.
by Ladan Foose, Chemical Engineering My goal was to figure out how to address this lack of “big picture” understanding in my sections and office hours, while still getting to the material I was asked to cover by the instructor and the many homework questions that the students had. My favorite tool is actually very simple. Some of my students call it “storybook time."
by Naomi Kohen, Materials Science and Engineering In order to make the demos more relevant and interactive for the students, all of the soft material systems examined were food-based...The promise of a lab that yielded edible results provided an effective motivation for the students to stay for the extra credit labs.
by James Ramey, Comparative Literature I was dismayed to find that we had been located in a small, windowless basement room in Haas Pavilion. Claustrophobia heightened my awareness of the need for the students to get along, which led me to wonder how I might structure my course, not only as an intellectual opportunity but also as a social one.
by Mary Trahanovsky, Materials Science & Engineering These methods consume lab and instructor time and neither method is effective in getting students to really think about what will be going on in the lab or how difficult the experiments and lab questions will be. The strategy I used was to make students responsible for deciding what they do in lab.
by Timothy Randazzo, Ethnic Studies Last summer I made the decision to alter my approach to teaching radically, and the result was the highest level of analytical thinking and enthusiasm among my students that I have ever seen in my six years of teaching...I decided upon three principles to guide my formulation of class activities and assignments: 1) there will be no lectures, 2) there will be no exams, and 3) whenever possible, student work will be reintegrated into the class, rather than being just “for the instructor.”
by Christopher Rider, Business Administration By providing detailed, constructive feedback specific to each student’s essay, my students developed a stronger idea of what was expected. By posing open-ended questions in the feedback emails, I engaged many motivated students to participate in an ongoing email exchange and stimulated many students’ interest in pursuing their topics further.