by Badr Albanna, Physics I decided to reverse the dynamic of our discussion sections. When it came time to work on problems, instead of my standing in front of the class begging the students to explain how they reasoned the first part of problem one to their classmates, they would become the teachers and I would adopt the role of a particularly knowledgeable assistant.
by Christie Dowling, Civil and Environmental Engineering It seemed to me that many students had not come to the discussion section to learn the lecture concepts, but rather to just be told how to do their homework. I was immediately faced with a challenge: how to create meaningful discussion sections that provide useful information without simply giving the answers away.
by Aubrey Clayton, Mathematics In addition to learning about the need for a precise definition when making an argument, the class learned to make sense of the symbols in the book by rephrasing them in their own words. Also, they learned that mathematics actually uses a lot of common sense, even if it is sometimes apparently obscured by notation.
by Sophie Dumont, Molecular and Cell Biology The first few sections were frustrating to teach because I was not able to lead a section at an intellectual level which all students could...benefit from, and was not passing on what I really loved about the class material...Perhaps naively, I decided to try and introduce my students to the research world.
by Gautam Borooah, Mathematics Since mathematics in books is (almost) always correct and students’ work is often wrong, they think that they cannot produce “real” mathematics. They are so afraid of coming up with a wrong idea that they do not articulate any ideas at all: they are too afraid to try.
by Alexander Diesl, Mathematics The ability to write mathematical proofs is not a result of genius but rather of an understanding of the language of mathematics. Students think that they lack fundamental understanding when they in fact lack only the ability to translate their intuition into mathematically precise statements.
by Amanda Heddle, Environmental Science, Policy and Management In the semester I taught...there were twenty-eight students enrolled which, in a content intensive course, presents a problem for developing activities that are inquiry-based. The immediate problems I faced as a teacher for this class were how to take the content of the class and facilitate learning through inquiry rather than memorization, and how to make sure that students received personal assistance with specific problems they faced when trying to identify their specimens.
by James Endres, Molecular and Cell Biology At the first meeting I commanded rapt attention by announcing the secret to getting an A in the course. "If you understand the experiments presented in lecture," I promised, "actively understand them, enough that you can change them to make and test novel predictions, you will get an A."
by Gaurav Punj, IEOR Students usually think of discussion sessions as just problem-solving sessions where the GSI will work on some numerical problems that are relevant for their midterms and finals. I realized that they were more interested in the final answers rather than Physics.
by Ajeet Shankar, Computer Science I quickly realized that it was imprudent simply to hope that they would develop an intuition about reductions; it had taken me years to nurture my own intuition, after all, and I would be expecting my students to cultivate theirs in a matter of weeks! So I formulated a method for my students that made solving reductions easier.