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.
Research in the field of psychology can help GSIs better motivate their students. Based on a talk by Martin Covington (Psychology).
by Viswanath Sankaran, Mathematics
Integral Calculus poses a new challenge. Here, most problems involve a crucial “guessing” step (called the substitution) that transform them into more amenable problems. An “insightful” guess leads to the solution, a “wrong” guess can get one stuck. So the question is: How can a teacher communicate this insight?
Strategies for helping students effectively organize and mobilize their learning. Based on a talk by Lawrence Lowery (Education).