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?
by Laura Basini, Music I wanted to bring a seemingly abstract concept to life by placing students in an unfamiliar position: that of the composer. They would have to engage more actively with each passage of music, working out what each did in musical terms, and how each led to and from its neighbors.
by John Johnson, Astronomy As the Head GSI for Astronomy 10 last fall, I was challenged with administering effective, individualized assistance to the students who needed it most. The solution I developed is The Astronomy Learning Center (TALC). TALC uses collaborative learning as an alternative to traditional office hours...[and] uses the philosophy that students learn better by doing than just by hearing or seeing.
by Giulietta Spudich, Molecular and Cell Biology I used the students who already had strengths in the theory by interrupting my discussion of the protocol to ask the students why we were doing certain steps. The more theoretically minded students would answer, providing insight to the class. I was attempting to get the students to link the "why" behind the experiment to the practical side of the laboratory.
by A. S. Cheng, Mechanical Engineering Many engineering students have been conditioned that they can succeed by simply duplicating textbook examples or blindly churning through mathematical formulas without understanding the underlying theory. Teaching these students to engage in critical thinking is vital, and was a particular challenge in the course ME 107A: Experimentation and Measurement.
by Jennifer Powell, Molecular and Cell Biology To address my goal of encouraging the students to take the quizzes seriously so they would be useful to everyone as a tool to evaluate their progress in the course, I developed a quiz strategy for my discussion section...Rather than just telling them the [quiz] answers, I asked volunteers to come up to the chalkboard and write their answers for the rest of the class.
by Joel Thornton, Chemistry Problem solving requires a vocabulary of the necessary equations and conceptual approaches, and I would drill the students on the equations and concepts discussed in lecture that week. My drills were in the form of quiz-show games, relay races, student vs. student competitions, anything to avoid the inherent boredom that comes with performing rote tasks.
by Steve Dawson, Astronomy Any physical problem, as well as all of the associated formalism, can be rendered not only intelligible but even pleasurable if the student first achieves a gut sense of the physical situation. Put plainly, all of the math in any science class makes sense if the student first has an intuitive mental picture of exactly what is going on.