scaffolding

One Lab Report, Two Lab Reports, Three Lab Reports, More! Teaching Scientific Writing

by Ellis Kennedy, Materials Science and Engineering Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2021 Materials Science & Engineering 104 is a laboratory course taken by not only materials science and engineering students, but also international concurrent enrollment students and students from other majors because it offers hands-on exposure to techniques that are…

Finding New Ways to “Read the Room” in a Year of Remote Teaching

by Jessica Katz, Energy and Resources Group Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2021 One of the most challenging aspects of adjusting to a remote classroom has been losing the nonverbal cues that allow teachers and students to communicate efficiently in real time. As a GSI for an interdisciplinary data science course…

The Thesis Statement as The Key to Unlock Essay Writing

by Julia Lewandoski, History Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2018 After several semesters as a GSI and Reader for history classes, it has become clear to me that a concise, clear, and specific thesis statement is essential to a successful student paper. Developing a strong thesis statement enables students to frame…

Achieving Higher Efficiency in Chemistry Labs Using Electronic Scheduling

by Rong “Rocky” Ye, Chemistry Chemistry 112A had a five-hour lab section every week. [I]n the first few weeks of the semester, students had difficulties in finishing all the work on time… I saw the need to improve [their] efficiency without causing too much intervention in their independent thinking.

Staging the Exchange: Learning to Read and Write Beyond Similarity and Opposition

by Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan, Rhetoric [A]sked to write an essay that deals with more than one primary text, [students’] tendency is ... to either illustrate the ways in which the texts make equivalent arguments, or to pit one text/author against the other… I realized that I needed to do more to teach students what it means to bring two texts “into conversation.”

Bridging Mathematical Models and Managerial Decisions

by Auyon Siddiq, Industrial Engineering and Operations Research While the content in a typical operations research course is usually technical, the field itself is actually quite practical… I viewed it as part of my job to help convey the idea that the seemingly abstract methods taught in class could in fact have a significant positive impact on how decisions are made in a wide variety of domains.