by Danielle Champney, Education, SESAME I view Calculus II as more than just a solution-finding mission or strategy game. Students will learn little or resort to untested pattern-matching if I simply tell them what method to use each time they encounter a new problem! Learning how concepts in class are reflected in procedures used to solve problems is, to me, a core principle of the course.
by Christopher Clark, Integrative Biology We had the students perform a double-blind peer review of each others’ papers during the final lab session. This is similar to the way scientific papers submitted to a journal are reviewed by peer scientists... By seeing (or overhearing) mistakes their peers were making, students became aware of ways they could improve their own papers. They also received nearly instantaneous, in-depth constructive criticism of their reports.
by Seemay Chou, Molecular and Cell Biology I found that the problem was not rooted in lack of comprehension but an imprecision in their scientific language, owing to their lack of experience in the field. They felt that they knew the answers but could not express what they were trying to say...They needed to think and speak in the same language as scientists.
by Sarah Macdonald, Sociology While teaching Sociology 5: Evaluation of Evidence, I encountered a problem that is not unique: how, as GSIs, can we prepare our students for challenging final exams without teaching exclusively to the exam?
by Carl Olsen, Scandinavian Students often have trouble understanding why we can't just “take the text as it is." My...response has been to suggest that we consider our mission to be not just the reading of texts, but the exploration of a foreign culture by way of those texts: we are sleuths who have been given a collection of cultural artifacts.
by Monica Gehlawat, English This activity is all about perspective. By creating a new way for the students to look at their writing, I was able to empower them to see how to change it. Tackling the sentences on the board all together with a clear set of drills transformed the debilitating immediacy of one's writing into a liberating problem-solving experience.
by Sonya Lebsack, Legal Studies I have discovered, to my surprise, in the past few years, that most of my students—including those doing otherwise excellent work — struggle to read a chapter or article and state (in a paragraph or in person) what the author's “project” is and what the stakes of that project are...As a result, I focus my efforts on teaching this underserved area of focus.
by Jelani Mahiri, Anthropology The production of “field notes,” descriptive writings about one's field research, is an ambiguous enterprise for most students, yet an important part of anthropological methodology. Thus a key issue for professors and GSIs is: How do we build on students' previous writing experiences, but move them beyond the notion of field notes as a personal journal, for example, to conceptualizing field notes as concrete description of events, interactions, people, and places within their research setting?
by Nichole Sterling, Scandinavian Ultimately, I have found that creative projects can have place in composition courses. Creative projects can help students to understand what they read, and a greater understanding of what students read can only lead to better papers and better discussion in class.
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.”