Teaching is one of the most powerful careers one can have. It connects generations, disseminates knowledge, and ultimately transforms lives.
Dr. Drew Faust, former president of Harvard University, believes that the college experience "opens minds and worlds — in ways that stretch us — almost pull us — to become different people."
One of Â鶹¹ú²úAV's strengths is innovative teaching. Our faculty challenge and engage students with active learning assignments, undergraduate and graduate research, and entire courses and programs that present content in original ways.
The Center for Faculty Development invited faculty to share their teaching insights and innovative methods with us. Six of their responses follow:
Blair Swoope
Blair Swoope,
Lecturer, Department of Mathematics & Statistics
"We redesigned MATH 162M to allow students to have hands-on interaction with problem solving in real time with supervised feedback through weekly 'workshops.' Bob Strozak, Andrea Jones and I created the pilot together. All three of us taught two sections each during both semesters last year, and our overall results were a passing rate 8-10 percent higher than the traditional courses. In order to allow enough classroom time for the workshops, animated PowerPoints were created, with limited topics for students to view outside of class time. The workshops cover a variety of material in the curriculum - both algebraic and graphing - with a particular emphasis on problems, which - while students are in the process of solving - create 'common errors' typically seen by all instructors when assessing student comprehension. Ideally, in real time, the students are able to 'see' the error and make corrections, making it possible for the students to progress through the subject matter and continue learning in a successful environment. Beyond the increased passing rate, there is a simple yet profound increase in enthusiasm in the mathematics classroom - for both students and instructors. Students feel engaged, empowered, and hopeful about their possible success. Students write comments that not only were the workshops 'great,' they were actually 'fun.' We are hoping to double the number of sections of the workshop course by next fall."
Stacie Ringleb
Stacie Ringleb,
Associate professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
"In the 2011-2012 academic year, I was introduced to the concept of collaborative learning in the classroom when I attended a workshop led by Drs. Rebecca Brent and Richard Felder. Since that workshop, I have always included group work in my classes, which usually includes group homework assignments, group problem solving during class (for bonus points on tests), and a group project. I use the website catme.org to form groups and for group members to evaluate each other, thus keeping each other accountable. In the fall of 2016, with the support of an IDW action project, I, along with Dr. Jennifer Kidd (Teaching and Learning), expanded the collaborative learning from within a class to across two classes, in two different disciplines. Specifically, we partnered students in MAE 111 with students in TLED 301, with the help of an online collaboration tool developed by Dr. Pilar Pazos. In this project, our students partnered to develop and deliver engineering lessons to fourth- and fifth-graders in Norfolk Public Schools. This multidisciplinary collaborative service learning project is continuously evolving, as we reflect and learn from every semester that we implement it. However, it's been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career as an educator."
Royce Burnett
Royce Burnett,
Associate Professor & Chair, Accounting
"Accounting is one of the most difficult topics to teach because it involves the stringing of threads that need to be collected together and woven to make meaning. Many of us have adopted countless pedagogical approaches to make sense of our debits and credits, how they balance and what they mean. The key obstacle is there is no readily available or discernable logic relative to debits and credits; they simply are used to capture how accounting information fits together. One day after a particularly trying day at the white board, a student came to me and said she was doing her family tree and that the angst about who people are and where they came from was nothing compared to following debits or credits. This scenario stuck in my mind and I thought: If I could show how two family coats of arms manage their family lineage and if I could tie those distinct tracks to one another, that would help me explain the accounting cycle. Long story short, I have worked with a colleague to present an approach to the accounting cycle that uses family lines to show how one transaction affects both families and how the results of this interaction capture the story about how a family was built. This analogy has been used to describe how business transactions (the family offspring) are used to produce accounting reports (the foundations the offspring support). This approach has been received well in the classroom as it makes accounting real and engaging."
Linda Bol
Linda Bol,
Professor, Educational Foundations & Leadership
"All of us have experienced a student who always responds first to questions or dominates class discussion. Judging from the eye rolls and mental checkouts, it is also irritating to the other students in class. How do we diplomatically handle this dominant student? Well, I stole a technique from a program I was evaluating in K-12 schools called Random Reporter. Students did not raise their hands or blurt out because they knew they would be called upon randomly to address a question. In the K-12 classrooms, teachers used popsicle sticks with student names and reached into their aprons whenever a question was posed. I use index cards. Yes, even with doctoral-level students. On the first day of class, I direct my students to write their names and program areas on the index cards. I explain that these cards are used to randomly call on them by name. I then explain that the practice is not meant to punish or embarrass but to engage them. If they don't know the answer, then I give them options for how to respond that are loosely modeled on the TV show 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire.' They can call a friend (a classmate), get a hint from me, or just say 'I don't know.' They rarely select the third option. Random Reporter has additional advantages. We all learn one another's names more quickly and easily. I also use the cards to take attendance and to form groups for teamwork. A former student described having a 'love/hate' reaction to those cards. Initially she didn't always like being called on, but it forced her come to class prepared and remain attentive while there. The scale must have tipped toward 'love' because she recommended the practice to another instructor."
Carolyn Rutledge
Carolyn Rutledge,
Professor, Nursing
"One of my most rewarding educational programs has been in the area of telehealth. Telehealth is the provision of healthcare at a distance. It can include the ability for healthcare providers to monitor a patient's health status (blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen level, etc.) at home via technology that transmits the data from the home to the provider. It can also include robots used in health care, the transmission of visual images such as an MRI or CT scan, and videoconferencing between the patient and a provider. Telehealth has been vital in enabling patients in remote and rural areas to obtain access to health care providers that are not located near them. I began developing and implementing educational programs (workshops and clinical experiences) in telehealth nine years ago as a result of several federal grants (about $5 million). One of the telehealth training programs developed from the funding at Â鶹¹ú²úAV includes students from 11 health care professions and four universities. The students learn to collaboratively use telehealth equipment to monitor patients and consult with other providers. The program includes didactic modules that are provided through Blackboard; hands-on experiences where students can use the equipment; requirements for students to visit a site that provides telehealth; and projects that require the students to think and apply their learning. Students complete the telehealth training with not just knowledge about telehealth, but also skills and enhanced attitude towards its utilization. The telehealth program at Â鶹¹ú²úAV has expanded into the new university Center for Telehealth Innovation, Education, and Research (C-TIER). One of the goals of C-TIER is to provide a certificate program for students from varying disciplines within the university who are interested in expanding their expertise related to telehealth innovation and/or implementation."
Amy Milligan
Amy Milligan,
Batten Endowed Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Women's Studies
"Students are always surprised to see how much and simultaneously how little they know about their own bodies, the ways they use their bodies, and how their bodies navigate the world. Students in classes like 'Gender, Fashion, and the Body' and 'Sexing the Body' explore the multifaceted ways that bodies are used in their own fields of study. My students contribute to the where they discuss the body's role in gender, sex, and culture. During the course of the semester, we discuss how to assess tone and audience in our writing, and we explore different types of writing styles, ranging from journalistic articles and encyclopedia entries to creative prose and letter writing. Throughout the semester, our blog is populated with examples of these writing assignments. However, these are not just classroom assignments; in fact, students are helping to shape the future of bodylore as a folkloric methodology, and our shared class blog receives regular traffic from across the globe. Their blog is one of the only centralized spaces for bodylore research. In addition, students have used the writing portfolios created in my class, which are tailored to their career goals or personal interests, to help them land jobs, and they also have been contacted by podcasts and other writers who wish to discuss the topics the students have introduced. In the end, my goal is for students to engage class material in real and tangible ways and to build toward applying body studies in their future careers. The real joy for me is seeing how students have taken and grown the Bodylore Blog in ways that were unimaginable to me! Their creativity, belief in bodily equality, and vision represents the future of body studies."