On February 17, Richard Watt, professor, and Jenn Nielson, associate dean, shared at the GE Inspiring Teaching Workshop their perspectives and experiences on effective approaches to teaching GE classes. Watt and Nielson are seasoned educators and understand the difficulty of teaching STEM courses as GE requirements.
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Watt expressed the importance of constantly learning different teaching methods and listening to his students. Below are a few takeaways from Watt and Nielson:
- Accept feedback from students during office hours. Office hours are valuable in receiving feedback
from students to improve your teaching. - Meet weekly with teaching assistants. Students often feel more comfortable being vulnerable with a TA.
The TA can provide insight on what students are struggling most on. From there, you can talk more about it
in classroom or record a video providing more information on the topic and send it out to the class. - Make the abstract tangible. A way to help students better understand science is to use the why and provide
real-life examples. These tools allow students to connect to the topics in their daily lives. - Include group work during class to build inclusiveness. Helping students feel like they belong is critical for
any course. Group work helps students make friends in class, be more collaborative, and create new connections. - Be yourself and have fun. Students engage more when they can tell you enjoy your subject. Have fun with
the class rather than solely focus on meeting a checklist. When a topic is more difficult to understand, turn the
lesson into a game or puzzle to help the student.
Nielson shared how the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry started a STEM faculty teaching institute three years ago. The institute's purpose is to help researchers and scientists learn tools to become better teachers because many of them were not formally instructed in pedagogical principles. The institute includes a week-long workshop, broken up over two weeks.
At the workshop, each new attendee is partnered with a peer mentor, who has participated in the institute before. The peer mentor works with the professor for the coming academic year to improve their teaching by providing new insights. The program accepts applications from all STEM colleges and departments but would love the program to grow to those outside of STEM to help bring in new ideas and insights.
Watch the GE workshop to learn more ways to teach GE classes and how to join the STEM faculty institute.