'the art of great teaching'
"Reaching Students: The Art of Great Teaching" is the theme of the Graduate School's annual Spring Teaching Forum and Innovation Fair, which will be held on Tuesday, April 2, noon-4:30 p.m. in the Presidents Room of Woolsey Hall, corner of Grove and College streets.
Organized by the Office of Teaching Fellow Preparation and Development (TFPD), the Working At Teaching program, and Academic Media and Computing, the forum will feature a keynote speaker, an Innovation Fair and a faculty-led panel discussion.
TFPD director Bill Rando and Ann Miller, a graduate student in the molecular biophysics & biochemistry department, co-chaired this year's Spring Teaching Forum committee. Other graduate students who served on the committee and their affiliations are Joe Acquisto (French), Cara Sargent (Near Eastern languages and civilizations), Petra Burkhardt (linguistics), Claudia Wilsch (School of Drama) and Jamie Repasky (immunobiology).
"I think every teacher wants to get through to his or her students, and the goal of this year's Spring Teaching Forum is to give participants the opportunity to hear from experienced teachers about strategies that have worked for them in the classroom," says Miller.
Burkhardt adds, "The overarching theme of the forum is how to reach students more effectively and how to improve their learning experience. We hope to generate a lot of conversations about teaching and provide teaching assistants and faculty alike with new ideas for their own classrooms."
Forum organizer Sargent says, "The forum will help make us aware of how our students approach learning. By being perceptive about how students think, a teacher is better equipped to help them learn."
In line with that theme, Robert J. Sternberg, the IBM Professor of Psychology and Education, will present the keynote address, "To Know Them Is To Teach Them: Teaching Better by Understanding Students' Learning Styles." He will discuss "a way of teaching that reaches all students rather than just some of them. It helps students capitalize on intellectual strengths and compensate for-- or correct-- intellectual weaknesses, by teaching analytically, creatively and practically."
Sternberg adds, "I am personally very committed to teaching. I had wonderful mentors and am trying to be as good a mentor to my own students." Author of several books on teaching, Sternberg directs Yale's Center for the Psychology of Abilities, Competencies and Expertise (PACE), where researchers study human intelligence, creativity, wisdom and related phenomena.
"The guiding principle underlying our research at PACE is that human abilities are flexible, modifiable and dynamic, rather than rigid, fixed and static," Sternberg says. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Psychological Society, he is president-elect of the American Psychological Association, where he has held several offices.
First introduced last year, the Innovation Fair -- a cross between a science fair and a poster session -- showcases effective, unusual classroom techniques by some of Yale's most creative teachers.
"The Innovation Fair is a unique Yale phenomenon that simultaneously celebrates and advances great teaching in its many forms," says Rando. "It is not a technology fair, though innovations in technology are a part of it. This is a teaching fair, where reaching students, bringing material to life for students, is the primary focus."
One presenter will be Kirk Williams, assistant professor of Germanic language and literature and theater studies. Williams has designed a computer program that allows participants to produce "virtual" plays. An interactive, role-playing game, the program was designed and developed with assistance from Andy Zygmunt, instructional technology specialist, and Ed Kairiss, director of instructional computing at Information Technology Services.
Now in its second year of development, Williams's prototype uses statistical algorithms and differential equations as well as elements of chaos theory "to harness the computer's multimedia and interactive potential to introduce students to the pragmatic aspects of theater production and performance," Williams explains. The game is set up to simulate the financial and aesthetic theater world of New York in the 1920s.
Williams explains, "Given these historical parameters, the player is asked to make a series of decisions -- purchasing a script, casting, selecting a director, choosing a design style, determining the rehearsal period and the length of the run, etc. The game demonstrates the consequences of the sum of the player's decisions through a scoring system that incorporates aesthetic, social and economic factors, generating audience numbers and critical reviews." Williams plans to use the game in his "Theater and War" course next year. At the Innovation Fair, he will demonstrate how the interface between liberal arts and technology can bring his subject matter to life.
Rebecca Bohrman, a graduate student in political science, and Burkhardt will present "The Magic of Small Groups: Pulling Your Students' Hidden Potential Out of a Hat." They will show how they implement small group activities in their sections, because, says Burkhardt, "Small groups provide a great opportunity for students to participate and engage in problem solving and critical thinking. If planned well, small groups can help to make students responsible for their own learning." Burkhardt will demonstrate a "Jeopardy"-like game she created for her "Introduction to Linguistics" section.
Other presenters at the fair will be faculty members Iona Black, lecturer in chemistry; Sheldon Campbell, assistant professor of laboratory medicine; Dianne Jonas, assistant professor of linguistics; Douglas Kankel, professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology; Mitch Prinstein, assistant professor of psychology; and Frank Turner, the John Hay Whitney Professor of History. Also on hand will be graduate students Joe Acquisto, Leon Rozenblit (psychology) and Cherie Woodworth (history).
There also will be demonstrations by Bill Rando, representatives from WATtv, the Eli Project, Sterling Memorial Library, the Center for Media Initiatives with the Alliance (for Life-long Learning) and the Center for Language Study, and by Ellen Noonan and Lee Ann Pomplas-Bruening from the American Social History Project Center for Media and Learning, City University of New York Graduate Center.
The afternoon will conclude with a panel on pedagogy, presented by Annabel Patterson, the Sterling Professor of English; Roman Kuc, professor of electrical engineering and director of educational affairs for the Faculty of Engineering; and William Summers, professor of therapeutic radiology and molecular biophysics and biochemistry.
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