Yale Bulletin and Calendar

March 7, 2003|Volume 31, Number 21|Two-Week Issue

At the Graduate School's Innovation Fair on Feb. 28, chemistry professor Fred Ziegler demonstrated how he uses the Internet to ease students' anxiety in his class.

Forum explores strategies
for 'Teaching the Tough Stuff'

Yale faculty member David Pearce sometimes sings a line from a popular song to the students in his economics classes and then finds "a cheap excuse to relate it to the lecture."

This, notes the professor, is one of the "tricks" he uses to get students to talk in class. "Show them you're not afraid to look like an idiot, and they won't be afraid to look like fools when they ask questions," contends Pearce, chair and the Henry Ford II Professor of Economics.

The economist was one of four Yale faculty members who shared their classroom strategies in a panel titled "Teaching the Tough Stuff," part of the Graduate School's fifth annual Spring Semester Teaching Forum, "Engaging Complexity: A Forum on the Most Challenging Aspects of Teaching."

The event was held in the Presidents Room of Woolsey Hall on Feb. 28. Graduate School Dean Peter Salovey, winner of several Yale teaching awards, opened the program with a bit of wisdom from his own classroom experiences. He also talked about the McDougal Graduate Teaching Center, which organized the event, noting that he chaired the search committee of graduate students that chose the center's director, Bill Rando.

In addition to the panel, the forum included an Innovation Fair and a closing presentation by physics professor John Harris. Besides Pearce, the "Teaching the Tough Stuff" panelists were Charles Bailyn, chair and professor of astronomy; Edwin Duval, chair and professor of French; and Pamela Schirmeister, associate dean of the Graduate School and lecturer in English.

Pearce told the graduate students and postdoctoral fellows at the forum that he has a four-point plan he uses when preparing to teach students difficult concepts in economics. In order to communicate material that he knows very well, he explained, he tries to put himself into their situation by asking himself: "What are the barriers they face?" and "How might they misunderstand what I say or do?"

The goal, said Pearce, "is making something incoherent, potentially coherent."

First, he said, he makes sure he really understands what he's trying to teach. Second, he tries to figure out which basic assumptions about the topic are obvious to him but won't be to his students, so he is able to give them the background they need to absorb the new ideas. Then he concentrates on ways to interest and motivate his students by giving shape and form to the subject and by showing them the power of the discipline. Finally, he turns the lesson into a narrative.

Pearce said that presenting a series of facts, definitions and theorems is not an especially effective way to engage students. "Motivation is extremely important," he noted, so he tries "to make students see that once they master the concepts and put them together, they can do things [at the end of the lesson] that they couldn't at the beginning."

When teachers lecture without interruption, said Pearce, they don't know whether they're getting through or not. "Students often make guesses about what you mean, and they often guess wrong. Try to get clarification as you go along," he advised.

In a physics class, said Bailyn during the panel discussion, words can mean different things than they do in common speech, and that can give rise to confusion.

"When I say 'work' or 'potential,' I have to clarify what I mean," he noted, recalling that once he got very strange looks from students when he referred to "degenerate white dwarfs" in discussing the evolution of stars.

In order to get the class involved and to encourage students to speak up, it's crucial to "set the stage in the first couple of classes," said Bailyn. "Use any gimmick you need to. ... The first sessions set the tone for the rest of the semester."

Schirmeister spoke of the difficulty of making students look at familiar literature in new ways. Unlike her colleagues on the panel, she teaches material that has "no numbers, no limiting cases, and it's even in a language they all understand." Her goal, she said, is to help students "unravel what they know, so they can read the text in a new way."

Duval told the audience: "The most important thing we do, and the most difficult, is to put ourselves in the position of the people who don't know what we know. I think I teach the things I don't know very well -- better than the things I do."

Forum participants also had the opportunity to learn creative teaching techniques at the Innovation Fair, a cross between a poster session and a science or social studies fair. The event featured 10 exhibitors, including graduate students, faculty members and representatives from the University Library.

Ted Bromund, lecturer in history, described a lively format that he has used successfully in a seminar on British history. In order to encourage students to understand the complexity behind strategic decisions, he has them take adversarial positions and debate their points of view as if they were members of the House of Commons, the Oxford Union or the British Cabinet. He found that students become passionately engaged in the process and develop greater understanding "that history is contingent, that human arguments and decisions matter, and that not all points of view are equally correct," he said.

Isaac Cates, a lecturer in English who teaches a writing-intensive course, offered his solution for dealing with those students who ask for extensions and other special treatment during the term without being unfair to other students. At the beginning of the term, he issues each student a set of six tickets that cover "most of the exceptions and excuses I thought I might see from them," explained Cates. "And here's the kicker: They can trade. The kid who wants extra time can swap with the kid who's feeling lazy about research or with the kid who wants extra attention." Some tickets entitle students to have their draft read "with meticulous care," while others allow them to submit a paper that is one page shorter than assigned. So far, the system is working well, Cates reported, noting that most students use up their "One Day Late" ticket first.

Some exhibitions featured computer-based innovations. Diana E.E. Kleiner, the Dunham Professor of Classics and the History of Art, discussed Internet strategies for teaching Roman art and the role of Roman women; Fred Ziegler, professor of chemistry, showed how he uses the Internet to take the anxiety out of organic chemistry; Julia Titus, senior lector in Russian in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, demonstrated a multimedia version of "The Gentle Creature" by Dostoevsky that integrates text, sound, graphics, vocabulary and grammar in order to allow students to enjoy literature in a foreign language. Yale librarians Laurel Bliss, Katherine Haskins, Danuta Nitecki and Karen Reardon outlined programs offered by the University libraries, such as the ELI Project and problem-based learning in the library classroom.

The forum concluded with a presentation by physics professor John Harris, who handed participants infrared wands that they used to respond to questions about physics, astronomy and rock music, and that allowed him to display their answers. He then discussed how teachers could use this technology in their classrooms.

The Teaching Forum was organized by Rando and a group of current and recently graduated Ph.D. students from a variety of departments. They included chairperson Amanda Sleeper, pharmacology, and committee members Joseph Acquisto, French; Isaac Cates, English; Bettina Lerner, French; Jamie Repasky, immunobiology; and Susan Rivers, psychology. Ed Kairiss, director of Instructional Computing and Technology, Academic Media and Technology, provided technical assistance.

-- By Gila Reinstein

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