Thanks for your post! I like how you start out by talking about challenging institutions to create change. I definitely agree with your comment that “if one [person] speaks up maybe more will follow to create a larger influx of change.” It made me thing of a TED Talk I watched recently on how to start a movement (http://sivers.org/ff). It all starts with one person but it needs that first follower too!

I really like the example in your post! I think that students can learn a a lot from their peers, and this example really demonstrates the benefits of this peer discussion in classrooms. As you mentioned, it is not really practical for the professor to be able to anticipate all of the difficulties the students may have with a topic. And these small group discussions can allow for students to learn from each other and overcome those difficulties. And the professor can help facilitate some of those discussions. Thanks for your post!

I really like your post! I agree that not everyone has all the right answers when it comes to teaching and that we are going to have to pull from all different points of view to find alternatives that work. And I think that this will be an ongoing process. We are never going to find the one way to teach. Great post!

Thanks for your post! The issue of memorization is an interesting one. And I often hear students say that they just have to memorize everything for a class or a test. When I think of memorization, I think of a bunch of pieces of information floating around in my head. But these pieces of information are not connected to anything. This information is not connected to any other pieces of information. I personally don’t like starting to learn a new topic by memorizing things. I would rather start with the big picture, a process or something in the real world that I can relate the information to. And then I can fill in all the details.

I read a book this semester, the Case for Constructivist Classrooms, and the authors describe two different ways to introduce the topic of photosynthesis. The first way is the traditional “here is the definition of photosynthesis; here is a diagram; memorize everything.” In the second approach, the teacher started by asking students to think about a process where raw materials are turned into a product (one example was creating art in art class). Students thought about a process that they could relate to. Later in the lesson, students learned that photosynthesis is a similar process and then started to fill in the specific details of photosynthesis.

I personally prefer this second method of starting general and then learning the specifics. But I would be interested to hear your thoughts!

Thanks for your post! You make a lot of great points. I really appreciate the point that you make about the importance of critical thinking when sorting through information. One thing that I noticed when I taught a first year college course was that students didn’t always think about the source of their information when doing research. They would often just Google something and use whichever result they liked the best. They didn’t always think about where the information came from. Great post!

This was a great post! Thanks for sharing! I really appreciate the three facets that you described and agree that they are so important in educational settings. I do agree that this sounds really beneficial and potentially really exhausting to implement. But I think there are a lot of ways to help with the implementation. For example, I love the idea of allowing students to re-do and resubmit their assignments. And one thing that could be really helpful in that sense is to have students peer review assignments before submitting them to the teacher. And I really appreciate the emphasis that you placed on formative assessment. I think that is really valuable. Great post! It gave me a lot of great things to think about.

I think you bring up a lot of great points about the problems with student evaluations. When I taught last year, I had students fill out a survey mid way through the semester and then they filled out the SPOT survey at the end of the semester. And students either responded very positively or very negatively (like Willie mentioned).

What I found really helpful was the short answer responses that students provided. The answers where students could actually explain their frustrations and the things that the liked was really valuable and showed me what aspects of the class were most confusing.

Another thing that I have found to be really helpful is to have students reflect on what they have learned at the end of class. In your class, it might be interesting to give students a real world example and then have them write down, in their own words, what the theory was and how it related to the example in class.

I think your class sounds really interesting and I really appreciate the types of examples that you give students! I’m sure it is helpful for students, even if that doesn’t always show in the evaluations.

Thanks for your post! It is really interesting to hear about higher education in other countries and to hear about your experiences in the United States. Thanks for sharing! It makes me really sad to hear about your friend’s experiences and the unfairness that he experiences because of his name and race. Being a female in engineering, I often got frustrated with the learning environments in engineering and the feeling that I didn’t have a voice in my engineering classes. And because of that, I am really excited to learn more about inclusive pedagogy too!

Thanks for your post. I really appreciate your honesty on this topic. While I agree that you don’t have any obligation to care about how other people feel, I believe that you should care. People’s beliefs, feelings, and experiences shape their worldviews, their opinions, and their ideas. I agree with Dr. Nelson that there is no such thing as a debate that is purely intellectual.

And as a female engineer, I disagree with your statement that “A person’s gender, age, race, ethnicity, sexuality, etc. are factors far from the realm of technical expertise and ability to apply science to problems.” Claude Steele, in Whistling Vivaldi, discussed one aspect of this in the chapter Identity and Intellectual Performance. In this chapter, Steele discusses the threat of stigmatization and the impact that this has on a person’s performance. Basically, when people fear that they could stigmatized, they under-perform. So yes, a person’s gender, age, race, ethnicity, sexuality, etc. can affect their performance in different settings.

I would encourage you to listen to the views of other people. And when doing that, I think it is really important to care about what the other person is feeling/thinking/experiencing. If you ever want to hear about one female’s experience in engineering, just let me know.

Thanks for sharing! I really like the point you made that we no longer have to train apprentices who just repeat what others do. Yet, this is how a lot of formal education settings are structured. In a field like engineering, students are told what to do and then have to repeat that information on tests. Then the engineering workplace is nothing like that education. We should be teaching students to think and to see other perspectives and to communicate and to solve problems. And I completely agree with you – paradigm shifts should be encouraged!