Nice!!! I’m glad you looked this up. I think that’s enough to convince me to employ these methods in my potential future classroom.

Kristin, I completely agree! The more I think about this style of learning, the more I realize that it is about getting a little uncomfortable. It involves making students (and instructors) reach outside of their comfort zones and DO tasks in order to learn (or teach) these skills. It’s not allowing professors to stand behind a podium and simply lecture. When we allow students the opportunity to do these skills instead of just listen to a lecture and type notes, they truly learn. In turn, they are better equipped to pass the knowledge on to others.

That’s a great point! I guess a lot of times, graduate students and professors are forced to teach general level courses within their field. After so many times teaching these general courses, I’m sure they get so tired of it and it’s not exciting anymore. This is really unfortunate, because it’s kind of hard to get excited about general biology or general chemistry in the first place (ESPECIALLY chemistry, for me). I fully agree with your last statement. No matter how boring a course, if an instructor truly cares about the students, I think the students will take a genuine interest in whatever the course material is.

I’m so glad that you were able to come to this realization in graduate school! It is really hard to understand the concept of enjoying learning (and that there exists a world where we can CHOOSE what we want to research and study) when we are forced to take so many classes as undergraduates, and even sometimes as graduate students. I’m thankful for graduate research and for finally realizing that we have the freedom to study and learn so many exciting things!

I am just so sad that I viewed it in such a negative way for all this time! It taught me so much, especially since I belong to a field of science that spends nearly every waking hour in the warm portions of the year outside observing living things in their natural habitats. Field-based, hands-on learning is certainly awesome!

You are so right!! Since we can relate to entomology classes, I’ll let you know that I remember much more from insect taxonomy than I do insect morphology or physiology. While I loved morphology and physiology, there wasn’t the same time commitment as taxonomy. I stalked so many insects for taxonomy and devoted so much of my life to identifying them taxonomically! Memories, and information, that I will never forget.

It’s true! I just can’t believe that I let all this time go by allowing myself to view this course in a very negative way. I’m glad I’ve realized the profound impact it has had on my career! If I end up going into academia in the future, I will absolutely structure my classes this way.