Just because the semester is over doesn’t mean there aren’t yet more teaching-related issues to consider. Take, for instance, this scenario outlined by a colleague: Say a student left a thank you card and a gift certificate to a local restaurant in my mailbox. I received it yesterday, after grades were already due. Is it…
In this four-part series, Departmental Teaching Fellows Anita Nikkanen (Comparative Literature), Erin Blevins (Organismic and Evolutionary Biology), and Meredith Schweig (Music) reflect on the why, how, and what of teaching with objects. These reflections grew out of “Teaching with Tangible Things: Museum Collections in the Classroom,” a workshop they offered at the Bok Center’s 2012…
For the last meeting of their year-long Teaching Colloquium and Pedagogy Practicum, third-year graduate students in the Music Department looked ahead to the next step in their professional development: teaching their own courses. Departmental Teaching Fellow Meredith Schweig assembled a panel of recent Music PhDs to share what they’ve learned as they transition from serving…
I received this announcement from the Program in General Education and wanted to share it with our readers as one example of a thoughtfully designed, creative assignment: The teaching staff and students of Culture and Belief 12, “For the Love of God and His Prophet: Religion, Literature, and the Arts in Muslim Cultures,” invite you to the opening…
In response to our recent post about Eric Mazur’s profile in Harvard Magazine, a reader pointed us to the case of CS 20, Professor Harry R. Lewis’s “Discrete Mathematics for Computer Science.” The course started out “with 15-minute mini-lectures followed by work in groups with TFs and prof wandering around. Now the lecture is recorded ahead…
This is the third in a series of posts by Anna G., a junior at Harvard who teaches one section and also serves as assistant head-TF for CS-51. Lately, I’ve been struggling with crafting a good review session for CS51’s midterm. CS51 covers a lot of material, and while the assignments for this class are all coding…
What if every exam-based class in college started with the final exam? Students would file into the lecture hall (or multimedia interactivity space) on day one and take the test. Their teacher(s) would then use the students’ responses to gauge – immediately and precisely – what kinds of prior knowledge and experience they’ve brought into…
Many courses assign them; too many undergraduates resent them as busy work. Weekly responses may be a fixture at Harvard, but they don’t have to be a chore – for students, or for the TFs who spend so much time grading them. Weekly responses give students a chance to work with important course content and…
The current issue of Harvard Magazine includes a profile of Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics Eric Mazur, who is among those leading efforts to transform the way Harvard students learn. Professor Mazur has long been an advocate of the use of clickers and pioneered the implementation of peer instruction. (Also featured in the article…
We welcome to the Bok Blog a new contributor: Anna G. is a junior at Harvard who teaches one section and also serves as assistant head-TF for CS-51. This semester, she’ll contribute a series of posts in which she reflects on issues facing undergraduate TFs. I was having dinner with two other female computer science…
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