Comments on: Teaching Innovation: Opportunities and Challenges http://arthropodecology.com/2013/03/13/teaching-innovation-opportunities-and-challenges/ Writings about arthropod ecology, arachnids & academia at McGill University Thu, 24 Sep 2015 02:50:18 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Expiscor (29 March 2013) | Arthropod Ecology http://arthropodecology.com/2013/03/13/teaching-innovation-opportunities-and-challenges/#comment-3058 Fri, 29 Mar 2013 12:31:23 +0000 http://arthropodecology.com/?p=1521#comment-3058 […] things that reflect my diverse interests, from spiders to the value of higher education, from teaching innovation to music. I will try, each Friday, to provide a summary of the discoveries that I fish out of my […]

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By: Jim Thomerson http://arthropodecology.com/2013/03/13/teaching-innovation-opportunities-and-challenges/#comment-2966 Wed, 13 Mar 2013 21:04:21 +0000 http://arthropodecology.com/?p=1521#comment-2966 I got involved in “writing across the curriculum”. I googled it and did not find anything I recognized as what we did. We had a workshop, which was voluntary and paid me $100. The basic idea was to have students write for other students; and for students to critique and edit each other through several iterations. Then students would evaluate each other on how much the other student had helped them, and how much the helped student improved. Idea was that students care more about what other students think than what the instructor thinks about them.

One time I did it with a large introductory class. We had Gould’s “The Panda’s Thumb” anthology as outside reading. I assigned various of the articles to be class readings along with certain lecture topics.

I then divided the class into groups of five, and assigned each one an article. Their assignment was to identify in one sentence the problem Gould was addressing, Then a short discussion of the arguments, and, finally, Gould’s reasoning and his conclusion. Members of each group made copies for the other group members, There was editing, discussion, and so on. Eventually the writings were turned in, along with the student evaluations. This was a small part of their grade, and came mostly from evaluation by fellow students.

We would be going along, and one of Gould’s writing assignment articles would be relevant. I would ask who knows about it, and the group who had written about that article would speak up and basically take over the class.

Some of my colleagues were against it, saying that having students evaluate each other was academically unsound. I concluded that I thought it a good thing, which at worse, did no harm. I did have a couple of students object to being evaluated by others not as smart as them. I told them to get used to it as it was not unusual in real life.

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By: Chris Buddle http://arthropodecology.com/2013/03/13/teaching-innovation-opportunities-and-challenges/#comment-2965 Wed, 13 Mar 2013 18:31:35 +0000 http://arthropodecology.com/?p=1521#comment-2965 YES! So true, Gavan – thanks for the comment. What was most amazing/thrilling about my visit to another institution to talk about teaching was the recognition about how much there is to learn from other institutions. The ‘culture’ of each and every institution seems to have a strong effect on many aspects of pedagogy. Perhaps not surprising…

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By: Gavan Watson http://arthropodecology.com/2013/03/13/teaching-innovation-opportunities-and-challenges/#comment-2964 Wed, 13 Mar 2013 16:52:18 +0000 http://arthropodecology.com/?p=1521#comment-2964 Hey Chris, really enjoyed all your thoughts here. One further thought (but nothing earth-shattering) about collaboration: teaching innovations cross institutions. While this might be apparent when reading the literature, as you’ve demonstrated here, the opportunity to informally talk and collaborate with peers across institutions is equally important. And it happens at a different scale and speed than publishing, which has its own benefits.

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