Teaching

Courses

Teaching Philosophy

Engaged teaching brings together students and stakeholders across the community and academy, promoting deeper learning and real-world outcomes. My focus on the importance of engaged teaching began as a Fellow at the 2011 Obermann Graduate Institute on Engagement in the Academy, and it is an ongoing effort to find ways to increase engagement in the fields of cognitive neuroscience and psychology. This often involves making direct real-world connections with course content, through current news stories, case studies, or popular media and movies. We have also done outreach work–organizing an annual community “Brain Fair,” a “Brain Bee” competition for children, and giving lessons about neuroscience in local schools. In the future, I envision assignments where students give group presentations at a public library about a public health issue related to course content, or collaborate with teachers to create a neuroscience lesson for high-school students.

My teaching philosophy can be found here [pdf].

Midsemester feedback

Feedback from students is helpful for improving a course on the fly, ensuring a good fit between students and teacher, and engaging students in the learning process. I have put the questionnaire that I use (with some modification depending on the course) to gather feedback from students during a course into a Google Form, which you are free to make a copy of and use/modify in any way. You can find a copy of the form at the link for Teaching Resources below.

“Student Feedback – Midsemester” Google Form usage: The link for the questionnaire will prompt you to make a copy of the form and sheet where responses are stored. Once you make the copy, the form and sheet will be saved to your google drive, and the Sheet will be the first thing you see. From the sheet you can open the questionnaire form by going to Form->Edit Form. Then edit the form as needed. When you’re ready to gather responses go to the Responses tab and enable the “accepting responses” option. Click Send to get a link to the live form to send to your students.

Get in touch if you have any questions about using the questionnaire or suggestions for improving it. It is based on the Mid-semester Feedback Examples (Schreyer Institute, PSU) and “Student Perceptions of Learning and Teaching” from W. J. McKeachie at The University of Michigan (McKeachie, Teaching Tips, 9th Ed., 1994).

Helpful information on the importance of feedback and methods for collecting it can be found at the Midsemester Feedback and Tools pages of the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence at Pennsylvania State University.

A free, online tool for assessing student’s learning is the SALG (Student Assessment of their Learning Gains).

Teaching Resources

You can find links to download resources like the midsemester feedback survey at the link below. Once you answer a few optional questions about how you intend to use the form you’ll be taken to a page with links to download the resources:

Download teaching resources