Teach Better

This semester I have about 140 students in my econometrics class. We meet twice a week in a big lecture hall, and while I try to make it as interactive as possible, it’s not nearly as personal as the small (10-20 student) classes I teach. It’s also a lousy environment for students to learn how to actually analyze data. This is something they have to learn by doing, and most folks who teach data analysis expect students to acquire the skill on their own by working through projects or problem sets. I think in-person support can greatly accelerate this kind of learning, especially in an introductory class.

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Business schools have a reputation for demanding students and high quality teaching. On this episode of the Teach Better Podcast, Professor Olav Sorenson from the Yale School of Management (SOM) tells us what actually happens over there. Along the way, he explains his own almost technology-free teaching style, as well as how SOM recently reformed its core MBA curriculum.

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In this episode we talk with Cyra Levenson from the Yale Center for British Art and Yale Professor of American Studies, History, and African-American Studies, Matt Jacobson about incorporating real artifacts and works of art into your teaching. Specifically, we talk about why you might want to do such a thing, and how you can get started doing it.

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I’ve had plenty of students criticize my teaching over the years, but no one has ever accused me of lecturing in a monotone voice. On the other hand, this is a common complaint I’ve heard about other instructors including a colleague who approached me the other day for advice on what he could do about it. I had no idea, but I did know this was a perfect question for the POD mailing list! If you’re a college teacher and you’ve never heard of the Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network in Higher Education, you are really missing out on some great discussion of teaching in higher ed, and a community of folks who both know a lot and really care.

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Before he retired in Spring of 2015, John Bryan Starr taught two of the most highly regarded classes at Yale about the politics and policy surrounding public schools in the United States. These classes had a unique structure where students read and discussed the material outside class in small groups and continued their discussions in the classroom. In the words of one of his students, “You could just trust upon entering class every week that you were guaranteed a profound learning experience in those two hours.” In this episode of the Teach Better Podcast, John Starr shares his secrets.

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This spring one of the best teachers in our department, Steve Berry, won the Lex Hixon ’63 Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Social Sciences. He won because he does a great job with one of our hardest classes to teach: Introductory Microeconomics. This big (300-400 student) lecture serves a wide range of students. Some have strong math backgrounds and are planning to major in economics, while others are just there because they think it’s important to learn something about how the economy works. Steve appeals to this diverse group with a combination of engaging lectures and well-designed problem sets. He gets positive course evaluations and a large fraction of the class goes on to take more advanced economics courses.

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Professor Lynne Regan from Yale’s Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry believes in the power of active learning. In this episode she shares what she’s learned incorporating active learning exercises into her classes.

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If you’ve been reading this site for a while, you understand that I don’t have all the answers. I often write about things as I learn them. That’s especially true today as I try to implement group projects in one of my classes. This is something I’ve had mixed success with in the distant past, but for a variety of reasons, I’m giving them another try.

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Professor Craig Wright has been teaching an introductory course on classical music for as long as he can remember. It started as a traditional lecture course, became an active in-person lecture course, and four years ago he taught it in Yale Summer Session as a Small Private Online Course (SPOC). In the spring Craig transformed the course yet again, this time into a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). Craig shares his journey with us on this episode of the Teach Better Podcast.

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