The Benefits of Talking about Graduate Teaching
–Chronicle of Higher Education Columnist Anne Curzan argues for faculty members’ engaging in more discussion and mentoring about graduate pedagogy.
Author Archive for: maojacan
Entries by maojacan
Is My Teaching Learner-Centered?
To gauge what it means to be a learner-centered instructor, consider these questions. (READ MORE) Characteristics of learner-centered teaching Does the course contain activities that put students in positions to learn from and with each other? Are students encouraged to discover things for themselves, or does the teacher usually tell them what they should know and…
Join Project Bruin Strong!
Project Bruin Strong seeks to normalize challenges, failures, and set-backs during the college experience and to build community amongst students so that they are aware that we have all dealt with failure, rejection or disappointment in a learning environment. To reinforce these ideas, Bruin Strong would like to share stories of resilience from our faculty…
Why Colleges Must Change How They Teach Calculus
Each year many students abandon plans to become engineers or scientists because of poor performance in calculus. An active learning approach could help turn things around. [READ MORE]
Investigating the Influence of Gender on Student Perceptions of the Clicker in a Small Undergraduate General Chemistry Course
The use of electronic response pads or “clickers” is a popular way to engage students and create an active-learning environment, especially within large chemistry courses. The authors of this paper examined students’ perceptions of how the clicker affected their learning, participation, and engagement in the classroom, as well as their overall experience within a first-semester…
How Kindness and Community Increases Students’ Participation in STEM Career Pathways
The United States’ inability to achieve equitable workforce development in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) career pathways is well-recognized and has been attributed to the poor retention of a diverse stream of students in academia. Social science theory and research provide evidence that social contextual variables—specifically kindness cues affirming social inclusion—influence chronic underrepresentation of…
Group Vs. Collaborative Learning: Knowing the Difference Makes a Difference
All collaborative learning is done in a group (of at least two people), but not all group work is inherently collaborative! The trick is to structure the activity in a way that makes students work together to be successful. [READ MORE]
Educating Biology PhDs for Life Beyond Academia
A growing number of universities, students, and funding organizations are working to change biology graduate education to meet the needs of students on a wide array of career paths. But before this new education model can take hold, graduate programs first have to figure out which career-development strategies work and how to cultivate a culture…
Who’s Preparing Future Faculty to Teach?
Last fall, the academic career coach Jennifer Polk conducted an informal Twitter poll: How many of you, she asked her followers, received any meaningful pedagogical training during graduate school? Replies ranged from the encouraging to the mostly dispiriting, with one doctoral candidate noting that the only training the program had offered took the form of…
Entering Mentoring Training – Spring 2018 RSVP
Dear UCLA Graduate Students and Postdocs, The UCLA Entering Mentoring Training (EMT) Program seeks to develop a mentoring ethos by providing leadership, mentorship, and diversity sensitivity training to graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. This course is specifically for those who directly mentor trainees working on STEM research projects. The seminar is based on a curriculum…