Teaching Samples
The best way to get a flavor for my teaching practices is to attend one of my classes. However, because this option is often not feasible, I provide some examples below of materials and activities that I use when I teach. These include: PowerPoint lectures, videos to encourage in-class discussions, in-class participation activities, and online discussion boards.
PowerPoint Lectures
One question that always leads to considerable debate is whether instructors should use PowerPoint presentations. I believe that PowerPoint can be an effective teaching tool, if used properly. I use PowerPoint to incorporate graphics and "builds" that appeal to students who are visual learners. However, I also find that combining PowerPoint presentations with writing on the chalkboard allows me to be more responsive to students' questions and guide class discussions more effectively. Writing their responses on the chalkboard also helps students to organize their own thinking about each topic.
Two examples of PowerPoint presentations that I have used are provided below.
Two examples of PowerPoint presentations that I have used are provided below.
Introduction to Item Response Theory (IRT) - Part I
I gave this guest lecture in a graduate research methods course on measurement. In it, I tried to appeal to students' intuition about how we should measure delinquency and I discussed some of the limitations of Classical Test Theory that contradict this intuition. In this lecture, I kept the statistical notation to a minimum, except for introducing a few terms. A follow-up lecture covered the statistical formulas in more detail. The version provided here is an annotated version that I posted for the students after the lecture, with additional text that was not included when I taught the lesson in class.
Evaluating "What Works in Intervention Programs
This lecture is from the fifth week of the undergraduate course on Human Development Interventions. I've also used a version of this PowerPoint for a guest lecture in an undergraduate research methods course. On the second slide, I list "six critical issues for any intervention" to remind the students what we had covered so far in the first unit (basic concepts in intervention science). On the third slide, I list the four objectives for that lesson, which consisted of the lecture, a hands-on activity to practice evaluating evidence for several interventions, and a paper that would be due several weeks later.
Videos to Encourage Discussion of Course Topics
On the evaluations after my first semester of teaching, several students suggested that I incorporate more videos into the course. I now try to find videos that can encourage discussion and make the course material "come to life." Two of these videos are provided here.
I show the top video on the first day of class. This emotional video demonstrates why it is important to study prevention science. After watching the video, we identify several reasons that may have contributed to Ryan's death, including bullying, cyber-bullying, depression/anxiety and a lack of suicide awareness. During the spring 2009 semester, I showed the second video on the last day of class. This video from CNN discusses a story that had been in the news earlier that semester, and brought the course full circle from day one. The discussion activity that I used with this video is shown below under "In-class participation activities." This video and the adiscussion that followed reminded students that prevention science is still an emerging field and that there is still a lot that we don't know. I suggest that bullying is a very pressing problem right now and that they might be ones to develop an effective intervention to address this problem. I also show videos of interventions that we discuss in class, such as the Nurse-Family Partnership, the Incredible Years Program, and the Strengthening Families Program for Parents and Youth 10-14. In addition, I invite guest speakers to come in and talk about their experiences conducting or evaluating different interventions. |
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In-class Participation Activities
I use in-class "participation activities" to encourage class discussion and to provide students with opportunities to apply skills that they are learning. In addition, these activities allow me to keep track of who is in class, and more importantly, they also help me assess each day how the students are processing the information from the course. For example, are there any common misconceptions that I need to clarify or points that need to be discussed in more detail?
In many cases, I use a variant of the "think-pair-share" approach to class discussion: I ask students to complete the participation activity with a partner or in small groups. Then, I ask groups to share their ideas with the entire class. A few examples of in-class participation activities in which I used this approach are provided below.
In many cases, I use a variant of the "think-pair-share" approach to class discussion: I ask students to complete the participation activity with a partner or in small groups. Then, I ask groups to share their ideas with the entire class. A few examples of in-class participation activities in which I used this approach are provided below.
Bullying Prevention and Future Directions
Below is an application activity that I used on the last day of my Spring 2009 course in Human Development Interventions. I had students complete this activity after watching the CNN video clip above.
Online Discussion Boards
This section is under construction... please check back later