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William Amadio, Computer Information Sciences [Acrobat PDF] Research on the benefits of Team Learning is mixed, but I am not happy with the results of a mostly lecture format in my SQL (Structured Query Language) programming course. How can I apply research on assignment sequencing to design a Team Learning experience focused on objectives expressed in the terms of Bloom's taxonomy, with emphasis on application-oriented activities? How would such an experience affect the learning of students at varying skill levels?

Rebecca Basham, English Literature [Word Document]  Rebecca Basham, [PowerPoint Presentation]  The core course I regularly teach—Literature and Psychology—counts for the general education requirement in literature but is really interdisciplinary. Having tried at first to do too much in this course, I realized I had to focus my syllabus and assignments so that students could learn to apply psychoanalytic theories to literature, when they are novices to both. How could I achieve a better balance between “covering” essential material and fostering critical thinking?

Pamela Brown, Communication Law [Word Document: Going Public] I spend so much time preparing Study Guides to help students through difficult legal cases. Why aren't my Study Guides working as well as I hoped? How can I make them more useful to students? How can I motivate students to respond to them more thoughtfully? Will better use of the guides improve student performance on exams?

Kathleen Browne, Marine Science [Word Document] I direct a project aimed at improving science education, both K-12 and on the college level. Since we generally emphasize the value of hands-on activities, I decided to investigate the following question: In a Marine Science class directed at non-majors, what effect would increased use of interactive and inquiry-based education methods have on student learning as evidenced in test scores?

Richard Burgh, Philosophy [Word Document] Our students have the tendency to ignore what they don't understand and focus on what they do understand. I want them to focus on what they don't understand and learn to put into words why they don't understand it. When one begins to see that questions can be asked about the most obvious, one is beginning to do philosophy. How can I use a) develop writing assignments that help students do what philosophers do and b) help students use question-posing as a way to foster better comprehension of primary texts?

Feng Chen, Chemistry [Word Document] Most students find chemistry difficult; many mistakenly think they can understand the material if they can follow the lectures and complete homework. However, they always have difficulty performing well on quizzes and tests. How can I discover exactly where my students' understanding of new concepts begins to break down? What strategies can I use to help them perform better on exams that require conceptual understanding?

Susan Denbo, Business Policy/Law [Word Document] I teach Healthcare Law, Ethics, and Policy, an elective undergraduate course in the College of Business Administration in which we analyze the public policy, economic, and ethical issues raised by our health care system. I want my students to actually “take a stand” on these issues and support their positions with quantitative and qualitative data from documented sources. How can I move my students beyond simply agreeing or disagreeing with various positions on a “gut” level?

Julie Drawbridge, Biology [Word Document] Julie Drawbridge, Biology [PowerPoint Presentation] How can I better evaluate student understanding of basic concepts of biology and their ability to use this material to make connections within bio content?

• how can I check to be sure they're "getting it" as we go through the material?
• how can I improve the methods by which I evaluate students?
• can I improve student performance as I do the above?

Mary Elizabeth Haywood-Sullivan, Accounting [Word Document], Mary Elizabeth Haywood-Sullivan, Accounting [PowerPoint Presentation] One main objective of this freshman course is to provide a foundation for advanced business classes by introducing business terms and concepts and by demonstrating the relations between business disciplines. So far, my “scrapbook” assignment hasn't succeeded as well as I would like. How can I revise it to help students 1) develop their ability to synthesize and integrate information and ideas; and 2) develop the ability to think holistically: to see the whole as well as the parts. [Objectives from Angelo and Cross, Teaching Goals Inventory.]

Ilene Goldberg, Business Policy/Law [PowerPoint Presentation] In this core course for junior Business majors, many students don’t know how the legal system works, and are unfamiliar with legal terminology.  I value the benefits of collaborative groupwork as a tool for both proactive learning and  peer-teaching. However, the results have been mixed. How can I revise the structure and focus of my group research/presentation assignment to 1) help students do a better job of identifying and synthesizing key findings in the literature, 2) improve the value of presentations to the audience, 3)use class time more efficiently, 4) mitigate the “slacker” problem?

Stephanie Golski Psychology [Word Document] PSY 335/335L is an advanced seminar/lab course for majors, but neither students nor I have been making the most of the seminar format.  I want to apply Walvoord’s principles of assignment-centeredness so that I can (a) appropriately reward extra effort by some students and constructively assess merely adequate effort by others and (b) increase professionalism (exposure to primary sources, presentation and summary skills, self-identification of interest areas, application of content knowledge to real-world problems). Stephanie Golski  [BCCC PowerPoint]

Alex Grushow Chemistry [Word Document]  Alex Grushow [PowerPoint Presentation]  Since much of what students learn in this class is a foundation for later work, I tend to focus on whether or not the students can “do the work.”  The thinking is that if they can “do” a chemistry problem, they must understand the concept behind it.  However, there have been a number of recent findings in the literature to indicate that this may not be true in many cases.  So my question is “How can I test (assess) the depth of a student’s understanding of chemical concepts using some form of chemical problem solving?”

Sigfredo Hernandez, Marketing [Word Document, Visual Metaphor] In the target class, student teams are asked to translate their synthesis of marketing principles into a visual metaphor that represents conceptual relationships and to present it to the class at the end of can I identify the key learning difficulties that students encounter while working in this project and develop strategies to help them overcome such difficulties?         Sigfredo Hernandez, Marketing [Word Document: Team Learning] How can I use Michaelsen's model of instructional sequencing for cooperative learning to give students more practice in concept application and problem-solving in my Marketing Principles class?

Peter Hester, Undergraduate Education 
My Education course, ELD 376, has been a major requirement for three distinct populations of teachers-in-training:

• junior-level elementary education majors (w/ any CLAES second major)
• junior-level secondary education majors (w/ science second major)
• junior-level secondary education majors (w/ social studies second major)

How can these prospective teachers address perceived gaps in their content preparation, especially in the sciences, in order to better prepare themselves for teaching?

Jonathan Husch, Geosciences [Word Document] By the time I began my BRIDGE project, I had already found success with strategies such as out-of-class review sessions before exams and pop quizzes for extra credit. Class sessions, however, were not as lively as I might have wished, as I found myself mostly in the “chalk-and-talk” position. So I took a chance with another experiment: What effect would posting my lecture notes on line have on a) attendance and class discussion and b) performance on exams?

Jonathan Husch, Geosciences [Word Document], Jonathan Husch, Geosciences [PowerPoint presentation] For over 90% of the students in this introductory course, this will be their only exposure to geology at the college level. My goal is to expand student horizons beyond the parochial to the national, global, and even cosmic I want students to appreciate the immensity of geologic time and to understand our responsibilities in respecting geologic processes. Building on my BRIDGE experience last year, how can I continue to make this “core” course meaningful, enjoyable, and positive?

Paul Jivoff, Biology [Word Document] In theory, group activities facilitate learning and lead to peer-teaching at a level not easily obtained in more traditional formats.  While I have not used small group activities during the lecture portion of my courses, I have colleagues who consider them a very effective teaching strategy.  So, I am interested in learning if small group activities are a useful tool for my own teaching. 

Michele Kamens, Education, [Word Document] In most of my courses, the class activities and content are complementary to the text, so I leave the text readings for students to complete independently. In my experience, students often do not read the text, particularly not on the schedule assigned for the course. My question for both target courses—SPE 301: Assessment for Instruction in Special Education and SPE 302: Instructional Practices for Students with Disabilities—was to find a way to motivate the students to read the text and process what they have read.

Jonathan Karp, Biopsychology [Word Document] I want to challenge my freshman students while addressing them at a developmentally appropriate level. Realizing that I may be moving too quickly and assuming too much background, I want to be more intentional about addressing the needs of students who have not yet learned to approach/view the world in a critical/scientific manner. Would slowing down, spiraling back, and providing more explicit support yield evidence of more and better learning?

Tony Kosar, Music Theory and Composition [Word Doc--Project Summary], Tony Kosar [Word Doc--Expanded Description and Appendices]   Harmonic dictation is especially difficult to teach, because if there are problems, the teacher is often unsure exactly where in the complex of required skills the problems occur.  Suspecting that some students were not consistently making connections between written exercises prepared for class and harmonic dictation aural drills, I decided to try to improve student performance in harmonic dictation--and my own understanding of my students' learning processes--through specific exercises on Blackboard. 

Anne Law, Psychology [PowerPoint] My students typically translate reading of disciplinary articles into versions of what they already think they know. They have difficulty connecting observational data to research and often substitute their personal experience for analysis of evidence. How can I introduce students to discipline-based methods of inquiry relevant to their future while including specific mechanisms to foster critical thinking and informed decision-making?

Jonathan Mendilow, Political Science [Word Document] A certain number of students each semester are unprepared to read critically in the ways I expect; as a result, they score poorly on exams, and some fail. What kinds of study guides will prove most helpful in prompting engaged reading, critical analysis, and conceptual synthesis -- in a course offered to relative novices in the discipline?

Susanna Monseau, Business Policy & Environment [Word Document] The problem I was most interested in addressing was the unfamiliarity of the material (law) and way of thinking (legal reasoning) for most of the students. How could I support reading comprehension, address misconceptions, and help students make connections that were obvious to me as a trained lawyer but not to relative novices?

Susanna Monseau, Business Policy and Environment [Word Document] "Multi-Layered Assignments for Teaching Law to Business Students," paper delivered at Creative Teaching Conference (ACT 8) of the World Association for Case Method Research and Application (WACRA) in January 2005.

Harry I. Naar, Fine Arts [Word Document] I was disappointed in the quality of my students' analysis in both informal journal responses and formal essays. How could I design and sequence writing assignments to help my students begin to see with an artist's eye? And, since students in this heterogeneous core class are not prepared to take notes on a slide show in a darkened room, how could I help them remember salient qualities of specific paintings we were studying?

Cynthia Newman, Marketing [Word Document] CBA 110 is an elective introductory survey course targeted primarily to freshman business majors.  How can I design and sequence assignments not only to help novice students begin to understand the fundamentals of a range of business fields (accounting, finance, marketing, economics, and management), but also to recognize and appreciate inter-relationships among these disciplines? 

Ryan Netzley, English [Word Document] I want to show students that literature is always already theoretical, not simply some concrete object that theory comes along to explain. How can I design and sequence assignments to address students' presupposition that this course is esoteric, useless complication of a fundamentally simple process—reading literature—a naïve belief that typically emerges in comments such a “Derrida is too hard,” “Why do we have to read this stuff?” and “Isn't it all just up to the individual?”

Marge O'Reilly-Allen, Accounting [Word Document] One of the stated objectives of Issues in Financial Reporting is to develop an informed concern about the unethical use of accounting and auditing standards. I found that students in this Master level course correctly identified appropriate accounting and auditing standards, but frequently did not recognize or consider ethical issues in a case. How could I broaden their focus beyond technical problem-solving to include more subtle matters of judgment?

Anne Osborne, History [Word Document] This required core course does not teach History, in the sense of critical thinking about the past or the application of historical information to gain understanding of the present History appears to be just one damn thing after another -- BORING! How can I design debate assignments based on primary sources—and also with a contemporary ‘hook' to engage students in studying history, not just acquiring information.

Gary Pajer   Physics Newton’s third law is traditionally a stumbling block, as beginning students, trying to make sense of forces in general and Newton’s second law, often have trouble understanding the essential difference between the second law and the third. Part of the problem is that I have to undo widespread misconceptions about basic physical principles.  What specific teaching strategies will help my students understand the basic Newtonian concepts they need to know?

Joel Phillips, Music Composition/Theory [Word Document] While all of my students are music majors, few specialize in the area of this core course, i. e., Music Theory and Composition. How can I initiate my novice students into expert practices through a sequenced assignment that integrates individual transcription, peer collaboration, and professional models? What teaching and learning advantages would accrue from such a sequence?

Mary Poteau-Tralie, Foreign Languages [Word Document] How can I help my beginning French students see another language as distinct from their own, not just a code or translation or (wrong!) representation of English? How can I increase awareness of the link between culture, or how one sees the world, and the language? My hunch is that students already begin to make this connection which more fluent speakers take for granted, but this insight is not fostered in a systematic way.

Charles Schwartz, Mathematics [Word Document] How can I help my students overcome two common (and somewhat contradictory) misconceptions about math: 1) that it is primarily a bunch of formulas to be memorized and 2) that there is an “all or nothing” property about math problem—i.e, if you don't get it right away, you might as well give up? Would it be useful, for example, to have them make up sample tests on their own before exams?

Reed Schwimmer, Geosciences [Word Document:Realigning teaching and testing] Earth science textbooks are generally weak at illustrating the connections both within and among chapter topics, and students tend to treat each chapter separately, not relating new material to concepts already covered.  I don’t want to enable this fragmentation by teaching to the artificial divisions of the book. How can I increase students’ motivation to learn actively (not just memorize) and deepen their real understanding of interrelationships among Earth processes by changing both my course organization and my assessment methods?
Reed Schwimmer [Powerpoint: Using flowcharts to teach conceptual understanding]

Elizabeth Scheiber, Foreign Languages [Word Document] Students in foreign language classes often perceive daily homework as  busy work.  Using part of the class time to give students feedback on  their homework had seemed like a good idea, but in practice, it did  not work well.  Many students had not done the homework and could not  or would not participate.  I changed the way I delivered feedback and  polled students to learn how they viewed and used homework.

Robbie Sethi, English (Writing) [Word Document--BRIDGE project summary] I teach a core (general education) requirement for freshmen who do not declare a major and who place into our introductory-level composition class (CMP 115). In fall, this class co-enrolled in a section of HIS 150; in spring, the next course in the composition sequence (CMP 120) is linked with a section of HIS 151.  My challenge has been to select materials and design reading and writing tasks that will help my students succeed in discipline-based courses. This meant experimenting with ways to address students' difficulties remembering and understanding the reading well enough to write accurate and coherent essays (including HIS 150 essay exams) with sufficient detail (evidence and explanation) to support a point.
Robbie Sethi [Word Doc: Materials for CMP 115]
Robbie Sethi [Word Doc: Materials for CMP 120]

John Suler, Psychology [Word Document] Over the past several years I have been developing an online psychoeducational program called “eQuest” for Independent Study students who wish to explore a topic in psychology that is personally meaningful to them and their lives (e.g., divorce, alcoholism, stress reduction, premartial cohabitation). Such projects fulfill the capstone requirement for a major in psychology. While the various qualitative assessment tools I had designed for this program were useful in exploring the progress of individual students, I wanted to devise a quantitative assessment that would serve as a succinct way of comparing and assessing various students’ eQuest projects over the years.

Todd Weber, Biology [Word Document] Students in the introductory biology lab course (BIO-115) that I team-teach every fall semester are often unacculturated to basic practices in scientific disciplines. As a result, students who might be retained are not. How can the course be redesigned from emphasizing coverage to fostering  the deeper understanding necessary for accurate analysis of qualitative and quantitative data, discipline-specific report-writing, and synthesis of data with bigger ideas related to science and society? Todd Weber [Word Doc: Sample lab report--initial and revised]

Don Wygal, Accounting [Word Document] Even in this capstone course, which depends on integration of knowledge from prior courses, students appear to prefer tasks for which correct solutions can be demonstrated. How can I best use linkages to the professional community to help students transition to complex workplace environments, where a single solution to a problem may not exist and where it is necessary to articulate thinking on better and worse alternatives?