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CRLT Services in Spring and Summer The "school year" may be over, but CRLT is still here to support... |
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Investigating Student Learning: Poster Fair on May 6 "I learned so much this semester!" This is the kind of student... |
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First Day Resources As winter term wraps up, many U-M teachers are thinking ahead to their... |
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Maximizing Student Response Rate on Course Evaluations End-of-term student course evaluations are important for a range of... |
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Teaching in the Wake of a Tragedy Our thoughts and best wishes go out to everyone affected by the tragic... |
Are you aware of a colleague who has recently developed an innovative teaching tool or method? Perhaps you've admired a faculty member's creative use of technology in the classroom, original approach to facilitating student collaboration, or new strategies for replicating the advantages of a small course in a large lecture hall. Or maybe you're proud of a teaching innovation you've developed yourself. If any of these is the case, consider submitting a nomination for the 
Design for Global Health. Sienko was honored with the 2012 Teaching Innovation Prize for this capstone program she developed for undergraduate engineering students. Under Sienko's guidance, in collaboration with Dr. Aileen Huang-Saag and building on several long-standing U-M connections in Africa, students in the program have worked with clinicians in resource-limited settings--initially in Ghana, then in other African countries and China--to design medical devices to address needs in specific areas of global health (e.g., maternal health, infant mortality, or HIV/AIDS). Student designs have included an assisted obstetric delivery device, a multi-functional labor and delivery bed, and an adult male circumcision tool. Through a combination of field work, course work, cross-cultural training, and hands-on design experience, students in the program learn to define problems, adjust their solutions to accommodate real-world limitations, and collaborate in culturally-sensitive ways. 
The three Arthur F. Thurnau professors analyzed data from 48,579 U-M intro physics students over 14 years to generate models for predicting student success in these gateway courses. Correlating data concerning students' preparation (e.g., standardized test scores, prior U-M GPA, previous coursework, etc.), background (gender, socioeconomic status, etc.), and progress through the courses (homework grades, exam scores, class participation, etc.), the BTE team discovered that prior academic performance was a significant indicator of success in the introductory courses. In effect, students' progress through the semester was largely determined by their starting point. The team realized that, in order to develop the learning potential of all students, they needed to move away from a "one-size-fits-all" instructional model.
These key questions -- familiar to many instructors in large lecture courses -- structured Joanna Mirecki Millunchick’s teaching innovation in MSE (Materials and Science Engineering) 220. Because the course draws engineering majors with widely varying degrees of experience with course concepts, Professor Millunchick was especially interested in offering diverse students opportunities to review lecture topics and learn at a pace appropriate to their needs. 
Along with her team of GSIs, the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of English Language and Literature set the goal of improving students' skills at literary analysis, and then they focused their teaching efforts on replicating the advantages of a small course in a large lecture setting. The group creatively deployed technologies like iClickers and CTools online quizzes to ensure students completed readings and engaged actively with lectures. And they created assignment sequences that allowed students intensive writing practice and provided individualized feedback (without significantly increasing anyone's grading load). This combination of strategies resulted in significantly improved student skill with the complex task of close reading.