Interactive Theatre
Sketches draw the audience into the scene with a mix of comedy, drama and occasionally music, and are designed to portray the complexities and challenges of everyday classroom situations. Following each sketch, the audience dialogues with the actors, who stay in character. A trained facilitator guides the discussion and provides professional expertise and research-based information about the topic at hand. After the dialogue, the characters often repeat the sketch, incorporating audience members’ suggested changes.
Anxiety in the Clinical Setting examines the difficulties students face as they enter the clinic for the first time, and raises questions of how instructors can help students learn and succeed in this complex environment.
Critical Thinking: Finding the Root of the Problem portrays a student new to the dentistry clinic and explores effective strategies for fostering and teaching critical thinking in the clinic.
Faculty Advising Faculty explores the junior faculty-senior faculty mentoring process and examines the many factors, both individual and institutional, that can hinder or foster effective mentoring. This sketch is also part of the U-M ADVANCE project (funded by NSF).
The Faculty Meeting depicts a faculty discussion involving an important topic (a faculty search) and how gender dynamics and faculty rank influence the conversation and affect the participants. The sketch is part of the U-M ADVANCE project (funded by NSF), designed to improve the recruitment and retention of women faculty in science and engineering.
First Days depicts an instructor and students on the first day of class struggling with the many issues, stereotypes, and dynamics surrounding visible and hidden disabilities.
Gender in the Classroom depicts the chilly climate that women students may face in a science classroom, but is applicable to all teaching environments.
Graduate Student Mentoring uses theatrical vignettes, monologue, and music to explore common dynamics and possible dilemmas in the faculty-graduate student mentoring relationship.
Groups portrays the complexities that often accompany assigned group work in the classroom. Topics include the importance of effective instructions, problematic group dynamics, and the instructor’s responsibilities regarding classroom climate.
Student Conflict in the Classroom focuses on a classroom conversation that suddenly turns contentious, exploring questions surrounding students’ backgrounds and conflicting perspectives, instructor responsibility, and what does or does not constitute subject-appropriate discussion in the classroom.
Tenure Sketch: The Fence. The Fence focuses on a tenure meeting discussion at the executive committee level of a science department. The sketch poses questions regarding the fairness of some common issues and dynamics in tenure discussions and portrays the subtle ways that the gender can affect a committee’s interpretation of the candidate’s scholarship and productivity. This sketch is also part of the U-M ADVANCE project (funded by NSF).