PII Newsletter: "Spotlight on Teaching"

Recent Newsletter Articles

April 2000 - "Sooner City: An Experiment in Design Across the Curriculum"

In May 1998, Spotlight featured a curricular innovation in the College of Business. In this issue, we are featuring another curricular innovation, this time in the School of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science. The Sooner City project is unusual in that it spans the entire four-year curriculum and thereby offers students the opportunity to integrate what they are learning in multiple courses in their major. The new structure is also encouraging a number of additional teaching innovations.

December 1999 - "Making Science 'Beautiful and Relevant' in a Capstone Course"

Mike Kaspari describes an interesting example of how he structured a course in a way that provided students with diverse kinds of knowledge. He also incorporated methods by which he could challenge students with "right brain/left brain" exercises. This structure, along with a number of active learning activities, resulted in a truly multidisciplinary learning experience for students. His essay also reveals how the course released energy in the students as well as a readiness to work. The course also led to new roles and rewards for the teacher.

May 1999 - "Building Positive Attitudes: The Tribute Letter Technique"

Jacob Larson, a trumpet teacher, has discovered that writing a simple letter thanking the many people who contributed to the education of his new students, can have a major positive impact on everyone involved in his work: his student(s), people who influenced the student previously, the university, and even himself as a teacher. The general idea of writing tribute letters seems to be one that many others in the university could use and benefit from.

February 1998 - "How to create writing assignments for students that you actually look forward to reading"

Michael Flanigan has done a 5-year longitudinal study of students at OU and their writing assignments. Among other things, he found many of the assignments given to students were confusing, underdeveloped, and lacking evaluative criteria. he offers some specific suggestions for creating better writing assignments that should result in better student writing.

May 1998 - "IBC: An award-wining curriculum innovation in OU's Business college."

Larry Michaelsen has helped create a new curriculum program in the Business College in which students create and operate an actual business -- at the beginning of their program, rater than at the end. The results? The students got an integrated understanding of how a business really works--at the beginning of their studies in the Business College; they therefore knew what they needed to learn in the rest of their courses; they had impressive experiences to report in job interviews; they had ready-to-go skills when thy got to their initial jobs; and they became personally engaged in the potential links between the business section of society and community service.