Better Teaching @ MIT
Dr. Lori Breslow, Director, Teaching and Learning Laboratory
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Participants welcome at individual sessions (series)
Prereq: none
A series of lunchtime workshops designed to help MIT instructors teach better. In the series we'll talk to some of MIT’s best teachers about how they teach, explain how to write homework problems and test questions to best support student learning and understanding, consider ways to engage students in classroom discussions, and explore other topics. Workshops are open to all members of the MIT community.
Web: http://web.mit.edu/tll/programs-services/better-teaching/schedule-iap-current.html
Contact: Leann Dobranski, 5-122, x3-3371, leann@mit.edu
Tech's Top Teachers Talk Turkey
Dr. Lori Breslow, Moderator
Join us for a session in which some of MIT's best teachers — both faculty and teaching assistants — talk about how to teach well. This is a panel discussion at which questions are strongly encouraged.
Mon Jan 25, 12-01:00pm, 34-101
Interactive Teaching and Active Learning
Dr. Sanjoy Mahajan, Associate Director, Teaching & Learning
Asking students questions based on key concepts engages students' interests and intelligences. Instructors also learn what concepts students find most confusing. This session discusses the reasons for interactive teaching and provides examples of questions and techniques that can be used for adapted for teaching a variety of courses and topics.
Tue Jan 26, 12-01:00pm, 34-101
Planning and Presenting a Lecture
Dr. Sanjoy Mahajan, Associate Director, Teaching & Learning
This session will explore how to organize a lecture or recitation. It will help you understand how to craft the messages you are delivering and understand how they affect your audience. By the end of the seminar, you will have a better sense of how to use more of your expressive capacity to keep a group engaged.
Wed Jan 27, 12pm-01:00am, 34-101
Constructing Effective Assignments, Problem Sets & Exam Questions
Dr. Sanjoy Mahajan , Associate Director, TLL
This session highlights ways in which exams, problem sets and homework assignments can be designed to best support student learning and understanding. Participants identify positive and negative attributes of sample homework problems and work collaboratively to redesign these problems in order to more effectively reinforce desired learning outcomes.
Thu Jan 28, 12-01:00pm, 34-101
Special Considerations for Teaching in a Multicultural Classroom
Jane Dunphy, Director, English Language Studies and Dr. Lori Breslow, Director, Teaching & Learning Lab
MIT's cultural diversity is an exciting resource. In this seminar, strategies are presented for discussion about ways to increase understanding in, and effective management of multicultural classrooms.
Fri Jan 29, 12-01:00pm, 34-101
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Getting Messages Across with Graphs
Dr. Jean-luc Doumont
Fri Jan 29, 02-04:00pm, 1-190
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Although widely used in research to analyze data and to communicate about them, graphical displays are still poorly mastered by researchers, who often use the wrong graphs or use them in the wrong way (and popular software does not exactly help). Based on Dr Doumont's book _Trees, maps, and theorems_ about “effective communication for rational minds”, this session discusses how to choose the right graph for a given data set and a given research question, how to optimize the graph's construction to reveal the data, and finally how to phrase a useful caption.
Contact: Leann Dobranski, Asst. Director, Teaching & Learning Lab, 5-122, x3-3371, leann@mit.edu
Cosponsor: Office of the Dean for Undergraduate Education
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How to Speak
Professor Patrick Winston
Fri Jan 29, 11am-12:00pm, 6-120
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Single session event
You can improve your speaking ability in critical situations by observing a few heuristic rules. Professor Winston's collection of rules is presented along with examples of their application not only in lectures, but also in job talks, thesis defenses, and oral examinations.
Web: http://web.mit.edu/tll/programs-services/better-teaching/schedule-iap-current.html
Contact: Leann Dobranski, 5-122, x3-3371, leann@mit.edu
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Making the Most of Your Presentation
Dr. Jean-luc Doumont, Communication Consultant
Wed Jan 27, 02-04:00pm, 1-190
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Single session event
Strong oral presentation skills are a key to success for engineers, scientists, and other professionals, yet many speakers are at a loss to tackle the task. Systematic as they otherwise can be in their work, they go at it intuitively, sometimes haphazardly, with much good will but seldom good results. Based on Dr Doumont's book _Trees, maps, and theorems_ about “effective communication for rational minds” this lecture proposes a systematic way to prepare and deliver presentations. Among others, it covers structure, slides, and delivery, as well as stage fright.
Contact: Leann Dobranski, 5-122, x3-3371, leann@mit.edu
Cosponsor: Dean for Graduate Education (ODGE)
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Structuring Your Scientific Paper
Dr. Jean-luc Doumont, Communication Consultant
Thu Jan 28, 02-04:00pm, 1-190
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Single session event
Papers are one of the few deliverables of the work of researchers. Well-designed, they efficiently allow each reader to learn only what he or she needs to. Poorly designed, by contrast, they confuse readers, fail to prompt decisions, or remain unread. Based on Dr Doumont's book _Trees, maps, and theorems_ about “effective communication for rational minds”, the lecture shows how to structure scientific papers, theses, and technical reports effectively at all levels to get the readers' attention, facilitate navigation, and, in this way, get the message across optimally.
Web: http://www.principiae.be
Contact: Leann Dobranski, 5-122, x3-3371, leann@mit.edu
Cosponsor: Dean for Graduate Education (ODGE)
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Workshop on Project-Based Learning (Lunch Provided)
Edward Crawley, Steve Banzaert, Diane Soderholm
Tue Jan 12, 10am-03:30pm, Room 33-116
No limit but advance sign up required (see contact below)
Signup by: 09-Jan-2010
Single session event
This workshop focuses on designing, conducting and assessing project-based learning experiences in engineering education. It is designed so participants will be able to summarize the rationale for project-based learning, design conduct and assess project-based learning through an example, and apply the design process to a project-based learning experience of their own. Open to all faculty. A faculty member may bring a teaching assistant (TA) with them. The workshop is limited to TA's accompanying a faculty member.
Contact: Dr. Diane Soderholm, x3-5575, dhsoder@mit.edu
Cosponsor: Aeronautics and Astronautics
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