Many students can feel shy voicing their opinions in classrooms that discuss subjective topics. William Klein, Psychology, is aware of such feelings; so, from day one of class, he tries to make his students feel comfortable.
“I try to make students feel as though they’re part of the learning process and develop a good rapport with them,” explains Klein, who teaches both undergraduate and graduate level courses. “I let them know that their opinions, attitudes, and interpretations are just as valid and important as anyone else’s, including mine.”
In his graduate and upper-level undergraduate classes, which contain about 12 and 30 students respectively, Klein is able to integrate material in ways other than lecturing. He encourages his students to “think and think outside the box as opposed to just memorizing information.”
One way Klein accomplishes this goal is by dividing his classes into groups. The groups take material from several portions of the course and apply it to solve a problem, such as developing a healthy community, and then complete a class presentation. He urges his students to consider questions like “What would you do to develop a healthy community? How would you structure the roads or structure the availability of resources? and How would you influence access to foods?”
Klein is always amazed at how creative and innovative the projects are. “Every year I get completely different projects for the same topic. You send people off and what they come up with is so interesting and so different from the other groups; to me, that is really fun.”
He also uses the problem-solution approach for in-class projects by “coming up with exercises that make students think differently than they normally might.” When teaching his students about research methods, Klein challenges them to create the worst possible experiment.
“The students go out of their way to find problems and come up with outlandish experiments, and, by the end of the presentations, everyone is laughing,” Klein says. “But in the end, students know research methods because they understand what all the problems are within experiments.”
Klein’s innovative approach, however, does not stop with these experiments. “I’m always working to devise new ways to get students more involved and more engaged in the classroom. I’m constantly refining my methods to make certain I’m doing the best I can.”
In the final analysis, because of this interactive approach, Klein’s students become active participants in their own education.
by Katie Szokoly, Teaching Times Intern
Katie Szokoly is a senior majoring in Nonfiction Writing and is in the Public and Professional Writing Program. She is also a peer tutor at the Writing Center.
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