Teaching Academy videos highlight strategies for targeting instructional techniques

Strategies for targeting instructional techniques to particular students are among the topics discussed by two recent Teaching Academy honorees in a new video series.

Monica Cardella

Monica Cardella, associate professor of engineering education, and David Eichinger, associate professor of curriculum and instruction, are among 11 faculty members and graduate teaching assistants recently honored by the Purdue Teaching Academy. Cardella and Eichinger have shared their innovative ideas on engaging students and facilitating learning in a series of videos posted on the Teaching Academy website.

In each short video interview, an honoree discusses the teaching philosophies, strategies and tools used to engage students in ways that facilitate learning.

In her video, Cardella discusses teaching first-semester, first-year engineering students, especially in developing their problem-solving proficiency and teamwork skills. Her experience includes providing more active-learning opportunities in large classes with multiple sections by "flipping" some course content such as readings and videos to online pre-work. Cardella also explains how she adds a science-fiction concept to design projects in her class.

"This science-fiction context is something that allows the students to be creative," Cardella says. "It's also something that really pushes them to think about the fact that they are designing for people, or creatures, that are not like them … it pushes the assumptions that they make."

Cardella's video may be viewed here.

David Eichinger

Eichinger, a 2014 Murphy Award recipient, targets his techniques and activities toward his future elementary and high school teachers. This means modeling sound, hands-on teaching practices in the two biology courses he teaches. He correlates content to what secondary teachers typically teach and to the Indiana State Science Standards. By spending only one hour in lecture and four hours in lab each week, Eichinger is able to incorporate activities that help his students understand biology better, and, with "a few tweaks" are activities they can use in their own classrooms.

"One of the real tangible ways that I measure the success is by the number of former students who are now full-time teachers who contact me on a regular basis and say 'I remember we did this activity in the biology classes that I took on campus. Could you send me a copy of that activity, because I want to be using this in my own classroom now?'" Eichinger says. "To me that is a signal that we've picked some appropriate content, because it correlates to what they want to be doing in their own classroom, and that we picked an approach that, not only was effective for them as a learner, but now they are seeing that it's effective for them as a teacher."

Eichinger's video may be viewed here.

The entire series of video interviews is available on the Teaching Academy website.