When we get creative with what we assign students, we open up a whole new set of possibilities for student engagement and learning. On today’s episode, Dr. Cameron Hunt McNabb helps us discover how to craft creative assignments that facilitate learning well.
Podcast Notes
Guest
Her bio and university web page
Recommended as a guest by past Teaching in Higher Ed guest: Dr. Josh Eyler
Cameron’s students contributed to the Medieval Disability Glossary by including their research on the word ‘lame‘
Teaching philosophy
…to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar…
The truth about internet slang; it goes way back (in Salon Magazine)
Cameron’s teaching philosophy from her website
Creative assignments
Must meet a specific goal and be measurable
Backwards design
- Identify goals first
- What evidence would exhibit those goals
- Explore options for assignments that would provide that evidence
** Write a paragraph in “future English”
Authentic pedagogy
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. – B.F. Skinner, The New Scientist, May 21, 1964
Places an emphasis on learning that is a construction of prior knowledge and a high value on knowledge that extends beyond the classroom.
** “Real world” is not just vocational, but for every aspect of life…
Active learning
** Intro to Shakespeare class; hired actors to come in and had students come with annotated script and then were asked to co-direct the scenes
A veteran teacher takes on the role of a student (from Wiggins’ blog)
Other ideas for creative assignments
- Undergraduate research: Morgan Library in New York
- Louis C.K.’s Everything’s Amazing and Nobody’s Happy routine
- The role of education: equipping us to think
- Arthur Holmes, The Idea of a Christian College
Recommendations
Bonni recommends Lines from The Princess Bride that could double as comments on Freshmen composition papers via McSweeney’s.net
Episode 3: Lessons in Teaching from The Princess Bride
Cameron recommends that we follow Tina Fey’s advice to “Say yes” (in her memoir Bossy Pants)