Teaching Spotlight
Welcome to Cornell Voices on Teaching!
Explore new tools and emerging technologies, approaches, and teaching strategies to facilitate vibrant, challenging, and reflective learning experiences at Cornell.
Explore new tools and emerging technologies, approaches, and teaching strategies to facilitate vibrant, challenging, and reflective learning experiences at Cornell.
Jennifer Birkeland, assistant professor of Landscape Architecture in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, used the award to develop a course in which students would use biosensors to understand how individuals interacted with environments. The students then used those data to design new virtual environments to explore or evoke emotions. Because of the shift to remote teaching in Spring 2020, Birkeland had students explore their own emotions around the pandemic through virtual spaces they created.
Darlene Campbell and Andrew St. James used their grant to incorporate the Organon 3D software into their anatomy class to help students explore tissues and processes that cannot be investigated through ordinary dissection.
David Deitcher and Bruce Johnson, together with James Ryan, professor of biology at Hobart & William Smith Colleges, used their innovation grant to develop an inexpensive microscope that would allow them to see neurons in action.
Through their Innovation grant, Peter Hitchcock and Mark Wysocki incorporated Jupyter Notebooks into their Atmospheric Dynamics course. The Jupyter Notebook is an app that allows students to use real forecast data in visualizations, and manipulate those data to explore the impact on forecast flows.
Trevor Pinch and Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri were awarded a grant to develop a class in which students create an instrument and use it to explore aspects of sound and performance. As the move to remote learning during the pandemic limited access to materials and workshop tools, Pinch & Papalexandri-Alexandri asked students to be creative and use their own living spaces and materials they had on hand to complete the assignment.
Michelle K. Smith used an innovation award to continue faculty learning communities for STEM gateway course instructors. She was able to hire Claire L. Meaders, now assistant professor of biology at University of California, San Diego, as a postdoctoral associate to extend a pilot they had run in 2018-2019 to add additional faculty and different courses.
Courtney Roby, associate professor of Classics, and Andrew Hicks, associate professor of music, used their award to create new tools to assist in making their team-taught course "The Art of Math" more active and engaging for their diverse group of students.
Andrea Won, Assistant Professor, and Connie Yuan, Professor, both in Communication, used virtual reality to help teach students intercultural competence.
Kelly Zamudio, professor, and Abby Drake, senior lecturer, both in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, created an online evolutionary biology course that uses active learning techniques.
Sr. lecturer and research associate Marc Goebel, and post doctoral associate Kira Treibergs, both in the department of natural resources and the environment at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, work to ensure that their students in Introductory Field Biology (NTRES 2100) have a collaborative learning experience. Student teams build confidence as researchers through conducting field research and learning to read the landscape. Students also connect with their peers as they discover field research together.
Cornell students in Benjamin M. Finio's Mechatronics (MAE 3780) course have an opportunity to connect theoretical knowledge with hands-on engineering activities using hardware that interacts with the physical world.
Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao, assistant professor of Design + Environmental Analysis in the College of Human Ecology, explains how she led her students through a hands-on class in designing wearable technology when her class moved from the lab to an online environment.
In this video, the first in the Peer Review series, Emilia Illana Mahiques, lecturer in Romance Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, talks about how peer review can benefit student learning.
Athena Kirk, assistant professor, and Stephen Sansom, Active Learning Initiative postdoctoral associate, both in in the Department of Classics, discuss their course: Hieroglyphs to HTML: History of Writing. The course is an introduction to the history and theory of writing systems from cuneiform to the alphabet, historical and new writing media, and the complex relationship of writing technologies to human language and culture.
Poppy L. McLeod, Professor of Communication in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, gives new faculty her insights and tips for getting off to a successful start in their teaching careers.
Connie Yuan, Professor of Communication in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences answers the question: What does inclusive teaching look like to you?
Poppy L. McLeod, Professor of Communication in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, explores reasons for using student groups as a means of engaging students with course material.
In this video, the second in the Peer Review series, Emilia Illana Mahiques, lecturer in Romance Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, talks about the components of high-quality peer feedback.
In this video, the third in the Peer Review series, Emilia Illana Mahiques, lecturer in Romance Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, talks about guiding students to give effective peer feedback.
In this video, the fourth in the Peer Review series, Emilia Illana Mahiques, lecturer in Romance Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, talks about ways positive peer feedback can reinforce student learning.
In this video, the fifth in the Peer Review series, Emilia Illana Mahiques, lecturer in Romance Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, talks about the importance of ensuring students give honest peer feedback.
In this video, the sixth in the Peer Review series, Emilia Illana Mahiques, lecturer in Romance Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, discusses ways to prepare students for hearing and effectively using the feedback they receive from peers.
In this video, the seventh in the Peer Review series, Emilia Illana Mahiques, lecturer in Romance Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, talks about ways to incorporate learning technologies into the peer feedback process in a course.
Brian Richards, Senior Research Associate in the Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering, talks about integrating student feedback assignments into the fabric of his course, BEE 3299.
Alexei Tchistyi, Associate Professor of Applied Economics and Policy in the School of Hotel Administration, SC Johnson College of Business, describes mini-quizzes he uses at the end of each class session to engage students with course material and provide opportunities to practice networking.
Jennifer Birkeland discusses her use of Google cardboard virtual reality viewers to explore landscapes after the pandemic quarantine began in Spring 2020.
Steven Strogatz talks about how he began building community with his students on the first day of class in Fall 2020 during the pandemic.
Beth McKinney talks about using live captioning in PowerPoint as a way to help students engage with material and as a way to explore diversity and inclusion in her nutrition classes.
Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri discusses how she adapted Bending Instruments, a course she taught with Trevor Pinch, to the pandemic quarantine in Spring 2020.
2021 Cornelia Ye Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award winner Giulia Andreoni talks about what teaching at Cornell has meant to her.
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