How do you know one teaching method is better than another?
How do you know when you’ve successfully developed more effective ways for students to learn the material in your courses?
If students are learning better, does that mean that they are earning better grades?

Image from: the-year-in-education-seven-innovations-changing-the-way-the-world-learns
How do we tell better learning from grade inflation?
I wish I had some answers to these questions. I don’t.
In evaluating teacher effectiveness and quality, we tend to rely on course evaluation questionnaires.

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The Student Perspective
I know when I was a college student, I basically muddled my way through a 4-6 hr lab period, barely knowing what I was doing despite reading through the instructions and even preparing a “pre-lab” outline the night before. I enjoyed the actual being there for the most part, but I felt the laboratory sessions lasted way too long. Most of my labs didn’t seem connected to my course work and most were just lists of steps to be done in order.

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The Faculty Perspective
Most college science curricula still have the overall structure of three-days-per-week lecture/4 hr laboratory, at the least for the intermediate-level bread-and-butter courses. Why? What are the goals of those laboratories?
Most laboratory courses are focused on learning how to do particular field-specific techniques and how to gather and analyze particular types of data. The plan is for those laboratory sessions to engage concepts and approaches that complement what is being taught in the “lecture” component of the course.

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Giving your class short writing assignments can be a great way to give them practice writing and thinking in the language of your scientific (or other) discipline. They also give your most shy students a way to express themselves, first in writing and then, hopefully, in class. These short writing assignments also give them practice using the language of science.

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Blended classrooms, MOOCs, multi-media infotainment- are the new ways really better?
Should lectures really go the way of the dodo?
image from Wikipedia!
Not so fast……
Yes, it is true that small group activities, discussion sessions and other student-centered teaching techniques are quite effective at enhancing learning and retention of material, even complex biological and neuroscience concepts. I certainly use a variety of non-lecture techniques in my courses and I think I’m a better teacher as a result. By “better” I mean that my students seem to master the course material and my course objectives and they also seem quite satisfied.

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