Center for Instructional Innovation - Western Washington University's Teaching and Learning Center
2000-01 Featured Instructors
This showcase features the curricular transformation of two Journalism courses, Journalism 190, Introduction to Mass Media, and Journalism 309, Editing. It chronicles the work done over several years by Dr. Tim Pilgrim, Associate Professor in Western Washington University's Journalism Department, and exhibits some examples of student learning.
The Introduction to Microeconomics course provides an overview of the modern market economy as a system for dealing with the problem of scarcity. Over the years, Dr. Matthew Roelofs has incorporated a number of innovations into his teaching, including allowing students to actively participate in economics experiments during the class. These experiments help the students gain a deeper understanding of complex economic principles.
Art History 220, Survey of Western Art, was created to provide students with an overview of the arts from pre-historic Europe to ancient Egypt, the Near East, Greece, Rome and the Middle Ages in Ireland, Great Britian, and Europe. When Professor Linda Smeins teaches this course, her students are introduced to questions about society and culture that teach skills in critical thinking, conceptualization and theorization. In her course, art history becomes the study of visual culture--the production of meanings in a society.
This showcase features the teaching of Dr. Thor Hansen, then Chair of the Geology Department at Western Washington University. His unusual teaching style, coupled with his flair for instruction and requirement that his students be "noisy" and "engaged", are presented in this showcase.
Innovative Teaching Showcase 2000-01
For a preview of this Showcase, read the following excerpts:
"Dr. Pilgrim's use of technology to help facilitate learning (also by using differing levels of complexity such as analysis, synthesis, evaluation) and to make greater use of the visual and kinesthetic (doing) modes of learning do not stop at his own courses..."
Read more..."Unfortunately, much of the subject matter of economics is abstract and difficult for many students to grasp. Professors of economics use a variety of approaches to make the material come alive for their students. The approach that I [Matthew Roelofs] use in my Introduction to Microeconomics class is the in-class economic experiment."
Read more..."Studying art history...is not about gathering information; it is about learning to analyze people, places, events and the values they express. In [Linda Smeins'] art history, how things mean is more important than what things mean. Art history as such is a study of visual culture.... The content of the course shifts from information about history to critical seeing and thinking as a means to sort through historical and contemporary complexities."
Read more..."Often, when I [Thor Hansen] am talking to a class, I don't know how much of what I am saying they are taking in. But when I answer a question, I KNOW the questioner is ready to receive and is more likely to integrate it into their worldview. Questions work both ways... If I have been droning on for a while, nothing energizes the class better than asking the right question; one that results in a few moments of awkward silence followed by tentative attempts to answer it."
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