Center for Instructional Innovation and Assessment - Western Washington University's Teaching and Learning Center
2001-02 Featured Instructors
Dr. Marc Geisler's main message in his Introduction to Shakespeare course is that a good reader is more like a film director looking at a potential script than a passive recipient of information and universal truths. Professor Geisler's students demonstrate their understanding of Shakespeare by developing their own imaginative responses to The Bard's dramatic language.
WWU Instructional Technology Professor June Dodd insists that her learners take center stage as they take on the instructor role in her Introduction to Distance Education class, take turns teaching course content to each other online, and create their own online courses based upon the instructional design process. She works with each student to customize these projects based upon their past work and educational experiences as well as the potential for actual delivery of the instruction in their professional lives.
WWU Professor Stan Tag teaches a section of Humanities and the Expressive Arts, a core course in Fairhaven College's curriculum. His Group Performance Project in the Humanities course pushed his students to new levels of creative work and expression, and challenged others to learn how to work together in groups.
WWU History Professor Marc Richards wishes to instill in his students his passionate conviction that learning and history really matter. He therefore requires his students to understand they too are historians and teachers.
Authentic Learning
To learn more about this year's Showcase theme, Authentic Learning, read the following excerpt from Ann Carlson's Authentic Learning: What Does it Really Mean?:
"By definition, the term "authentic learning" means learning that uses real-world problems and projects and that allow students to explore and discuss these problems in ways that are relevant to them.
This approach differs greatly from the traditional "lecture" class, where professors give students facts and other content that students then must memorize and repeat on tests. In Marc Richards' class, for example, students must not only connect post-Civil War history to current events and their own lives, they must also help teach the class and are encouraged to give their own views on historical events. In effect, they become historians."
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To navigate this year's Showcase, select the links to the 2001-02 Showcase on the left navigation bar or in the text above.
