(1 minute, 21 seconds, 6.5 MB)

( Michael Russell, Teaching Assistant, University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Most of the teaching assistants find that teaching the active learning style requires a different kind of effort. When you're working with the students in the lab, our jobs are more to be a guide rather than to be a source of information. The students themselves develop strategies for working on open ended labs and for their different problem sets that they're working on and the TA is there to guide the student through the problems or to provide helpful guidance on an open-ended laboratory rather than to be a source of a right or wrong answer.

(Teri Larson, Teaching Assistant, University of Wisconsin-Madison, coaching a group of 3 students)... but first of all, think of the properties of ...

(Michael's voice fades in over) Teaching in this style requires that you develop an insight to how the students are feeling about the problems and how they're thinking about solving them and you have to begin guiding them through the problem rather than providing a correct answer for them.

 

© 1997 Division of Chemical Education, Inc., American Chemical Society. All rights reserved.