Portfolio

1. In the philosophy of science course "Science, Knowledge, and Objectivity", students often find it challenging to engage in critical evaluation of the relative merits of theories foundational to the history of scientific development, given that modern science has largely progressed beyond them. Recognizing this, I implemented principles of gamification and deep processing by assigning each student a “role” as a proponent of one of the competing theories being covered. Throughout the relevant unit of the course, students were responsible for representing the views and arguments of their assigned theories in class discussion, incorporating each week’s new course material into their role-playing as the semester progressed.

2. A central objective of the introductory logic course "Reasoning and Argument" is to equip students to evaluate the arguments that they encounter across widely differing contexts in day-to-day life, in part by applying highly technical concepts and tools from Propositional and First-Order Logics. So, to enhance the sort of association-building that enables classroom learning to translate readily into daily life, I created two progressively in-depth projects in which students sought out, analyzed in formal terms, and evaluated real world arguments drawn from sources of personal interest to them. Examples of arguments that students chose included ones drawn from their friends’ Facebook posts, magazine ads, blogs, and current articles from major news sources.

3. When the COVID-19 pandemic compelled the strongly discussion-oriented course "Ideas on Trial" to switch to a remote learning format during Spring 2020, several of my students became unable to participate in synchronous class sessions due to time zone constraints. In light of the extensive research demonstrating the benefits of peer interaction for learning (e.g. in connection with the social relatedness component of the Self-Determination Theory of intrinsic motivation in learning), I replicated elements of in-class discussion for these students by creating an asynchronous online forum organized around weekly discussion questions similar to those that students discussed synchronously on Zoom. I provided incentives for all students (including synchronous participants) to comment substantively on each other's posts.

4. The subsequent iteration of "Ideas on Trial" took place entirely in a hybrid learning environment, which presented new opportunities for integrating interactive educational technology into the course. For example, I was able to use Articulate Storyline’s branching content pathway functionality to equip different groups of students with differing, complementary knowledge bases to bring with them into synchronous class discussions. This enhanced the quality of the discussions, facilitated my ability to build directed practice in philosophical argumentation into each class session, and contributed an additional element of deep processing to students’ engagement with the course material.

5. In most undergraduate courses that I have taught, I have aimed to apply the principles of chunking, dual coding, and association-building; Self-Determination Theory regarding intrinsic motivation in learning; and the Generation Effect regularly in these ways: (i) creating charts that visually represent the relationships between different components of course content (e.g. all the main theories, arguments, and objections covered throughout the course), often collaboratively with students; (ii) beginning class by presenting students with “puzzles” arising from the day’s subject matter and giving them time individually and/or in pairs to work toward their own solutions, so as to position the lecture content as a means of moving closer to an answer that they are antecedently invested in finding; (iii) breaking up periods of lecture and full-class discussion with brief, targeted active learning exercises for students to complete individually or in small groups.

6. Because of the unique learning needs and context of the learners I've taught through Corrupt the Youth - LA (students aged 17-24 who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness), the first and third of Gagne’s Nine Events of Learning have been especially crucial in lesson design for the program; i.e.: (1) gaining attention and (3) stimulating recall of prior learning. So, for example, in a lesson I taught on “philosophical zombies” and the Problem of Other Minds, I opened the session by dividing the students into pairs and asking them to write down every clue they could identify regarding what their partner was thinking or feeling; I then listed all their proposals on the whiteboard, and the group collaboratively eliminated each feature that they concluded could be indistinguishably mimicked by the sort of realistic android familiar to them from science fiction.