Developing New Courses and Exploring New Teaching Approaches: The Role of “Unexpected Feedback”

We have all experienced it-course evaluations or learning assessments that are surprising. In July I participated in the 2008 Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience workshop, The Undergraduate Neuroscience Education: Interactions, Interdisciplines, and Curricular Best Practices, and was struck by a phrase in one of the plenary sessions. Referring to faculty willingness to try exciting new teaching approaches and ideas, it was suggested that there are no failures, just " unexpected feedback " that can be used to improve, hone, change, or adjust teaching effectiveness the next time the course or topic is offered. This phrase was a huge hit, probably because it highlights the importance of thinking about teaching as a work in progress rather than a series of successes and failures. Thinking about " unexpected feedback " reminded me of a Sensation and Perception course I recently taught for the first time. At the start of the semester I had a basic but tangential understanding of the sensory modalities and perceptual processes, primarily from teaching Introductory Psychology. But most of the topic matter was new to me. As tends to happen when developing brand new courses, I spent copious amounts of time, including every weekend of the semester, searching the literature, reading, and gathering activities and information; essentially learning the material before teaching it that week. I knew going into the course that I was not an expert and the standard professing of my expertise in lecture format did not seem appropriate to either the course matter or the situation. The students in the course were a small, smart, upper level group that would see right through my inexpert shortcomings. So, since it was a new course, why not try a new approach? The interaction with students and the entire class dynamic needed to be a partnership in learning. After all, most of the 16 students were in their final semester and theoretically able to take more responsibility and became more active in their own learning. While searching the internet for ideas and other Sensation and Perception syllabi I stumbled upon Dr. David Kreiner's Sensation and Perception syllabus posted under Project Syllabus on the Society for the Teaching of Psychology's website syllabus really seemed to fit the goals and objectives I had set for the class by focusing student involvement around problem-based learning (PBL) activities. Additional searches through teaching books and the internet confirmed PBL as a good fit for …