Category Archives: Teaching

Are extrinsic and intrinsic motivation relevant variables in learning?

Posted on September 15, 2017 by SubOptimist

Only cited 5 times in Google Scholar, but this study gets at some interesting ideas.  95 male college students are classified as  Type A or Type B according to the Framingham  Type A Scale (same Framingham as the heart study) … Continue reading →

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Would I know a misperception if I saw it?

Posted on January 23, 2016 by SubOptimist

Thinking a lot about student misperceptions recently while actively measuring their prevalence in all my classes this semester.  Writing these thoughts up on this blog helps me to connect the thoughts I have in the fragmented time that I actually … Continue reading →

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Cubes versus naked women (books please)

Posted on August 23, 2015 by SubOptimist

In Sanjoy Mahajan’s 2009 course on teaching he states that You know if you know anyone who’s a symphony orchestra player, they say, oh yeah, the best way to start hating music is to be a professional musician. They love … Continue reading →

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Motivation

Posted on August 22, 2015 by SubOptimist

Several years ago I watched Sanjoy Mahajan’s MIT 2009 course on Teaching College Level Science & Engineering (here) and among the many things I learned was that extrinsic motivations actually decrease performance in a variety of ways.  Ever since then … Continue reading →

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Bad slides are worse than no slides at all

Posted on January 25, 2014 by SubOptimist

Michael Alley, Penn State http://www.writing.engr.psu.edu/slides.html

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I hate correct answers

Posted on January 17, 2014 by SubOptimist

I don’t normally blog about anything happening in a class during the semester because I don’t want students thinking that anything they say will end up here, but this I must post.  As I say in my profile, I write … Continue reading →

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Packing mental boxes

Posted on January 12, 2014 by SubOptimist

My qualification to teach Microbiology at the College comes from my degree in Immunology & Molecular Pathogenesis that came from a Department of Microbiology. There I took graduate courses in Virology, Biochemistry, Eukaryotic & Prokaryotic Cell Biology and of course, … Continue reading →

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A recent problem

Posted on September 18, 2013 by SubOptimist

I love misperceptions in the classroom.  More specifically, I love it when they  are exposed in the classroom.  More correctly, I can’t teach effectively unless I know what those misperceptions are.  When I notice a misperception that comes up in … Continue reading →

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Pathogens in a parking lot & gratuitous fecal references

Posted on September 8, 2013 by SubOptimist

Teaching 4/5 classes a semester can leave little time for thinking about your teaching (especially if you have young children). Even with a class release this semester, I find myself with very little time to think ahead more than 1 … Continue reading →

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Plagued by graphing mistaks

Posted on August 25, 2013 by SubOptimist

I was excited to find the following graphs in a WHO report on global surveillance of potential epidemic infectious diseases because in the plague chapter is this awesome chart that I plan to have students grapple with (What can you … Continue reading →

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