Applying skills from class to my teaching

This semester, I taught an undergraduate Abnormal Psychology class. I was excited to teach this class since when I last taught in Fall 2017, I taught Intro to Biobehavioral Statistics. Not to say I didn't enjoy that. I actually loved teaching stats, but in terms of how creative I could be with my assignments... well, let's just say, I wasn't.

At the beginning of the semester, I planned on having three assignments throughout the semester. Initially, the three assignments were three essays on a topic of their choice (from a limited list).

After completing the first week or two of the Data Visualization & Infographics course, I wondered why I was limiting the assignments to essays and updated the options to include anything from videos, PowerPoint or Prezi presentations, visual essays, and infographics.

I shared examples that Dr. Cairo showed up in class with my students (e.g., https://pudding.cool/) and provided links to the websites/resources that we were using in our class (e.g., rawgraphs.io, flourish.studio) and to Canva.

I really enjoyed seeing the work that my students created and got their permission to share two examples (below). Although I was surprised by how many students still chose to write essays, it was fun to see the different ways they chose to present the information for their topics. I'm not sure when I'll teach next, but I hope I'll have the opportunity to include more assignments like this one and hopefully actually spend some time teaching some of the skills I learned in Dr. Cairo's class this semester.