Topic: What undergrad classes taught you the most, and how did they do it?

[superdave]

I'm in a teacher training program for undergraduate teaching, and this is a question I have asked myself quite often when trying to understand how to improve my teaching.  The problem is that I am a very self taught kinda person.  My favorite classes were ones that had a good textbook I could just pour over by myself.  So I am posing the question to you guys. 

What do you have to say?

[DonA1979]

I think for me it would have been 1 of my biomedical ethics courses.  The textbook we used was excellent.  And the lecture periods were set for open discussion/debate each week.  Basically took the readings and made us apply them in a discussion setting.

[Soldier of FORTRAN]

World Literature I, with an emphasis on the hero for that semester.  Why?  The professor is teaching into retirement for his own enjoyment and tuned the course accordingly.  It was very intellectually demanding and I benefited greatly.

I'm taking Organic Chemistry I right now, as a 1-month summer course, from a woman who is fairly disinterested in making allowances for 'speed organic' and it's pretty easy and straight forward by comparison.

[Jolimont]

I learned a lot from my Honors Sociology class in college, the professor was older and very experienced, small class size, great text book (that I saved but can't get my hands on right now). That class really changed my outlook on life and helped me realize that we're all the products of our cultures and not near as original as we'd like to think.

History of Science and history of Philosophy were also outstanding.

[benschwab]

This isn't related to the question you seam to be asking but the course I found most valuable was my linear algebra class.  I took a very theoretical linear algebra class for math majors and partly as a result I had a much easier time in upper level physics courses then most other physics majors.  I saw and helped some of my classmates who wouldn't have had the same difficulties that they did if they understood the theory of linear algebra better.  I think having a theoretical linear algebra class is much more important for physics majors then it is for math majors (though I still claim having a theoretically based linear algebra class would be better for math majors then a calculation based class but that's a tougher argument).  I can go into more detail if people want but I don't think that's why you asked your question.

You are asking for my personal experiences and I can give them.  I'm told that I'm very good at teaching people and getting them to understand things but my experiences in doing this are either one on one or in small groups.  I have no relevant experience in teaching that I could give you but you asked about how I learned best in classes.  I could read from the book and understand things but I preferred to learn from a professor that knows how to teach.  For me this involved being able to explain things at a level that your audience would understand it without getting it wrong in the course of trying to make it accessible.  This is a non-trivial skill and I could take more about this if people would like.  The best professor and my best classes are ones in which the professor or teacher would encourage my enthusiasm (for example, by giving me some individual guidance when I want to do more/other work, or by praising my attempts even when I go wrong: "all of this is completely wrong but it's still very good").  Strangely (perhaps not) more professors and teachers didn't do even simple things to try and encourage me then did.  That last statement is probably wrong...  oh well....

I hope this helps.

[Plastique]

My favorite classes were ones that had a good textbook I could just pour over by myself.

What did you pour the textbook over?

[Samhain]

Philosophy 101 - I had a phenomenally engaging professor who made it clear he was not there to teach us what to think but how to think.  He made a very simple statement on the first day that stuck with me: "Either there is a dime in my pocket or there is not a dime in my pocket.  They both cannot be true." 

Symbolic Logic: Just loved the textbook and ended up completing every proof in it, which is about 75% more then was needed for the assignments in the course.

[Stovetop32]

Two classes:

1 - Biology of Aging.  Caught my interest and introduced me for the first time to the scientific literature.  I'll be starting a PhD program focusing on this field later this summer, so I guess something stuck with me   The most striking and effective part of this class was definitely the focus on interpreting scientific literature.  We had "journal" assignments, in which we repetitively answered the same basic questions about different canonical and contemporary experiments and reviews.  Once I got used to the format, it really helped hone my critical thinking skills, because the questions required us to not only summarize the articles, but also critique results, raise questions, and relate the findings to other topics we studied.  Did the results make sense and agree with various aging theories, or did they call specific models into question, etc.  This was all in addition to an interesting lecture, which covered the foundations of gerontology and basics of statistical data treatment.

2 - Evolution and the Nature of Scientific Inquiry.  This is probably the single most important course I took in terms of it's effect on my overall comprehension of what science is.  I wish this would have been available to me earlier in my undergraduate coursework, because it shifted my mindset from "science is learning facts and tools;" to "science is how you can use facts and tools to learn about things that nobody else has ever discovered."  I think that - at least at my undergraduate institution - many science-inclined students never experience this worldview-altering "aha" moment.  So many students don't "get" the value of a science education while they are obtaining it.  At least for me, this class helped push beyond the superficial enjoyment of "scienc-y" things.  As for the "how,"  I would posit that the real key was the synthesis of 1) historical examples of scientists solving problems of their times, 2) modern ramifications of those early pioneers' findings, and 3) an effort to highlight the common "process" of science and skeptical inquiry into the natural world.  We talked about the creationism/evolution and climate change debates, and had classroom-wide discussions about the merits (or lack thereof) of the claims on both sides of each debate. 

Okay, three classes:

3.  Organic Chemistry.  When the notion of producing a molecular "fingerprint" with NMR, IR or MS hit me, I was instantly enamored with processes that alter those molecules or their proportions in biological systems.  Hence I ended up completing a biochemistry major.  Seriously though, O-Chem is invaluable to anybody in the life sciences.  Science is all about communication, and I have noticed that those who lack OChem seem to be missing a part of the common "language" in life sciences work.  I think the secret in Ochem was the way my class was taught; we could meet with our professor outside of class at regular office hours (not unheard of) - but it was always held in a public coffee shop (unorthodox).  So each office hours session turned into a 5-10 person problem solving workshop with our professor (no TAs).  It was fantastic - he really tried to relate to us, and despite being a talented chemist, he had no problem coming down to our level to explain the basics over and over until we got it.  Dedication and enthusiasm for seeing his students succeed really made the difference.

[David E.]

Psych 101.  The professor went above and beyond to teach the class how the brain does not work.  First day of class he showed clips from Terminator 2 to show all the tricks we did not see (mismatched bullet patterns, the third arm during the helicopter scene).  He was a very skeptic minded teacher. 

Jesus, Socrates and Buddha.  The class was taught by a former Franciscan, who had converted to Buddhism.  The guy knew his subject and knew how to teach it.       

[341gerbig]

Philosophy of logic and critical thinking, others may have taught me more, but this one changed the way I looked at the world.

It was basically a guided discussion every class

[Skeptress]

Genetics Lab: Hands on real experiments with fruit flies.

Statistical analysis in psychology: Didn't just learn statistics but also about how to recognize phony statistics, poorly done experiments, and outline better experiments.  One of the great things about this class was that the prof realized no one need memorize formulas.  It is far more important to know which formula to use when and how to use it.  His exams were open notes/open book.  No one would be able to figure out what to use in the hour time given if they didn't know already.  He said he'd tried the same class in many ways (close book/open notes; no help; one piece of paper with notes; etc.) and the mean test scores never significantly varied.

Oh and as an aside I hated group work and never understood it's purpose.

[EhJayArr]

A generic US history course, because the professor taught the entire course as a narrative. It was a hard class, and you had to madly take notes... but he told the stories based off the "whys" rather than the "whos/whats/whens." In retrospect, reminds me some of Dan Carlin.

18th Century Counterpoint. It was the first class I really really had to try at in order to succeed. I'm not even sure if the prof ever graded our homework--but he'd sit down at the keyboard and play everybody's homework assignments for the class. It was an amazing learning tool to hear something suck, followed by him explaining why whatever the person wrote didn't work well. The humiliation factor was also great motivation to do your reading and spend a proper amount of time composing.

[Caffiene]

To be honest, I cant think of any particular classes that stood out. I remember Computational Theory being really interesting but I think it was mostly just because it was stuff I could learn that I hadnt already come across and understood.

But why I really wanted to answer is to say:

My favorite classes were ones that had a good textbook I could just pour over by myself.

My experience at Uni was the exact opposite. The more information there was in the textbook, the more I would read ahead, and almost all of the classes where that happened I ended up struggling because 99% of the class lectures were stuff Id already learnt from the textbook but 50% of the exams were the other 1% of the lectures that I was too bored to listen to.

[j_j]

Hmmm. Control Systems, perhaps.

[Zytheran]

Production Technology...(2nd year Engineering) for all the wrong reasons.  Sometime between the exam date being announced and the exam, the time changed from afternoon to morning and I missed the exam. Because of that I auto failed and then the lecturer basically failed me on the supplementary exam one month later even though the exam he set was a repeat I had trained upon, knew what answers I gave and I knew I passed.
So because of this lesson in the school of hard knocks I repeated a subject and had basically 2 years part time.

During this slack study time I did a whole pile of things I wont detail that led to me a) becoming interesting in psychology and eventually a cognitive scientist and b) and whole pile of involvement in the union movement, student politics, running clubs, editing news letters, student radio and partying/girls that has been a lot more useful than my degree ever was. In fact I just about have nightmares thinking what I would have been like  if I had passed that one exam.

Ironically my longest engineering job was in production technology (mostly robotics and I did mighty fine) before switching to electrical engineering and then a huge jump ship to more study and then as a cognitive scientist.

So the 'classes' that taught me the most as an undergrad were all the ones outside of lecture theatres but in the university environment.