Three professors discussed ongoing efforts to innovate in the classroom on Monday at the DigIT Innovation Talks event hosted by the University’s Digital Initiatives program, which seeks to increase school digitization and the use of technology to enhance academics.
Christopher Bailey, a student in the School of Medicine, spoke about how, when studying radiology, he was paired with a professor-mentor who taught him hands-on, practical knowledge about the field. This was better than the traditional method, he said, in which professors drilled students on their knowledge of the material.
Harry Goldberg, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and an assistant dean at the School of Medicine, acted as the master of ceremonies, facilitating the discussion and seeking audience opinion throughout the event.
Goldberg spoke about how he encouraged innovation in his neuroscience lab course by telling his students to teach themselves some of the material, including which ions are responsible for generating an action potential.
“Two weeks later, the students had the answer,” Goldberg said. “I remember vividly someone in the Biology Department said, ‘Harry, you just took two weeks to have students answer a question that I deliver in about 30 seconds. Sodium in, potassium out. What’s so hard about that?’ So my question to you all is, was that a valuable experience?”
Senior William Mason talked about his experiences in Film and Media Studies courses, highlighting some of his most unusual and noteworthy assignments.
“During my freshman year, for my very first film course on my very first day, the professor gave each of us about six feet of unexposed film stock, sixteen millimeter, and we were assigned to create something in the style of Stan Brakhage,” Mason said.
Brakhage was an experimental filmmaker who used unorthodox techniques to create his work. To demonstrate, Mason showed a clip from Brakhage’s 1963 film Mothlight, in which Brakhage put moth wings, flower petals and blades of grass on the physical film stock in order to produce surreal images.
“So as freshmen, we were asked to do something sort of like this,” Mason said. “I went home, I looked at different things. I drew on the film with Sharpie marker, or painted it with watercolors or White-Out, just try to experiment with the film, and do whatever I can with it to make something cool... It’s not at all what you’d expect. It’s kind of crazy and weird, and not nearly as cool as Stan Brakhage[‘s work]. But it’s still really mind-blowing to see what film can do and what you created just by drawing on the film. And for me it really helped to understand how many possibilities there are with film and media.”
Physics and Astronomy Professor David Neufeld explained how the new technology he was using in his courses led to greater student satisfaction than did the traditional lecture. Neufeld uses multiple innovations in the classroom, including microphones installed into the tables in some Bloomberg laboratories, Clickers, tablet-to-projector technology and websites. Neufeld promoted a system called the “flipped classroom,” in which students work with online content and go through the homework with their professor.
To offer a different perspective, Psychological and Brain Sciences Professor Linda Gorman defended the traditional lecture format, saying that it still has value as long as the lecture highlights major concepts rather than merely reciting facts. Gorman stressed that while she supports traditional lectures, they must be comprehensive and exciting in order to teach students effectively.
“Everything is changing, but one of the things that doesn’t change is the storytelling,” Gorman said. “I am going to posit here that lectures are stories, and we basically have been telling stories since the beginning of time... It’s a way to engage your audience. It’s a way to excite your audience. It’s a way to transform your audience.”
Elizabeth Rodini, a History of Art professor and the director of the Program in Museums and Society, spoke about how the stereotype of the humanist is someone who works alone, isolated from the world, with only books for company.
She discussed how she is working to make Museums and Society classes group-focused and project-based “humanities labs.” Rodini’s class made the signs posted across the Homewood campus detailing the histories of various structures.
Mason appreciated the variety that he saw in the speakers. He commented on his appreciation of the perspectives of experts in other fields.
“I like talking about what I do,” Mason said. “It was really good to hear everyone else’s talks, too. [It’s] nice to hear that Hopkins is encouraging diverse learning environments.”
