HR: 1340h
AN: ED13C-1150    [Abstracts]
TI: The Kitchen Sink and the Professors Drawer
AU: * Lenardic, A
EM: adrian@esci.rice.edu
AF: Rice University, Department of Earth Science, MS-126, Box 1892, Houston, TX 77251 United States
AB: Many of the demonstrations that have been most effective in teaching an introductory Earth science class at Rice have been developed on the spot before lectures as I realized that some hands on, visual material would help make a point more clear. This lead me to rifle through my own desk drawer and use whatever was available (e.g., rulers, rubber bands, etc.). Such demos went over very well in the first years I taught. Students liked the fact they could go home and redo them, without having to run to the hardware store. This increased the hands on value and made the demos all the more tangible. In turn, the greater direct contact provided a memory hook to lock the main point of the demo into long term memory. I have continued to use "out of the drawer" demos and I will present a few of the successful ones based on student responses. Enjoying cooking, I have also had demo ideas come to me the night before lecture during dinner prep. Although some of the kitchen sink demos are not as easy to redo by students themselves, they do maintain a high "direct contact' factor to them. I will present one or two of these kitchen demos as well.
DE: 0825 Teaching methods
DE: 0845 Instructional tools
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005