Developing Teaching and Learning Videos for addressing challenging classroom situations

Combined, the Political Science, Geography and Sociology departments enroll over 9000 students in courses each year. Based on surveys to be conducted with faculty and graduate TAs in these departments, this project will identify the most prevalent teaching and learning challenges which occur in lecture, seminar and tutorials in order to develop 4-5 instructional videos aimed at addressing the most challenging of these situations. Each video will be 5-6 minutes in length and will be dedicated to a particular situation and methods to prevent, manage and resolve the situation. These videos will then be screened at departmental TA Training events and shared with faculty members. Finally, at the end of this pilot period we will conduct focus groups with faculty and TAs to evaluate the impact of the project on their teaching and assess the utility of extending the project to include a wider range of topics and teaching situations.