The Teach Better Podcast

In this episode we're joined by Boris Kapustin, one of the most highly regarded teachers in Yale's Ethics, Politics, and Economics Program. We talk about how he leads seminars on political theory, connects philosophy to historical events, and changes how students think about the world they live in.

Much of the best teaching at Yale is done by our language instructors, and on this episode we are joined by Theresa Schenker, senior lector and director of the German language program. Theresa shares her general approach to teaching as well as many ways she gets students creatively engaged in her classroom including telecollaboration, movie making, and web quests.

Harvard computer science professor David J. Malan is most well-known for his wildly popular introductory computer science class: CS50. In this episode, David tells us all about its inner workings including the role of memorable moments, 20 page problem sets, hackathons, and balloons.

In this episode we discuss two important papers in the scholarship of teaching and learning. The first, written by John Hattie in 2003, identifies what characteristics distinguish expert teachers from other teachers. The second, by Hattie and Helen Timperley (2007), investigates what kinds of feedback are most effective.

Historian and Dean of Yale College Jonathan Holloway joins us on this episode to talk about his highly acclaimed undergraduate lecture course on African-American history from emancipation to the present. We also discuss his role as dean of the college in shaping the quality of undergraduate education at Yale, and how his experience as dean has affected his own teaching.

Business schools have a reputation for demanding students and high quality teaching. On this episode of the Teach Better Podcast, Professor Olav Sorenson from the Yale School of Management (SOM) tells us what actually happens over there. Along the way, he explains his own almost technology-free teaching style, as well as how SOM recently reformed its core MBA curriculum.

In this episode we talk with Cyra Levenson from the Yale Center for British Art and Yale Professor of American Studies, History, and African-American Studies, Matt Jacobson about incorporating real artifacts and works of art into your teaching. Specifically, we talk about why you might want to do such a thing, and how you can get started doing it.

Before he retired in Spring of 2015, [John Bryan Starr taught two of the most highly regarded classes at Yale about the politics and policy surrounding public schools in the United States. These classes had a unique structure where students read and discussed the material outside class in small groups and continued their discussions in the classroom. In the words of one of his students, "You could just trust upon entering class every week that you were guaranteed a profound learning experience in those two hours." In this episode of the Teach Better Podcast, John Starr shares his secrets.

Professor Lynne Regan from Yale's Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry believes in the power of active learning. In this episode she shares what she's learned incorporating active learning exercises into her classes.

Professor Craig Wright has been teaching an introductory course on classical music for as long as he can remember. It started as a traditional lecture course, became an active in-person lecture course, and four years ago he taught it in Yale Summer Session as a Small Private Online Course (SPOC). In the spring Craig transformed the course yet again, this time into a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). Craig shares his journey with us on this episode of the Teach Better Podcast.

Carla Horwitz spends her time teaching undergraduates at Yale about child development and directing one of the nation's premiere early child care centers: the Calvin Hill Day Care Center and Kitty Lustman-Findling Kindergarten. In our conversation we talk about how these two jobs overlap, the importance of quality early education, and how college classrooms should be places for creativity and play.

Edward and Doug reflect back to identify eight habits which almost all of our guests have used to teach effectively. If you're new to the podcast, this is a great place to start since it's filled with our favorite quotes from earlier episodes.

Vida Maralani, Yale Assistant Professor of Sociology, joins us with two of her students to talk about how she teaches undergraduate seminars on social issues and graduate lectures on quantitative methods.

Larry Samuelson, Yale Professor of Economics, explains how he teaches difficult material effectively.

We talk with Yale's David Bromwich about how and why he teaches such a broad range of classes.