Teaching Blog

At Leeds this year one of the things I’m teaching is first year intro logic. I’ve taught most of the material before and my experience is always the same. The students fall into roughly two types. Type A Some students love it straight away, and ask interesting questions right off the bat. Some students (typically those with mathematics backgrounds) breeze through the early material, although they do find it dull. Let’s generalise and call these Type A Students. Type B And many students find it terrifying, at least at first. They typically have not enjoyed mathematics at school, and find symbols off putting. They are used to writing essays. They struggle to see how logic is relevant to the kind of philosophy (often ethics) they came to university to do. They often say they would drop the course if they possibly could (for undergraduate joint or single honours philosophy programmes in the UK these modules are typically required modules). Let’s generalise and call these Type B Stude...

 It’s the first week of teaching at Leeds and at Cambridge. Everywhere is buzzing with lost students and excitment. I’m thinking a lot about how we introduce ourselves. Clearly we cant ask for introductions in lectures, but I do for small groups. But how best to do this?    1. Recent Norm    In small group teaching, during the very first session, I used to ask students to go around the circle and introduce themselves, answering three questions. The first two questions were always name and preferred pronoun. The last question changes depending on context, size of class, type of class etc. Thought is given to how much time we have!  Some last questions include:  Q: In three words or less, how do you feel about this module? Q: Why did you take this module? Q: What’s your favourite thing about philosophy? Q: What’s your least favourite thing about philosophy? Q: What are you most/least excited about when you think about th...

Current practice Ask students to make ‘name tags’ (A4 sheet folded into a sign with your name) at the start of every session. I ask them to write on the paper "what you would like me to call you" Reasons to do this include: A Nice easy start to lesson B Some students don’t have A4 paper with them, and I ask them to “make a friend! Ask someone else to borrow some!”. This helps build community slightly C I'm guaranteed to get their names right. I can then call on them more easily to take part, and also don’t embarrass them by not calling their names D Easier for students to learn each other’s names E Easier for students and me to refer to each other using the correct name (note that this is true even if their name is not that which is on the register) F Helps with the register   The order of importance from highest to lowest is: C, E, F, D, A, B. Things I want to avoid I: Calling students the wrong name II: Students calling each ot...