Teaching

My teaching philosophy has developed over the course of my own training with principles of research-based and problem-based learning , as well as my engagement with Feminist Pedagogy . Building on all those, I aim to (1) curate my classrooms as brave spaces for collaborative learning, open communication, and discussion by engaging students to work with each other and share their opinions and understandings; (2) give students the tools to learn and research on their own through research assignments; (3) build flexibility in the course to focus on learning and development instead of completion of tasks through practices such as flexible deadlines and attendance policies.

World Problems in a Global Context (SU24, AU24, SP25, SU25)

I have taught “World Problems in a Global Context” at OSU to non-sociology students in both in-person and asynchronous modes. The course aims to introduce global social changes from the 17th to the 21st century, focusing on how these changes shape our lives locally, nationally, and globally. Specifically, it builds on engaging students with social changes and theories of modernization, capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, development, transnationalism, and globalization.

The course serves as a general education course for the citizenship theme at OSU, with students at all stages and from diverse social science and non-US backgrounds enrolled. Engaging, including, and keeping the interest of all students with such diverse educational backgrounds and interests is challenging. Therefore, I have organized the course around the principles of transparency, communication, and learning. First, as is known, providing extensive information on how to do tasks can lead students to rely on others rather than think for themselves and find their own answers. However, students with diverse backgrounds and limited knowledge of the instructional type can feel lost when no information is provided. To address this issue, I use scaffolding of larger assignments (especially research assignments) and give multiple low-stakes assignments to help students practice.

Additionally, I provide multiple resources to help complete tasks. Second, my experience teaching this course for several semesters has been that while students with a background in natural sciences, STEM, or Engineering find the course load heavy (possibly due to being used to midterm-final structures), students with a background in humanities and arts & sciences find some material repetitive and easy. Therefore, through assignments in which students do research, bring in new material, and/or work collaboratively, I encourage them to help each other understand and evaluate terms and concepts together. This opens up room for communication and collaborative learning (regardless of online or in-person settings). In general, I find online tools valuable for encouraging collaborative learning and engagement. Some tools I have utilized for this course are Hypothesis for group annotations, Padlet for introductions and showcasing student work, TopHat for in-class questions, and Mediasite for lecture videos with embedded questions.

AuthaGraph projection World Map –  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrPzvfknI1I