Students learn about Boston, urban life, and social change from guest lectures by local practitioners in the policy, business, and nonprofit sectors.

This activity is designed to assess students’ understanding of the course learning goals by engaging the students in an active, individualistic question and answer session. It provides the instructor with valuable insights about his/her students’ learning and if the course learning objectives are being met.

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This reflective activity is designed to provide the instructor with feedback about students’ understanding of course concepts and about their experience with the course.

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In this activity, students work as a group to create one large conceptual map that includes many or all of the key concepts from the course using large Post-it notes and dry easer markers.

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In Emily Riehl's Topology I: Topological Spaces and the Fundamental Group, she uses a fun heads-up-seven-up style quiz to quickly engage students and test the level of confusion among the students. This activity not only helps students participate and actively take a part in their learning, but also assists the instructor in increasing the effectiveness of their lectures. 

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This activity uses a bag of differently-sized candies to get at the concept of bias in sampling.

... Read more about The Candy Weighing Demonstration or The Unwisdom of Crowds

This case study, contributed by the Cornell Center for Teaching Excellence, is intended to show that two enantiomers can have different effects on the body, and how the same drug can be used to treat different diseases or symptoms.  It is also intended to help students begin to understand the process of FDA approval for drugs.  This problem could be used in an organic chemistry class or in a class for non-science majors.

... Read more about Thalidomide: The Pros and Cons

Kellie Carter Jackson, a Harvard College Fellow, created the game “Name Five” for her AAAS118 class. In the beginning of the class, she goes around the room and asks students to list five notable people of different ethnicities to help students understand the world and the power dynamics within it.

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This lesson, created by Graciela Unguez, Erika Abel, Vanessa Castleberry, Rizalia Klausmeyer, Aaron Snead, Martina Rosenberg, William S. Garver, and Marcy Osgood for the National Academies Summer Institute for Undergraduate Education in Biology uses clickers, pair and share, and other exercises to help students "understand the effect of environmental pH on the ionization status of weak acids and weak bases."

... Read more about Shakespeare on Acid: To ionize or not to ionize?

In Soc 43: Social Interaction, students design and act out interactional scenes to help them understand the concepts learned that week. Generally the students are divided into pairs or groups of three for these acting "games," which vary from week to week.

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Professor Nathan Kaplan uses popular websites and online data to generate discussion about the topic of correlation in his math gen ed, "Fat Chance." According to Kaplan, the purpose of the activity is to show students that correlations are everywhere, even in movie rentals, library cards, etc., and part of the era of big data is that companies will know lots of things about people even if they don't tell them. 

... Read more about Exploring Correlation Data on Popular Websites

In History of Science course "Brainwashing and Modern Techniques of Mind Control," students participate in a role play to debate the legality of torture and other types of coercive interrogation. 

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To prepare students for an exam, the teacher sets up essay questions on posters around the room for students to review. The movement helps keep energy up at the end of the semester.

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How did race, gender, employment, and other characteristics condition people's responses to revolutionary activities during the American Revolution? In this activity, students take on different personas and consider whether they would support a boycott of British goods. 

... Read more about Reactions to Revolution?