By Cassandra Hendry, TLS Staff Writer
For the 2016 winner of Carleton’s Excellence in Learning Support Award, you would expect a strong dedication to student learning, and that’s exactly what Claudia Buttera brings to the table.
Buttera, who is a lab co-ordinator with the Department of Biology, is intimately familiar with excellence; in 2014, she was one of three Carleton winners of the prestigious Capital Educators’ Award. Her award-winning philosophy of teaching is simple: foster student engagement in unexpected ways.
“What works best is to make connections with disciplines that are not plant material-based, especially for those students who aren’t interested,” she says.
For Buttera, this manifested itself clearly in a student who she says seemed completely disinterested in the lab, one who would only come in to do his work and avoid talking with others. But when Buttera spoke about the connection between biology and architecture and engineering, the student perked up and would jump into the class conversation with enthusiasm.
“The important thing to remember is that just because you’re talking about a certain topic, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t or can’t relate it to something else that would be much more interesting or important to another person,” she says.
Buttera instills this philosophy in her teaching assistants when she runs training sessions that are aptly named ‘Curiosity.’ In many math- and science-based courses like biology, she says, the students aren’t always registered because they want to be. That’s why it’s the lab co-ordinator and TAs’ jobs to keep students engaged with the material.
Finding out what interests students personally isn’t always obvious, so Buttera and her TAs try to connect with students through one-on-one and group conversations to develop strong learning relationships. That way, curiosity can flourish.
“[Biology labs] are all mandatory and very scripted. You have a protocol you have to follow. Curiosity and creativity aren’t usually obvious things related to science labs, but ultimately they have to be,” she says.
“If we’re not teaching students to become that way, how can we automatically expect them to go from recipe followers to these creative individuals when they’re done?”
One of the ways Buttera achieves this is through her emphasis on helping students think about how they can use the skills learned in class for their own personal career or educational goals.
“Making them aware of those things early on will increase the value of the course for them. They’re more invested because they’re looking for what it is that they’re doing here that they can take away.”
What techniques do you use to increase engagement in your courses? How do you show your students links between the real world and the classroom? Leave a comment below and let us know your techniques.