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UNC O N V EN T I O N A L WISDO M
THE SCIENCE TEACHER Alma Moon Novotny, a lecturer of biochemistry and cell biology, knew since she was 10 years old that she wanted to teach science. Since 2000, she has taught at Rice, picking up a George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching in 2012. Recently, Novotny developed and taught Fundamentals of Immunology as a massive open online course (MOOC) on Rice’s edX platform. “Immunology can be very dry, boring and complicated, so what I’m trying to do is make it interesting and memorable and make the content something that’s humorous enough that it sticks.”
TEACHING PHILOSOPHY The main thing is to figure out what’s going on inside of the minds of your students and figure out the most efficient way to get them from A to B. It’s a matter of trying to figure out the problem and what the road block is and how to get around it. I would say the other thing is don’t take yourself too seriously.
A DA M C R U F T
DEVELOPING AN UNDERGRAD IMMUNOLOGY COURSE FOR THE CLASSROOM You can’t teach immunology in a straightforward way, because it’s something that I would call recursive. You have all these very complex systems, and they’re all interacting with one another, and so you have to keep circling back and tying things in. It was one of the tougher things I’ve ever had to put together. ... AND TURNING IT INTO A MOOC When the MOOCs were getting started, I had a hunch that nobody else was teaching this online. It was an unmet need. ‘Ah ha!’ I thought, it doesn’t have to be an unmet need! I knew I would be supplying something that
would be a worldwide resource. Also, people will say that learning something from a MOOC is inferior to learning it in a small classroom with a good teacher. Of course it is! But many classes are too big, or can be taught by people who may not be good teachers. CLASSROOM VS. ONLINE STUDENTS The edX class is different from the Rice one in that you have a lot more people, and therefore a much broader set of problems that you have to overcome. In my immunology course at Rice, I get premeds. It’s obvious why they’re there. On edX, I get a broad range of motivations, almost by definition. (I have 163 different countries sending me students.) Also, you have to do the video lectures without student feedback, which can be kind of tough. TOPS IN PROPS In all my classes, we use a lot of physical models. We do role playing. There’s a CD4 molecule there, and I have some students waving them around and dragging Th cells into lipid rafts. We videotape the Rice class exercise and wi n t e r 2 0 1 5 | Ric e M aga z i n e 9