"Innovative" teaching

I was nominated twice for the Innovative Teaching Award, a campus-wide award for "TAs who bring extraordinary creativity to their work and have developed or adapted teaching methods or techniques in new and innovative ways".


Below, a list of some of the ways in which my teaching has been innovative:

  • Took a historically face-to-face course - Human Sexuality - and converted it so that the course could be offered completely online. This included identifying the key objectives from the small groups in our traditional face-to-face course and figuring out how to meet these objectives online.
  • One of the most important things I believe educators can do is be open to the idea that learning is a dynamic and reciprocal process and that teaching methods and materials should be updated, in part, based on current students’ needs and new technologies. To this end, in Human Sexuality, I was the first to advocate for and initiate the use of anonymous feedback surveys amongst my fellow TAs so that we can get—and incorporate—feedback throughout the semester. Starting the first week of discussion, I sent out weekly Google Surveys where students can submit thoughts on the activities we do, questions they have, and general feedback about the course and my performance.
  • For lecture-only courses, I keep an active presence on the discussion boards, where students can pose questions about the course. I find it extremely important that we incorporate technology into our teaching, as it is an excellent way to help students and foster communication.
  • I take initiative to engage professors in conversations—conversations they typically haven’t had before—about how we can incorporate themes of inclusivity within the bounds of the course and offer suggestions for implementation tailored to the material. These conversations are important for big lectures like Introduction to Psychology (340 students per semester; 90 in summer), Child Development (190 students per semester), and Human Sexuality (350 students per semester) and discussion sections as with Human Sexuality (4 sections, 25 students each).
    • For example, in Summer 2015, I gave a lecture on motivation, which included sexual motivation. To supplement the material, I created a slide on how research on sex, gender, and sexuality does not often capture the full spectrum of humanity and that reality exists beyond the binary. I received an email from a student in response to my one-minute detour stating that I prevented this student from being uncomfortable. Even this one email demonstrates the importance of an inclusive classroom—and just how simple it is to create—in making our students relate to, and engage with, course material.
  • I have initiated a lot of change within the Human Sexuality curriculum that is ongoing today. One of my goals is to supplement the course material so that students leave the class with real-world applications. As such, I make a point of having a few minutes of discussion devoted to talking about current events related to sexuality. I continue to work closely with the instructor to redesign discussion activities to be more inclusive. For example, we do role-play activities to foster communication skills. In previous years, the role-plays involved only heterosexual couples. Over the course of two years, I’ve developed new role-plays that are more diverse. The scenarios now include gender-neutral names from around the world. By not having gender specified, students not only explore communication skills, but what gender means and how it plays a role in their navigation of the world. In addition, I added new scenarios that reflect situations that might be especially relevant to college students. From feedback I received, these scenarios were especially helpful to students in not only handling their lives, but empathizing with the experiences of others.


These types of changes are minimal, yet have a large impact on our students’ lives. They demonstrate inclusiveness, intercultural sensitivity, and respect for students. In short, they make classrooms safe places for everyone to learn.