Teaching Tips From Your Colleagues

Lecture Courses
Active Learning
Stimulating Students' Thinking
Learning From Others About Teaching
Who Are Your Students?
Teaching Adult Students in a Professional School
Teaching Students with Different Backgrounds
Tips For TAs
Students' Comments About Mentors
 

LECTURE COURSES

Teaching a large lecture course, such as a core course in epidemiology, offers a whole different set of challenges.  It is more important than ever to be clear and consistent about what you are going to cover and what your expectations are of the students.  I have found it very useful to spend the first minute of each class reviewing what we covered the session before, then tying it into the material to be covered that day, and ending the lecture with a summary slide of what was just covered.

With a large class of students with very diverse backgrounds, it is a real challenge to stay focused, yet flexible.  Since the students cannot tell you directly during the lecture if they are confused or if there are questions, I try to read their faces as I speak, to figure out where they are and whether they are with me.  Then I try to adjust accordingly the approach I am using in my explanation or the number of examples I give - while making sure I cover everything scheduled in 50 minutes!  

Setting a respectful, safe tone in the class is also very important.  Given the diverse backgrounds and expertise of the students, some questions that students ask will be self-evident for most of the others, other questions will be far beyond the scope of the class, or a student's answer to my question could be totally wrong.  Moreover, some students will make comments or ask questions in ways that are not kindly worded, and will contradict a faculty member or another student and directly state they are wrong.  It is important for a faculty member to always maintain a respectful and controlled tone, by treating all these situations non-judgmentally and not letting any one student threaten the protected environment of the classroom.  That takes self-confidence and a lot of self-control, in order to ensure all comments are treated with respect both for the student and for the tone of the class.

Another aspect of setting the tone is willingness for me to acknowledge if I am wrong or don't know an answer.  That too takes self-confidence, a belief that one can be a good teacher and a good epidemiologist and not necessarily know the answers to all questions right on the spot.

I know from various studies that students cannot retain more than one or two concepts from a class session. In my teaching, I try to cover one major issue and to keep the point simple. I try to develop it step by step with information, data, and examples all around the central point. I try to provide continuity between classes so there is coherence between topics. When I shift directions, I alert the students in advance. In homework assignments, I ask students to write short papers so that they must do their own synthesizing.

My teaching is not innovative in form: I lecture a lot.  Students say my lectures give them a different perspective. I err on the side of too little redundancy, and students often have difficulty taking notes.  But I try to give students a completely different way of looking at things. The emphasis is on concepts, not information. And they say that makes the course exciting.

When I meet with individual students in tutoring and mentoring, I explore what their interests are.  Rather than giving them my questions, I ask:  "What kind of question might keep you awake at night?"

Teaching is very hard work. Prepare, prepare and know where you are going. Don't do anything off the cuff; it won't work. Be very clear about what you want to cover in a lecture. If you really have the outline in your head, then you are not wedded to the printed word. You can be free enough to move fluidly to look at data sets and respond to questions as they arise.

In a large core curriculum lecture course you have to be very organized, clear about required assignments and due dates, and exactly what the students are expected to do. You must be consistent with what students have learned in other courses; you need to be clear when your approach departs from what they have learned before; you need to be clear about what you are covering and what they must know. A large number of students are non-native English-speakers who have been in the US a short time, so you must also speak slowly and carefully. And there can be no mistakes on the materials you hand out. Being clear and organized and showing spontaneity at the same time is an area where I haven't yet succeeded, but the perfect teacher would.

Teaching is similar to acting in that you have to have a script prepared ahead of time but you have to be willing to discuss material on an impromptu level too. It's very important to begin a class by briefly describing what is being covered that day and what the point of the material is--rather like a synopsis of a play in a playbill. I like to leave time for discussion and questions because HSPH students have work experience in health care delivery or management and have interesting observations and questions-which contributes to the sense of impromptu lines in a play. It's important to be honest when you don't know something a student asks about and to come back to the next class with information that answers the question. Mostly I think good teaching comes from trying to impart a sense of excitement about acquiring skills or approaches to issues that will be useful throughout one's career.

ACTIVE LEARNING

Students at the School of Public Health are all professionals who want to develop skills to apply to very serious problems. They take everything you say and envision whether it is practical. The real issue for teachers here is to look at their discipline and see what skills are useful over time. We must teach analytical skills and problem-solving skills so that students can apply them to problems twenty years later.

As an engineer with a non-public health background, I try to bring together biology and mechanics in an exciting and simple way.  I am always asking myself: How deep should I go?  How can I present engineering topics in a way that is exciting to the students?

When students are asked what is most important in their education here, they say it's their colleagues. After going to the Case Discussion Leading Seminar, I turned my teaching around and let the students teach each other. This past year I started teaching through cases.  And I stopped and listened to students' stories. I provide the motivation, the topic and the direction; the students provide the learning experience. The students all have different backgrounds and they can learn from each other.  I hope in the class not to teach but to learn. I try to create an environment where there's a sense of discovery in the classroom. And that makes it more fun.

Students in Biostatistics 201 are really going to use what I am teaching. Many go on to do their own research: they need to learn the mechanics of doing statistics, beyond just a familiarity with the techniques. Students really appreciate it if you tie all the pieces together. When I was starting out, students forced me to do this through their questions; now I try to show them not only how a particular technique fits in with the work they may be doing, but also how it ties in with what we did in past lectures, and what we will be doing in the future.

When you are teaching you are not talking alone.  Let your students know that the material you are covering has important implications.  That way they will participate in an active fashion.  Always ask yourself:  "Why is this material useful?  What applications can I find for this material?"

I feel there are several factors that go into being a good teacher from the students' perspective. First is relevance. Students like teachers who have real world experience in addition to a theoretical knowledge and so can convey practical applications of the coursework. Coming from a consulting background, it was easier for me to help students to see the relationship between the theory and the application. Second is access. Students often feel isolated at HSPH and are looking for mentors as much as specific course content. I think that having an open door policy for students to come and talk is a very important ingredient of successful teaching. It also provided a way for students who were having difficulty with the course to get extra help. My goal was for each student to be comfortable with the material.

It is important for people teaching at the School of Public Health to realize the high level of experience of the students: they have much to teach each other and to contribute to the process of teaching. Case-study methods, in-class presentations, and skills practice through scenarios such as mock press conferences promote learning by doing and by sharing.

STIMULATING STUDENTS' THINKING

To keep students interested you need to motivate technical discussions within a vivid social and political context. The course is about the interface between scientific evidence for specific occupational hazards and public health policy.  The material is intrinsically interesting and that helps.  We read a lot of short articles from the peer reviewed epidemiology literature on hazards like asbestos and silica, and talk about how the findings were translated into public policy.  I've been teaching the course for a long time with my co-instructor, David Wegman, and we have developed a syllabus that includes, for each session, an annotated reading list of journal articles for each class, along with a brief statement of the questions that will focus the discussion. The focus of the readings is generally narrow and scientific, but the discussions in class are much broader.

When I first started teaching there was an inclination to revel in complexities. This is fun for people advanced in a discipline, but does not help students who are new to the material. Try to focus less on having students prove they are good students, and more on the core sub-set of knowledge and skills that have lasting value rather than engaging in academic olympics.

One lesson I have learned about teaching students at the School of Public Health is to focus on asking the right questions - and then not answering them. One of the most compelling learning models, particularly with mature adult learners, is to pose problems or frame decisions in a way that becomes personal and asks students to apply frameworks that we have been studying class. Early in my teaching career I thought I had to be the source of knowledge, but now I think about guiding a class with a series of questions to engage students in issues in a way that is personal and memorable.

It is important to recognize the diversity of students in your class at HSPH: in terms of age (ranging from twenty-year-olds to students in their mid-fifties) and in terms of language capabilities (often 1/3 of the students' first language is not English). Also recognize the pedagogical culture that people are used to, especially international students who are accustomed to one-way communication: it may not be acceptable to ask questions or to question what the teacher says.

I try to create a safe environment where students feel comfortable questioning the ideas of other students and the person in front of the class. This is hard at the beginning of the year and is easier by the "d" period. I try to create a teaching environment that draws on the experience and expertise of students in a positive way, that leads them to articulate and question their underlying values and assumptions about public health, while at the same time teach them something.

My recommendation to students: be skeptical of your teachers. 
My recommendation to teachers: be respectful of your students.

I am very lucky because I am dealing with interesting and engaging subject matter. I try to share that enthusiasm with the students through helping them learn epidemiological methods and how to do research using HIV as a case study. If you focus on HIV as a case, you must know not only medicine but also public health, ranging from etiology to ethics. First we have to deal with: does HIV cause AIDS? The whole purpose of epidemiology is to understand etiology. Then we examine case studies of trials to prevent the spread of HIV. Each one has its own set of contradictions which can lead to ethical debates. Each study is like opening an onion with many layers. Faculty with a lot of experience have a further advantage of reaching a large number of students: they can provide many examples and they can describe different contexts in a variety of ways that are different from the text book.

I don't think that the method of teaching is as important as indicating that which is not known in a field. At our level one ought to map the future. I try to organize my teaching programs around the direction in which the field seems to be going.

LEARNING FROM OTHERS ABOUT TEACHING

The best advice I can give to new teachers is this: talk to experienced teachers and listen to their suggestions.  I recommend different strategies depending on the size of the class. For a large, introductory lecture course, prepare material carefully, be organized, anticipate questions and be prepared to change plans. In a smaller, more specialized course, get to know the students. I cut their pictures out of the student photo directory and paste them on 3 x 5 cards, adding some notes of my own. When you know your students, you can promote an exchange of ideas and challenge their thinking.

I benefited from many years of co-teaching with Professor Alec Walker, who has taught me a lot outside and inside the classroom. Outside the classroom, we continually tried to improve not only the materials we presented, but we also worked on finding suitable new exercises and updating the discussion. Inside the classroom, I observed him teach in a way that allowed students to come up with ideas themselves. No matter how good your materials are, you can not force-feed them knowledge. Another idea that I heard from our Educational Consultant, Ellen Sarkisian, always stayed in my mind: teaching should not be considered as a performance, but we should try to understand how the materials are perceived by the students.

Teaching Assistants represent our "ears and eyes" of the course. Over the years, I have introduced incremental improvements in the course format and content, based on detailed feedback from my talented TAs (my course involves 4-5 doctoral-level students who run weekly seminar sessions with the students on my course). My liaison with my TAs has been greatly facilitated by the luncheon-funds that the Dean's office makes available, and I have found these meetings to be an excellent opportunity to hear the feedback from my TAs and to make mid-course corrections.


The best advice I got was from my colleague David Hemenway: Teach them what is interesting.  Don't try to teach them everything about your field, because you can't.

It's very helpful to talk to the previous instructors of the same course and to instructors of related courses. Beyond having a good outline and a good teaching plan, find out what the students want to learn and try to connect the course with their interests. Then get feedback from them along the way. I asked the students for feedback twice during the semester and it helped me understand what the students were thinking about the course lectures as well as the course labs led by the TAs. Of course, it was much easier the second time through-you can design new homework, new examples and bring in new ideas based on your previous experiences.

WHO ARE YOUR STUDENTS?

Students at the Harvard School of Public Health are a diverse group that can be difficult to characterize. The professional and masters students often have short term educational goals, while the doctoral students are prepared for a more extended stay. In addition, the international nature of our student body creates a rich diversity of learning styles and expectations for classroom interaction. I begin to find the soul of a class by listening carefully to their questions, especially those tentative, first questions that come early in the term. That listening tempers my tendency to talk too much in class, limiting the space that students need for taking risks with new ideas.

You have to know your subject so well that you spend more of your preparation time thinking about how to teach than what to teach. In thinking about the how-to part, it helps to be aware of the background, training and experience of your students and why they have come to the School. In HPM we try to collect that information on a card with a picture of the student, which faculty receive before the course begins. Many students will feel that your subject is something they know nothing about and will falsely conclude that therefore they should be passive observers in the classroom. I try to help students overcome this urge to be observers rather than participants. This requires that early in the course, day one, I establish the relevance of my subject to issues in public health. Then I work very hard to involve students in class discussions of particular case problems. Some students just respond to your own enthusiasm; others require pushing, through grading criteria, being called on, talked with after class, group presentations, peer pressure, etc. Because of the variations in student abilities and presenting attitudes, I rarely enjoy the luxury of teaching the same case the same way twice.

The students at HSPH are extremely self-motivated, they are resourceful, and they have autonomous intellects.  These students have a broad fund of knowledge and most of them are very well-trained.  They are an extremely mature group of graduate students.  I expect them to be engaged with me as a group and as individuals.  I want them to become better as researchers and I push them beyond what is comfortable in paper-writing.  I think they appreciate the extent to which I am asking them to integrate what I am teaching about disasters and how the response to disasters reflects the social cohesion and bureaucratic organization of a country.  They like the breadth of knowledge presented in the course and the extent to which they are introduced to new ideas.

There are two things students value very much that I have not been doing as well as I should.  Students really want teachers to be available for discussions outside of class, more than simply one afternoon. And they really value your bringing in things when you say you are going to.  I always meet with students a few times when they write their papers.  When I have access to something they may have difficulty finding (such as a book, a paper, or a photograph) I offer to bring it in for them. I am moderately good at that.  When the students say they will do something, they will; and they expect the same from their teachers.  They are not loose and forgetful about the commitments they make, and they expect you to reciprocate.

I don't think there is any one single way to teach-or even a list of key points for everyone. Instead, it seems to be a continuous process, to keep learning to teach and to get excited about improving one's teaching. When I was teaching last year, I tried to remember how it felt to be a student-I was an MPH student some years ago. A lot of the students at SPH have been out in the world doing things. To suddenly become a student can be quite demeaning. So when I organized the reading and when I put questions on a test, I tried to think, "How would I feel about this?"

Start with the students; that tells me how I am going to teach them. They have a real purpose in being here, they have all elected to come and they expect to leave with specific skills. Successful teaching here is very simple: If you can give them these skills they are going to be satisfied. I have not found that homework makes students unhappy, unless it is drudge work. You must give them real work, real problems so they can see the implications of how it relates to their own goals and to the work that they are doing.

If you know something very well, you have probably forgotten what it is like to not know it. Try to put yourself in the student's place and figure out what will seem confusing; and it helps if you are a ham!

TEACHING ADULT STUDENTS IN A PROFESSIONAL SCHOOL

At the School of Public Health we are dealing with practitioners, dedicated professionals from a medical practice of public health. They share a common goal to engage in public service and demonstrate a high level of empathy. They are usually skeptical about political agendas or economic structures. Their vision of society is one of transformation, advocacy and engagement. We have to respond to this interest in social engagement without turning a class into an advocacy group. The social goal may be clear, but teaching must engage their capacity to think in a critical manner on their practice.

One of the most important things about teaching is to like and respect the students. Don't think that you have to be an expert on everything. Be willing to indicate if you don't really know; ask if anyone else knows. The students here are older, dedicated, smart and interesting, and you can learn a great deal from them.

The best advice I got was from my colleague David Hemenway: Teach them what is interesting. Don't try to teach them everything about your field, because you can't. The only other thing I would say is that the comment students most often make on my evaluations is that they appreciate my being organized. I think students get frustrated quickly if your presentation is meandering, but if you lead them in a clear direction, they will follow eagerly.

I am always amazed by the talent, motivation and energy of the HSPH students -- they are truly remarkable.  My class is a little out of the ordinary: 7 classroom sessions, followed by a practicum project, and then back for two weeks of student presentations.

I try to be well organized in presenting a series of 10 models that help to explain politics and policy in a helpful way.  We then bring in a series of speakers, mostly physicians who have become deeply enmeshed in health policy directly or indirectly.  I meet with each student individually concerning their projects, and spend a lot of time talking about the project, as well as their own career goals.  Because I have only 10 or 15 students, it is not too hard to do this in a useful way.  I have another technique I use in early classes.  I give each student 2 yellow stickies and ask them to write something they liked and something they didn't like about the class on each.  That way I get instant and anonymous feedback that enables me to tailor the class more to their needs.

You have to treat these students with respect. These are mid-career professionals who have given up a year of their careers and a year's salary to do the MPH program. They're not children; they're very clever adults who deserve to be treated as such. You can't talk down to them. Patience and respect are the keys to convincing them they do have the smarts to master the material.

TEACHING STUDENTS WITH DIFFERENT BACKGROUNDS

The majority of students at HSPH are coming to us as accomplished and successful professionals.  Yet students are often from other countries, having just arrived to live in the United States for the first time, and are totally overwhelmed.  Moreover, they are taking courses in English, which is often not their first language, and as they struggle to adjust, in their own minds they often feel they are failures.  There is no question that the overwhelming majority of them will succeed beautifully in adjusting and mastering the academic material – they were successes in their own countries, and will be successes here.  But, it is important for us to convey our confidence in them, as they develop their own.

them, but when you teach—particularly a diverse group of students—you must learn to explain things in other ways. Difficult concepts can be explained in a down-to-earth manner if you put some thought into it.

Every year I teach the course in molecular biology like it's the first time. Since the field is constantly changing I add new material every year. I try to distill everything-even rather complicated concepts- to their essential core, to make them accessible, before adding on the necessary complicating details. Of course, this requires more effort than when speaking to a professional audience. A few years ago I started to show a 5-minute movie at the end of each lecture. These movies, which can be downloaded from the web, give a feeling for the dynamics of the biochemical processes that I discuss in lecture and have proven very popular.

The students at HSPH are fantastic and a joy to teach. Every week I ask students to do problem sets in order to apply the concepts creatively. Good students bring out the best in a professor: they ask questions that keep you on your toes.

Lecture Courses

Teaching a large lecture course, such as a core course in epidemiology, offers a whole different set of challenges.  It is more important than ever to be clear and consistent about what you are going to cover and what your expectations are of the students.  I have found it very useful to spend the first minute of each class reviewing what we covered the session before, then tying it into the material to be covered that day, and ending the lecture with a summary slide of what was just covered.

With a large class of students with very diverse backgrounds, it is a real challenge to stay focused, yet flexible.  Since the students cannot tell you directly during the lecture if they are confused or if there are questions, I try to read their faces as I speak, to figure out where they are and whether they are with me.  Then I try to adjust accordingly the approach I am using in my explanation or the number of examples I give - while making sure I cover everything scheduled in 50 minutes!

Setting a respectful, safe tone in the class is also very important.  Given the diverse backgrounds and expertise of the students, some questions that students ask will be self-evident for most of the others, other questions will be far beyond the scope of the class, or a student's answer to my question could be totally wrong.  Moreover, some students will make comments or ask questions in ways that are not kindly worded, and will contradict a faculty member or another student and directly state they are wrong.  It is important for a faculty member to always maintain a respectful and controlled tone, by treating all these situations non-judgmentally and not letting any one student threaten the protected environment of the classroom.  That takes self-confidence and a lot of self-control, in order to ensure all comments are treated with respect both for the student and for the tone of the class.

Another aspect of setting the tone is willingness for me to acknowledge if I am wrong or don't know an answer.  That too takes self-confidence, a belief that one can be a good teacher and a good epidemiologist and not necessarily know the answers to all questions right on the spot.

I know from various studies that students cannot retain more than one or two concepts from a class session. In my teaching, I try to cover one major issue and to keep the point simple. I try to develop it step by step with information, data, and examples all around the central point. I try to provide continuity between classes so there is coherence between topics. When I shift directions, I alert the students in advance. In homework assignments, I ask students to write short papers so that they must do their own synthesizing.

 

Richard Levins, Population and International Health

 

Teaching is similar to acting in that you have to have a script prepared ahead of time but you have to be willing to discuss material on an impromptu level too. It's very important to begin a class by briefly describing what is being covered that day and what the point of the material is--rather like a synopsis of a play in a playbill. I like to leave time for discussion and questions because HSPH students have work

experience in health care delivery or management and have interesting observations and questions-which contributes to the sense of impromptu lines in a play. It's important to be honest when you don't know something a student asks about and to come back to the next class with information that answers the question. Mostly I think good teaching comes from trying to impart a sense of excitement about acquiring skills or approaches to issues that will be useful throughout one's career.

Katherine Swartz, Health Policy and Management

Stimulating Students' Thinking

To keep students interested you need to motivate technical discussions within a vivid social and political context. The course is about the interface between scientific evidence for specific occupational hazards and public health policy.  The material is intrinsically interesting and that helps.  We read a lot of short articles from the peer reviewed epidemiology literature on hazards like asbestos and silica, and talk about how the findings were translated into public policy.  I've been teaching the course for a long time with my co-instructor, David Wegman, and we have developed a syllabus that includes, for each session, an annotated reading list of journal articles for each class, along with a brief statement of the questions that will focus the discussion. The focus of the readings is generally narrow and scientific, but the discussions in class are much broader.

 

When I first started teaching there was an inclination to revel in complexities. This is fun for people advanced in a discipline, but does not help students who are new to the material. Try to focus less on having students prove they are good students, and more on the core sub-set of knowledge and skills that have lasting value rather than engaging in academic olympics.

One lesson I have learned about teaching students at the School of Public Health is to focus on asking the right questions - and then not answering them. One of the most compelling learning models, particularly with mature adult learners, is to pose problems or frame decisions in a way that becomes personal and asks students to apply frameworks that we have been studying class. Early in my teaching career I thought I had to be the source of knowledge, but now I think about guiding a class with a series of questions to engage students in issues in a way that is personal and memorable.

  Daniel D. Moriarty, Management

It is important to recognize the diversity of students in your class at HSPH: in terms of age (ranging from twenty-year-olds to students in their mid-fifties) and in terms of language capabilities (often 1/3 of the students' first language is not English). Also recognize the pedagogical culture that people are used to, especially international students who are accustomed to one-way communication: it may not be acceptable to ask questions or to question what the teacher says.

I try to create a safe environment where students feel comfortable questioning the ideas of other students and the person in front of the class. This is hard at the beginning of the year and is easier by the "d" period. I try to create a teaching environment that draws on the experience and expertise of students in a positive way, that leads them to articulate and question their underlying values and assumptions about public health, while at the same time teach them something.

My recommendation to students: be skeptical of your teachers. 

My recommendation to teachers: be respectful of your students.

   Michael R. Reich, International Health Policy

  

I am very lucky because I am dealing with interesting and engaging subject matter. I try to share that enthusiasm with the students through helping them learn epidemiological methods and how to do research using HIV as a case study. If you focus on HIV as a case, you must know not only medicine but also public health, ranging from etiology to ethics. First we have to deal with: does HIV cause AIDS? The whole purpose of epidemiology is to understand etiology. Then we examine case studies of trials to prevent the spread of HIV. Each one has its own set of contradictions which can lead to ethical debates. Each study is like opening an onion with many layers. Faculty with a lot of experience have a further advantage of reaching a large number of students: they can provide many examples and they can describe different contexts in a variety of ways that are different from the text book.

   George Seage, Epidemiology

I don't think that the method of teaching is as important as indicating that which is not known in a field. At our level one ought to map the future. I try to organize my teaching programs around the direction in which the field seems to be going.

 

Learning From Others About Teaching

The best advice I can give to new teachers is this: talk to experienced teachers and listen to their suggestions.  I recommend different strategies depending on the size of the class. For a large, introductory lecture course, prepare material carefully, be organized, anticipate questions and be prepared to change plans. In a smaller, more specialized course, get to know the students. I cut their pictures out of the student photo directory and paste them on 3 x 5 cards, adding some notes of my own. When you know your students, you can promote an exchange of ideas and challenge their thinking.

 
I benefited from many years of co-teaching with Professor Alec Walker, who has taught me a lot outside and inside the classroom. Outside the classroom, we continually tried to improve not only the materials we presented, but we also worked on finding suitable new exercises and updating the discussion. Inside the classroom, I observed him teach in a way that allowed students to come up with ideas themselves. No matter how good your materials are, you can not force-feed them knowledge. Another idea that I heard from our Educational Consultant, Ellen Sarkisian, always stayed in my mind: teaching should not be considered as a performance, but we should try to understand how the materials are perceived by the students.

Chung-Cheng Hsieh, Epidemiology

 Teaching Assistants represent our "ears and eyes" of the course. Over the years, I have introduced incremental improvements in the course format and content, based on detailed feedback from my talented TAs (my course involves 4-5 doctoral-level students who run weekly seminar sessions with the students on my course). My liaison with my TAs has been greatly facilitated by the luncheon-funds that the Dean's office makes available, and I have found these meetings to be an excellent opportunity to hear the feedback from my TAs and to make mid-course corrections.

  Ichiro Kawachi, Society, Human Development, and Health

 

The best advice I got was from my colleague David Hemenway: Teach them what is interesting.  Don't try to teach them everything about your field, because you can't.

 

     David Wypij, Biostatistics

Who Are Your Students?

Students at the Harvard School of Public Health are a diverse group that can be difficult to characterize. The professional and masters students often have short term educational goals, while the doctoral students are prepared for a more extended stay. In addition, the international nature of our student body creates a rich diversity of learning styles and expectations for classroom interaction. I begin to find the soul of a class by listening carefully to their questions, especially those tentative, first questions that come early in the term. That listening tempers my tendency to talk too much in class, limiting the space that students need for taking risks with new ideas.

You have to know your subject so well that you spend more of your preparation time thinking about how to teach than what to teach. In thinking about the how-to part, it helps to be aware of the background, training and experience of your students and why they have come to the School. In HPM we try to collect that information on a card with a picture of the student, which faculty receive before the course begins. Many students will feel that your subject is something they know nothing about and will falsely conclude that therefore they should be passive observers in the classroom. I try to help students overcome this urge to be observers rather than participants. This requires that early in the course, day one, I establish the relevance of my subject to issues in public health. Then I work very hard to involve students in class discussions of particular case problems. Some students just respond to your own enthusiasm; others require pushing, through grading criteria, being called on, talked with after class, group presentations, peer pressure, etc. Because of the variations in student abilities and presenting attitudes, I rarely enjoy the luxury of teaching the same case the same way twice.

           
The students at HSPH are extremely self-motivated, they are resourceful, and they have autonomous intellects.  These students have a broad fund of knowledge and most of them are very well-trained.  They are an extremely mature group of graduate students.  I expect them to be engaged with me as a group and as individuals.  I want them to become better as researchers and I push them beyond what is comfortable in paper-writing.  I think they appreciate the extent to which I am asking them to integrate what I am teaching about disasters and how the response to disasters reflects the social cohesion and bureaucratic organization of a country.  They like the breadth of knowledge presented in the course and the extent to which they are introduced to new ideas.

Jennifer Leaning, International Health

 
I don't think there is any one single way to teach or even a list of key points for everyone. Instead, it seems to be a continuous process, to keep learning to teach and to get excited about improving one's teaching. When I was teaching last year, I tried to remember how it felt to be a student-I was an MPH student some years ago. A lot of the students at SPH have been out in the world doing things. To suddenly become a student can be quite demeaning. So when I organized the reading and when I put questions on a test, I tried to think, "How would I feel about this?"

 

Start with the students; that tells me how I am going to teach them. They have a real purpose in being here, they have all elected to come and they expect to leave with specific skills. Successful teaching here is very simple: If you can give them these skills they are going to be satisfied. I have not found that homework makes students unhappy, unless it is drudge work. You must give them real work, real problems so they can see the implications of how it relates to their own goals and to the work that they are doing.

 

If you know something very well, you have probably forgotten what it is like to not know it. Try to put yourself in the student's place and figure out what will seem confusing; and it helps if you are a ham!

  

  

  

Teaching Adult Students in a Professional School

Claude Bruderlein, Population and International Health

 
One of the most important things about teaching is to like and respect the students. Don't think that you have to be an expert on everything. Be willing to indicate if you don't really know; ask if anyone else knows. The students here are older, dedicated, smart and interesting, and you can learn a great deal from them.

 

The best advice I got was from my colleague David Hemenway: Teach them what is interesting. Don't try to teach them everything about your field, because you can't.

The only other thing I would say is that the comment students most often make on my evaluations is that they appreciate my being organized. I think students get frustrated quickly if your presentation is meandering, but if you lead them in a clear direction, they will follow eagerly.

 Michelle Mello, Health Policy and Management

 
I am always amazed by the talent, motivation and energy of the HSPH students -- they are truly remarkable.  My class is a little out of the ordinary: 7 classroom sessions, followed by a practicum project, and then back for two weeks of student presentations.

I try to be well organized in presenting a series of 10 models that help to explain politics and policy in a helpful way.  We then bring in a series of speakers, mostly physicians who have become deeply enmeshed in health policy directly or indirectly.  I meet with each student individually concerning their projects, and spend a lot of time talking about the project, as well as their own career goals.  Because I have only 10 or 15 students, it is not too hard to do this in a useful way.  I have another technique I use in early classes.  I give each student 2 yellow stickies and ask them to write something they liked and something they didn't like about the class on each.  That way I get instant and anonymous feedback that enables me to tailor the class more to their needs.

You have to treat these students with respect. These are mid-career professionals who have given up a year of their careers and a year's salary to do the MPH program. They're not children; they're very clever adults who deserve to be treated as such. You can't talk down to them. Patience and respect are the keys to convincing them they do have the smarts to master the material.

  

  

Teaching Students with Different Backgrounds

The majority of students at HSPH are coming to us as accomplished and successful professionals.  Yet students are often from other countries, having just arrived to live in the United States for the first time, and are totally overwhelmed.  Moreover, they are taking courses in English, which is often not their first language, and as they struggle to adjust, in their own minds they often feel they are failures.  There is no question that the overwhelming majority of them will succeed beautifully in adjusting and mastering the academic material - they were successes in their own countries, and will be successes here.  But, it is important for us to convey our confidence in them, as they develop their own.

Julie Buring, Epidemiology

In biostatistics we always must explain difficult concepts. It is always easier to explain things the way you understand them, but when you teach-particularly a diverse group of students-you must learn to explain things in other ways. Difficult concepts can be explained in a down-to-earth manner if you put some thought into it.

Paul Catalano, Biostatistics

Every year I teach the course in molecular biology like it's the first time. Since the field is constantly changing I add new material every year. I try to distill everything-even rather complicated concepts- to their essential core, to make them accessible, before adding on the necessary complicating details. Of course, this requires more effort than when speaking to a professional audience. A few years ago I started to show a 5-minute movie at the end of each lecture. These movies, which can be downloaded from the web, give a feeling for the dynamics of the biochemical processes that I discuss in lecture and have proven very popular.

The students at HSPH are fantastic and a joy to teach. Every week I ask students to do problem sets in order to apply the concepts creatively. Good students bring out the best in a professor: they ask questions that keep you on your toes.

Immaculata De Vivo, Epidemiology

Teaching to students with different academic backgrounds is a specific issue in my course, pathophysiology. Some students have substantial background in biological science; others are public health students with no background in biology. My goal is for both groups to leave with a set of basic principles.

To make sure that both succeed, at the beginning of class I emphasize that I am after big concepts and general ideas. I show students copies of old exams in which short essay questions (rather than multiple choice) look for the big picture in answers.  I do not want a rampage of memorizing facts.

I state specific goals of each body of knowledge by providing study guides for each chapter, objectives such as "at the end of this chapter students should be able to..."

To get people back in the groove of thinking about topics addressed in the course, most lectures begin with an open-forum question: if someone were missing from the last lecture, what were the three main points?  I pause long enough to hear a few of their replies, then I show my favorite three slides.

Lester Kobzik, Environmental Health

 Teaching people of different levels in my course is something I have struggled with. In the past I made the course basic enough for almost all the students to follow. Now my approach has changed.  I make my expectations clear and concrete at the beginning. I tell students how long the homework should take - and if they are spending more time than that, perhaps this isn't the course for them.  Making expectations clear is key; otherwise everyone is unhappy with the course.

 

 

It is important to recognize the diversity of students in your class at HSPH: in terms of age (ranging from twenty-year-olds to students in their mid-fifties) and in terms of language capabilities (often 1/3 of the students' first language is not English). Also recognize the pedagogical culture that people are used to, especially international students who are accustomed to one-way communication: it may not be acceptable to ask questions or to question what the teacher says.

I try to create a safe environment where students feel comfortable questioning the ideas of other students and the person in front of the class. This is hard at the beginning of the year, but it becomes easier later on. I try to create a teaching environment that draws on the experience and expertise of students in a positive way, that leads them to articulate and question their underlying values and assumptions about public health, while at the same time teach them something. My recommendation to students: be skeptical of your teachers. My recommendation to teachers: be respectful of your students.

 

 

HSPH has a very diverse group of students. I teach many students who do not have a background in biology, let alone physiology. My main worry is always, "Am I keeping them on track?" In lectures I try to periodically say very simple things to bring them into the fold. These comments may sound obvious to students with a strong background, but it is most important for me to know that all the students are staying with me. I am not giving very erudite lectures for those in-the-know. If students are not asking questions often the only clue you have is to look in their eyes. Are they following? The main thing is being clear. Sometimes it means being very linear. For many students, if you take side-trips, they don't know where you are going. I don't unless it is very interesting. If students are trying to get hold of the big picture, it can be very confusing.

 

 

Design a curriculum that builds a strong foundation easily understandable to all students. Many instructors anticipate that the students know a great deal, but in fact there is often large variability in the breadth and depth of their knowledge. If you anticipate starting a class at level three, provide levels one and two so that everyone is on the same footing. Once you have a solid base, continually keep the students involved in what they are learning by demonstrating the relevance between what is being taught and the knowledge needed to solve practical problems in public health and medical research.

  Marcia Testa, Biostatistics