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Teaching
in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences:
Semih Eser describes how we use energy.
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From Bubble Sheets to Online Portfolios
Beneath
Semih Eser's placid exterior is a very focused, driven
man. When it comes to his students, he refuses to take
an easy path.
Dr.
Eser learned to teach in the style of the "sage
on the stage." His responsibility was to dispense
knowledge, and his students' responsibility was record
his every word, read the textbook, and cough up the
right answers on a few multiple-choice exams during
the semester. It's a teaching style that many students
have come to expect, especially in a huge general education
course.
But,
conversations with students in his Energy and Environment
course made Eser realize that while they may have memorized
facts, many of them did not understand the basic concepts
of energy use. Other students complained that they were
confused by the multiple choice tests, despite having
a firm grasp of the concepts.
Eser
began to reconsider his teaching style. If he could
get students actively involved in putting facts about
energy use and fuels together, if they could arrange
the ideas themselves, then they might build a deeper
understanding of the material.
Eser
could assign essays and short papers on various aspects
of energy and fuels, and then he ask students to create
another document to show how all of that information
was related—a map of their understanding gained
by serious thought, not acquired the day before
his exam and forgotten the day after.
His
plan would mean the end of feeding students' completed
multiple-choice test sheets through an automatic scoring
machine. It would require him to read thick stacks of
papers and student portfolios—a major commitment
for a busy man. It would also require him to redesign
his existing courses to emphasize research and writing.
Eser
took the plunge, and then went a step further. Not only
did he switch his courses to an active-learning, project-oriented
approach, he asked his students to submit all their
work as web pages, so that the information would be
available to the world.
While
it makes a lot more work for him, he is very pleased
with the results. He now has a better idea of what his
students know, and he is convinced that his current
students learn more than those he taught with his previous
approach.
Semih
Eser, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department
of Energy and GeoEnvironmental Engineering in the
College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Penn State.
In addition to his teaching, Dr. Eser researches the
the way that crude oil is carbonized, uses digital image
analysis to describe carbon at the microscopic level,
and prepares activated carbon from coal.
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