Kirsten Mollegaard

Education is a collaborative process between student, teacher, and institution. As partner in that process I see myself as part of a learning community in which all partners commit to facilitate and support learning and academic integrity. At the classroom level, this includes offering high quality instruction and encouraging theoretical and applied exercises in critical thinking, analysis, and progressive learning. At the infrastructural level, it involves supporting inclusive loyalties, to be open to diversity and to work towards an attitude of academic, inter-disciplinary partnership that encourages personal and intellectual growth. My teaching philosophy is built on this vision of education as a dynamic axis of horizontal and vertical strategies, loyalties, and outcomes.

The backbone of my teaching methodology has always been student-centered group activities combined with short lectures. My aim is to have every student respond verbally in class at least once during a lesson. In Fall 2013, I formally implemented Team Based Learning (TBL) in one class, ENG 200E Intro to Myth and Folklore. TBL is an instructional method that allows students to become active partners in their own education as they work in teams on task solving rather than passively listen to lectures. TBL is more systematic than my regular instructional method, and it works very well for certain types of classes. This semester, I have implemented TBL in two other classes, ENG 370 Advanced Film Studies and ENG 200G Intro to Comics & Graphic Novels. I am looking forward to apply what I learned from my experiences last semester and from student feedback. I have also learned valuable, applicable information from the ALEX seminars on TBL. The support from the ALEX cohort is inspiring, and I feel positive about what I have learned so far because it benefits the students in significant ways to see themselves as active partners in their own education.