Experiments in Learning Events Series

Interested in learning about what your colleagues are doing in the classroom to promote student inclusion, learning, and engagement? Join us for a monthly series to hear about innovative approaches used by Stanford instructors, and discuss how you might apply them in your own courses.

2025-6 Events

Biology Field Trip with Dr Esther Cole Adelsheim

Date: TBA
408 Panama Mall, Room 116 + Lake Lagunita trail

Come join us  for our first Experiments in Learning field trip! Stanford Conservation Program Manager Esther Cole Adelsheim will lead us in a short lunch discussion of her students’ work in “BIO159: Herpetology” before guiding us on a walk around Lake Lagunita to take in the fabulous information signs that came out of the class.

In addition to an inside glimpse into the hidden ecology of our campus, this event will provide an opportunity to think through how to move from classroom learning to real-world public educational creations. We hope you will have an opportunity to join us!

Previous events

• Imbuing AI with the Humanities: How Meaning-Making Matters
  Gerui Wang | Center for East Asian Studies

  When humanities teaching and research face unprecedented challenges in a technocentric era, how to convince students of the value of humanities? This workshop shares such experimentations of AI in arts and humanities curricula as reading lists, class activities, and assignments that motivate students to self-consciously reflect on meanings: meanings of history, humanities, and experience, in the age of dramatic technological changes. The workshop shows how instructors can motivate students to critically engage with AI, rather than relying on or resisting AI. Bringing classical texts, images, and historical events to challenge AI, can help inform what still matters in today's college education.  
   

• Scientific Thinking for All: An Experiment in Experiential Learning in the Kitchen
  Haoxue Yan (Department of Materials Science and Engineering) 
  
  How do we create an environment where students from diverse backgrounds can all develop and practice higher-order experimental and analytical thinking skills? In MATSCI 121: Edible Materials, we explore this question by creating an introductory class that links materials science to the familiar context of food within a non-traditionally laboratory setting – the kitchen. Through experiential learning, we help students practice being observant and drawing connections between abstract materials science concepts with their everyday sensory experiences. In this session, we will share the challenges we faced in fostering a challenging, rewarding, and supportive learning environment for all students and discuss effective strategies we employed in the course. Additionally, we will explore best practices for balancing the broad scope of an introductory course, the scientific rigor of a lab course, and the engagement of ‘fun’ content. Join us to learn more about this teaching experiment and explore how we can enhance laboratory experiences within the broader science and engineering community.
• Research In Practice: Upgrading The Seminar Paper to Match Real-World Applications  
  Simone Paci (Department of Political Science) 
  
  How can curricular activities encourage career exploration and teach how research is employed across professional fields? For the Political Science capstone program, I developed an updated format for the classic seminar final project. Instead of emulating an academic research paper, students are encouraged to frame their research in a format they choose, from long-form journalism to public policy white papers to lobbying or campaigning strategy memos. I scaffold this assessment around a weekly milestone framework to standardize requirements across chosen formats, ensuring the equitability of assessment.
   
• Framework for Fast & Flexible New Course Execution: Human & Planetary Health (HPH) ACTION LABS
  Katie Vogelheim (Center for Human and Planetary Health) 
  
  Training future climate and sustainability leaders requires a multidisciplinary perspective and hands-on problem-solving experience. This presentation introduces a streamlined framework for rapidly launching new courses that are flexible, impact-driven, and deeply connected to real-world challenges. Built on insights from the Human & Planetary Health Action Labs, the framework provides practical tools for course and syllabus development, interdisciplinary integration, and working with external partners to create meaningful learning experiences. We will highlight case studies such as the Blue Food for Indonesia HPH Action Lab, and the Renewable Energy Transition in Rural America Action Lab, demonstrating how this approach equips students with the skills and experience to drive tangible change. Whether you’re an educator, administrator, or curriculum innovator, this session will offer strategies to accelerate course execution while ensuring students engage in relevant, outcome-oriented learning. 
   
• Community as Rebellion: Innovating African Studies Through Community-Driven Pedagogy 
  Michelle Kalu (Department of African and African American Studies) 
  
  "Shifting Frames" is an African Studies course that relies on strong collaborations between students and faculty of all levels. By centering student perspectives on issues facing the African continent, the course is ultimately driven by the interests and opinions of the students who take it. While no longer credit bearing, Shifting Frames continues to foster vibrant discussions on African issues through interactive student presentations and community-building. This session will focus on the specific elements of community-driven pedagogy that sustained the course even without credits in the previous academic year. 
   
• Experiments in Assignment Design: Exploring Diverse Ways to Capture Student Learning 
  Jennifer Stonaker (Advanced Lecturer | Program in Writing and Rhetoric) 
  
  How do we design assignments that engage students, provide hands-on experiences, and support different types of learners? In Stanford's Notation in Science Communication, we do this by providing students with the opportunity to work in multiple different modes and genres of communication, from producing podcasts to designing museum exhibitions, that are used by professional science communicators. We also offer students the opportunity to “choose their own adventure,” working in a mode and genre that they find interesting and would like to learn. Join us to consider how you might implement similar types of assignments in your own course (communication-focused or not), and how to support students working on different types of projects within one course. We’ll also discuss how to approach assignment design when students have easy access to generative AI tools.
   
• Generating and Applying Classroom Research for Engagement and Inclusion  
  Jennifer Crosby (Psych One Program Manager | Department of Psychology) 
  While an array of scholarship of teaching and learning exists, implementing and assessing research-backed practices can be challenging. In particular, what might be best for research, such as randomized research designs and consistency in all factors other than the specific intervention of interest, can be in tension with the realities of large classes and with efforts to equitably support the learning and course performance of all students. We’ll consider the pros and cons of various approaches to addressing these challenges we have implemented in Psych 1 and think together about additional possibilities in the context of diverse course formats.
   
• Seeing the Invisible: Molecules in Virtual Reality 
  Alex Chang (PhD Candidate | Department of Chemistry) 
  Understanding the theoretical concepts that explain observable phenomena is often challenging for students. This is especially true in chemistry, where molecules not only cannot be seen but also can behave in ways that defy intuition. In the general chemistry course CHEM 31A, we ran a virtual reality lab that leveraged tools from computational chemistry to immerse students in the world of molecules. Students were able to watch individual molecules vibrate, react, and respond to human interaction – actions that previously had been unobservable. Join us to hear more about this virtual reality lab and to consider how you might incorporate modern technology into your curricula.
• Efficiently and Effectively Supporting Undergraduate Capstone Projects 
  Penelope Van Tuyl (Associate Director | Center for Human Rights and International Justice) 
  During this session, we show what the Human Rights Capstone course looks like on Canvas, explain how it is used to engage with students, and discuss some of the challenges the Center has contended with over the past two years as it piloted this tool.
• Metacognitive and Collective Self-Assessment For Black Feminist Pedagogy 
  Tuesday, May 30 
  Casey Patterson (PhD Candidate | Department of English) 
  The disciplines of Black, Women’s, and Ethnic Studies entered the university as expressions of student protest, when students were demanding “relevant education” and “education for liberation.” So how are we, as extensions of that protested authority, supposed to teach a curriculum which should always be premised on questioning us? In the design of my Winter 2023 class, “Black Feminism and the Sci-Fi of Octavia Butler,” I included two experimental assessment structures: a “Joint Assessment” process which adapted “contract grading” and “ungrading” frameworks to structure metacognitive self-assessment as an equal component of students’ final grades for the class; and a Collective Final Exam which called upon students to cooperatively define questions, methods, and answers to frame our learning for the quarter. In this session, we will review the implementation of such assessments, and discuss how each of us can develop allied methods in our own contexts.

• Can We Create Assignments that Shape the Way Students Learn? 
  Wednesday, April 19 
  Katherine Preston (Associate Director | Program in Human Biology) 
  Instructors usually have ideas about how students should approach learning in their courses, and we sometimes even talk about those ideas in class or the syllabus. But graded work is the currency of the classroom, and the design of our assignments very effectively tells our students where to invest their time and attention, even when we have different priorities for them. How can we create assignments that go beyond the immediate goals of a class to help students practice the scholarly habits we value? Dr Preston will describe two assignments designed with this goal in mind. Join us to share your own successful assignments, as well as common barriers to implementing them.

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• “In This Class, I Have to Think!”: Learning through Decision-Making in a Sustainable Energy Course 
  Monday, May 8 
  Argenta Price (Lecturer | Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability; Science Education Research Associate | Physics Department) 
  Arun Majumdar (Chester Naramore Dean | Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability; Jay Precourt Professor | Mechanical Engineering & Energy Science and Engineering; Senior Fellow | Precourt Institute for Energy and Hoover Institution) 
  Kathryn Moler (Vice Provost and Dean of Research; Professor | Applied Physics and of Physics) 
   

• "Communicating to Learn: Teaching Students to Think, Write, and Speak like Experts" 
  Rajan Kumar (Lecturer | Director of Undergraduate Studies, Materials Science and Engineering) 

• "Teaching Complex Problem-Solving Skills Using a Framework of Decisions" 
  Argenta Price (Science Education Research Associate, Physics Department | Lecturer, Doerr School of Sustainability) 

• "Trusting the Students: An Introduction to the Harkness Method" 
  John Barton (Director, Architectural Design Program)
• "What Does 'Research-Led' Teaching Mean in Practice?" 
  Elaine Treharne (Professor of English and, by courtesy, of German Studies and Comparative Literature)
• “I Never Knew I Could Study That”: Archival Research as the Key to Inclusion, Engagement and Belonging in the Classroom 
  Thomas Mullaney (Professor of History)
• Lifeworks: A Pedagogy For Fostering Holistic Student Outcomes In The Arts And Sciences
• Start Here: The Art of the Introductory (Art) Assignment 
  Facilitator: Kim Beil, art historian and Associate Director of ITALIC
• Hands-on Learning to Make Theory Reality—Experiential Learning for Aerospace Engineering 
  Facilitator: Ken Hara (Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics) Sonia Travaglini (Skilling & Learning Specialist, Aeronautics and Astronautics)
• Learning Across the Techie-Fuzzy Divide 
  Facilitators: Lanier Anderson (Professor of Philosophy; former Sr. Associate Dean of the  Humanities and Arts), Dan Edelstein (Professor of French; Faculty Director of Stanford Introductory Studies), Jeff Schwegman (Assistant Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences)
• Experiments in Grading for Large and Small Classes 
  Facilitator: Russ Poldrack (Professor of Psychology)
• Using Sketchnotes to Improve Attention, Retention, and Comprehension … Even When Nobody Can Draw! 
  Facilitator: Christina Wodtke, Computer Science
• Exploring Alternative Systems for Grading 
  Facilitator: Melissa Ko, Bioengineering and CTL
• Designing (Our Courses) for Racial Justice 
  Facilitators: Louie Montoya, Jess Brown, and Sam Seidel, Stanford d.school
• Creating Community During Virtual Teaching 
  Facilitator: Sarah Derbew, Classics
• Discovery-Based Learning: From Classroom to Textbook 
  Facilitator: Liqun Luo, Biology
• Mastery Learning: Marrying High Standards and Flexibility Using a “Revise and Resubmit” Exam Policy 
  Facilitator: Cynthia Lee, Computer Science
• Hands-On from Home: Tips for Running Virtual Labs and Other Activities in the Remote Environment 
  Facilitator: Jennifer Schwartz Poehlman, Chemistry
• Humans and Viruses: An Ongoing Platform for Experimentation 
  Facilitator: Bob Siegel, Human Biology
• Teaching and Learning, Fast and Slow 
  Facilitator: Leticia Britos Cavagnaro, d.school
• Giving Students Control over their Learning: Integrating Well-Being, Self-Assessment, Choice, and Outreach into EE 376a 
  Facilitator: Tsachy Weissman, Electrical Engineering
• Doing Before Knowing: How Students Learn to Direct by Directing  
  Facilitator: Michael Rau, Theater and Performance Studies (TAPS)
• Team-Based Pedagogy  
  Facilitator: Marcelo Clerici-Arias, Economics
• Expert-Level Decision-Making in the Classroom: How to help students move from thinking like novices to thinking like experts 
  Facilitator: Lisa Hwang, Chemical Engineering
• The Case for Applied Ethics: How Experiential Learning Can Help Students Develop Meaningful Principles 
  Facilitator: Tom Byers and Jack Fuchs, Management Science and Engineering
• Active Learning is Not a Fad: Empowering Students to Learn 
  Facilitator: Pat Burchat, Physics
• Situating the Student Scientist by Teaching environmental Justice and Equity Framing 
  Facilitators: Sibyl Diver (Earth Systems) and Emily Polk (Program in Writing and Rhetoric)
• Drawing Students into Arguments: How Mapping Argument Structure Improves Engagement and Analysis 
  Facilitator: Emilee Chapman, Political Science
• The Power of Vulnerability in Fostering Student Learning and Belonging 
  Facilitators: Steven Roberts, Psychology, with his students, Valerie Wu, Jackson Richter, and Isaac Arocha
• The Pi-Shaped Student: Learning Ethical Design in an Age of Technology 
  Facilitator: Ge Wang, CCRMA
• Engaging Students in Large Lecture Courses: Lessons from Psychology One 
  Facilitator: James Gross, Psychology
• Students Mixing Silos: Using the Arts to Express and Explore Science 
  Facilitator: Sue McConnell, Biology
• Seeing, Hearing, Tasting: How Students Benefit from Experiential Learning 
  Facilitators: Marisa Galvez (French and Italian) and Jesse Rodin (Music)
• Teaching with No Learning Outcomes: Against the Instrumentalization of the Classroom 
  Facilitator: Alex Nemerov, Art and Art History
• Practicing Safe CS: How Interdisciplinary Learning Benefits Students (and Stimulates New Research) 
  Facilitator: Rob Reich, Political Science
• The One-Unit Class: Creating Gateways to Humanities 
  Facilitator: Allyson Hobbs, History

Co-sponsored by the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Dean’s Office of the School of Humanities and Sciences.

Questions?

Please contact Kenneth Ligda for questions.

Kenneth Ligda
Associate Director, Faculty and Lecturer Programs 
kenligda@stanford.edu