Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Teaching Assistant Assistants

These knitted pals of mine made by the ever talented Crowe aka rockcozy, (photos stolen from her Flckr stream) helped out in class today. The task for the day was to engage the students in a lively discussion about the causes of the End Permian Mass Extinction event based on articles they had read at home.

I forced my 4 sections of disinterested non-majors to duke it out in an academic competition for prizes. They were split into "team sea slug" and "team sea star", borrowing my friends here for moral support. No responses were registered as valid unless the responder had physical possession of said mascot.

The success of this idea varied by class, and because I'm a wimp... everybody got a prize in the end.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"I've got the conch, I've got the conch!"

Eh hem. Excuse me. Got carried away there....

Interesting idea. Wonder if it would work with some of the disinterested majors I get on occasion.

Christie Rowe said...

that is so kickass. i hope the little critters didn't suffer any undue abuse at the hands of *gasp* non-majors! I should knit some permian extinction fauna...

Trifarina said...

I'm going to make a crinoid sometime soon... still in the thinking stages.