By Linda Zhang
Linda Zhang, a Duke and Duke Kunshan University (DKU) Global Learning Semester student, took a course taught by Dr. Katherine Robertson, Director of Faculty Affairs. She then wrote this story about how Dr. Robertson modeled active reading through a collective reading activity in the beginning of the courses, in order to better prepare students for reading, understanding, and communicating in this discipline.
In college classrooms, it is considered rather unusual to have in-class reading unless it’s part of an exam. Collective reading in class is time-consuming and instructors often give readings as individual assignments. However, Prof. Katherine Robertson developed a creative way to engage students in “active in-class reading”. Her approach aimed to introduce in her “Global Health Ethics” course, designed for Undergraduate Global Learning Semester Program, not only the field of global health ethics, but also reading techniques that are critical to students’ future learning.
On the second day of class, Prof. Robertson handed out an eight-page reading from Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics.[1] Just as students were ready to dive into the text, Prof. Robertson called for everyone’s attention to discuss how to engage in “active reading.” She first raised the issue of culturally-specific vocabulary, recognizing that some words and references in the reading might not be familiar to people from different backgrounds and assuring them that that is okay. By acknowledging cultural differences before discussing the content, Prof. Robertson aimed to create a neutral and welcoming environment where students coming from different backgrounds can engage in ethics discussion overcoming cultural barriers.
Later, she went over reading techniques, emphasizing the importance of context over specific words, and tips on understanding compound words through recognizing their prefixes and suffixes. Prof. Robertson, a biologist by training, gave the example of “polymorph” and asked if anyone in the class knew the word. No one did. She wrote the word on the whiteboard and put a strike between “poly” and “morph.” Then she moved on to explaining that “poly” is a Greek word that means “multi,” and “morph” means “shape.” After explaining how to tackle compound words, Prof. Robertson continued giving more examples, e.g., “polysyllabic,” for students to practice. In two minutes, besides learning some of the vocabulary that would appear in the reading, students have also obtained reading techniques that will assist them in Prof. Robertson’s class and beyond.
After going through cultural differences and reading techniques, Prof. Robertson gave out instructions for “active reading”: read three pages, mark phrases you don’t understand and anything that interests you. In addition to that, she also encouraged students to think whether they could guess the meaning of unfamiliar words or phrases from the context and to evaluate the importance of each one for understanding the rest of the paragraph. She told them to mark sentences and passages that seemed “important,” then to write a sentence that summarized the take-home message of each paragraph and/or each page. After Prof. Robertson’s pre-reading instructions, students undertook their reading with a heightened level of confidence and skills. Some students still practice her techniques on a daily basis, in classes that have nothing to do with global health ethics. By incorporating innovative teaching techniques, Duke Kunshan classes can equip students with the necessary skills to learn, not just to study.
Note:
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Being-Good-Short-Introduction-Ethics/dp/0192853775
Faculty Introduction
Katherine Robertson
Director of Faculty Affairs, Adjunct Associate Professor of Biology, Duke Kunshan University
Prior to becoming a higher education administrator, Dr. Robertson did her postdoctoral research at Carnegie Mellon University in the U.S. and was on the faculty at Duquesne University and Westminster College, both in the U.S. Her research interests focused on developmental neurobiology, and the molecular regulation of learning and memory in insect models. Dr. Robertson has published her research in several leading journals such as Developmental Biology and Trends in Genetics, and has published several articles on science pedagogy. She has been teaching biology and engaging undergraduates in research for more than 12 years.
