Roadmap for Success
Graduate student receives GSI Award for innovative teaching incorporating technology.
Highlighting the sixth annual Graduate Student Colloquium, Sean McCarthy received DIIA’s Graduate Student Instructor Award.
Mark Decker, head of DIIA’s Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) Program, regards the award as an important expression of appreciation for the contribution to undergraduate teaching provided by graduate student instructors. “The GSI Award was created to recognize a TA or AI who has made an especially significant contribution to the classroom experiences of undergraduate students. Award recipients exemplify DIIA’s core values of learning, professionalism, innovation, collaboration, and inspiration.”
McCarthy is an assistant director at the Computer Writing and Research Lab, a component of the Department of Rhetoric and Writing.
McCarthy received the John Slatin Meme Award last year, presented by the Department of Rhetoric and Writing to recognize assistant instructors who design learning activities that integrate pedagogy and technology. Taking a page from the mission statement of the CWRL to “encourage innovative, sustainable, theoretically informed pedagogies,” McCarthy designed a rhetoric course focused on extending students’ conceptual grasp of complex topics by developing their rhetorical skills in a Web-based writing environment. Using GoogleMaps, students working in teams executed a semester-long project that required collaboration with an outside organization. They developed and published a collaborative map that reflected a topic associated with globalization.
McCarthy chose the Learning Record Online to provide a framework for project evaluations. Students recorded their individual contributions to the team’s effort, noting their growth across the LR’s five dimensions of learning. Students were eager to make their final presentations public, taking responsibility to promote the event, inviting their collaborators, and contacting local media organizations.
Students have responded to McCarthy’s teaching with passion.
Mr. McCarthy taught the writing course I took with interesting and engaging projects and assignments that gave his students a new perspective on writing. He had an obvious passion for teaching and language that was obvious through his lectures, and his concern for his students' progress and learning made his class enjoyable and educational.
Not only does his love for teaching come through in every class, he truly wants his students to learn the art of rhetoric in a fun and interesting way. He makes it easy and comfortable for every student to put in his or her two cents in every conversation. He provides us with not only the skills to succeed in the classroom but in our various careers later in life.
Sean's approach to teaching is fantastic. He is incredibly willing and eager to help us with anything we need and is incredibly excited about every assignment we are given. Because of this, every assignment we receive is appealing and the class is eager to engage. Our assignments up to this point have been really creative and helpful, teaching all of us new things about ourselves and the resources around us. He is great!
I am a 4-year student and I have never had a teacher so devoted to a class or students. Sean tries to teach the class in a unique way by incorporating emerging technology and applications that will be useful outside of the class: for example NovaMind, Google Map, Skype, Podcasts, and our own class wiki page. Great teacher!
Sean truly cared about our ability to write. He worked with us on ways to improve our writing styles with different techniques. He was always available for help and easy to approach if confused about an assignment. He understood that not everyone writes in the same way and that we didn't have to be traditional to be heard.
It seems that Sean McCarthy has fashioned a roadmap for success in engaging students as active learners while linking class work to civic engagement. Diane Davis, director of the CWRL, says of McCarthy, “Sean is a rare blend of tireless innovation and feet-on-the-ground planning. He has already made far-reaching contributions to the vision and direction of the lab.”