Faculty Lunch: How can you develop your own effective style for visual aids in teaching?

Rachelle Gaudet, Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology

Teaching is, among many other things, fundamentally an act of communication. To teach effectively, an instructor must be able to anticipate her students’ prior knowledge, and figure out how to render her own expertise legible to non-experts. Images and visualizations are often crucial to this act.  As a structural biologist, Rachelle Gaudet invests a lot of time in developing effective scientific illustrations of biological molecules. She also teaches her students, at all levels, both the software and the design approaches that will allow them to create effective illustrations of their own. While some of these tools and approaches are discipline specific, many are not, and can be translated into compelling design choices in any field of teaching. Prof. Gaudet will share her approach, some tips and tricks, and lead a discussion on what to consider in developing your own visual aids that suit your goals and style as a scholarly communicator.