Aside from teaching, I have been conducting pedagogical research/Scholarship on Teaching and Learning (SOTL) in order to (1) improve my own teaching and (2) promote pedagogical innovations to other philosophy instructors.

My current project is Mastery Learning. The theory of mastery learning was originally proposed by Benjamin Bloom (1968) and Fred Keller (1968) and has recently been reinvigorated by Linda Nilson (2015). The underlying principle is to provide various modes of instructions, sufficient opportunities, and clear guidelines to students in order to enable them to achieve course learning objectives to a high level. Numerous studies show that mastery learning can significantly improve performance, learning, and student motivations. I have recently started conducting experiments on mastery learning and am writing a paper on how to effectively and efficiently utilize it. I am also scheduled to present a poster session on its use at the upcoming APA Teaching Hub in April 2022.

My previous project is group/two-stage exams (Group/two-stage exams: students first do an exam individually, and then re-do the same exam in small groups. Students will get bonus points if they do better at the second stage.) I have conducted several group exams to ascertain that group exams (in philosophy) can improve exam performance and reduce students’ stress.  I am also interested to think about the value of group exams (is it all about helping students get better grades?) and their fairness concern (e.g. free-riding). I have recently published a paper (Teaching Philosophy) and have led a few workshops/sessions on this topic.