More than free time:
Sabbatical offers chance to recharge research, teaching
 rofessors on sabbatical generally focus on reinvigorating either their research or teaching methods, but Associate Professor Ben-Tzion Karsh is focusing on both, and his ambitions have kept him very busy.
It’s been time well spent, as Karsh, who is on sabbatical until fall 2009, has jump-started a new line of research and has intensively studied the science behind how his students learn.
Karsh is interested in the cognitive work that primary healthcare workers perform, and he is investigating how computers are changing primary healthcare overall. Cognitive work refers to the problem solving that healthcare workers do every day, including how they make diagnoses, assign treatments, make decisions and recover from those decisions at the end of the day.
As computers become a mainstay in doctors’ offices, Karsh is investigating how technology affects doctor-patient relationships, diagnoses decisions, and primary care patient safety in general. He has received a grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a sister agency of the National Institutes of Health, to work on these questions with a team of primary care doctors from the Wisconsin Research and Education Network.
Karsh’s new research parallels his efforts to improve his teaching. “The two areas combine for me in the sense that my teaching is informed by my research,” Karsh says. “Students get to hear firsthand about the real-world experiences of their professors, and my experiences include going to hospitals and clinics and learning what it’s like.”
Beyond simply expanding his research to, in turn, share with his students, Karsh is also rethinking his teaching methodology.
“I have always loved teaching, but I was acutely aware that I didn’t know the science behind teaching,” he says. “I never felt equipped to make changes to my courses, but once you understand the science of learning, you can make effective, evidence-based changes.“Otherwise, you’re just guessing, and as a scientist, I don’t like to guess.”
Karsh and PhD student A. Joy Rivera enrolled in a semester-long course through the UW-Madison Delta Program in spring 2009. He also enrolled in the 2009 UW-Madison Teaching Academy Summer Institute. The courses taught Karsh how to scientifically design and improve courses and materials that could, for example, accommodate different learning styles and promote interaction. He also learned how to craft exams that more accurately evaluate student knowledge.
“I can now apply a lot of same ideas we teach in class to creating more effective engineering courses,” Karsh says.
With Rivera, Karsh used the principles from the Delta course to redesign ISyE 349, Introduction to Human Factors. “I have almost 60 pages of notes on how we are making
the course better for students and tie into other department courses,” Karsh says.
Karsh is also redesigning ISyE 556, Occupational Safety and Health Engineering, and plans to bring in guest lecturers, such as industrial hygiene consultants and staff from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, to talk about applying the course principles to the real world.
Overall, Karsh is ready and excited for the fall 2009 semester. “I’m really charged to get back into teaching and right away apply what I’ve learned,” he says. “During the sabbatical, I accomplished the things I wanted to realize, and it’s been a great benefit for my research and students.”
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