Teaching of College Science
Code
SCI 544
Short Course Description
This course focused primarily on discussions and activities that covered the latest research on effective teaching and learning, particularly in the undergraduate learning environment. Students were shown literature and tools to examine current research. Projects and assignments allowed students to analyze and create common teaching documents, such as a teaching philosophy statement. Students also planned and implemented a "micro" lesson plan to practice delivering lessons.
Greatest Course Takeaways
This was one of my favorite classes. The professor was very helpful and energetic, and very knowledgeable about teaching science at the college level. What I appreciated the most about this course - and one of my biggest takeaways - was the emphasis on other teaching methods that are not strictly traditional lecture. Most of my classes in engineering were lectures if they were not strictly a laboratory class, and the slides or course work was often just text or practice problems over and over. This class showed me that you can utilize phenomenon-based activities to introduce a lesson and grab the attention of your students. You can also use scaffolding and other types of questions about the observed phenomenon to see what students understand about the concept and what misconceptions they may have. By having all students observe the phenomenon, they all share a history of what occurred and can use that to build off of each other's ideas. Other activities such as group work to discuss what happened and devise ways to explain the phenomenon were practiced as well.
I think this stands out to me because this is something that is seen more frequently in the K-12 sphere, but not as much at the collegiate level (at least, not in the classes I took). It was more about writing down what the professor said and then remembering it precisely to write on an exam. Sometimes, I feel these methods that utilize "broken" lectures, demonstrations outside of the laboratory, phenomenon-based learning, scaffolding, group work in the classroom (instead of a group project outside of the classroom), and other "less-traditional" teaching techniques are looked down upon in the college science classroom as being immature or out of place. Perhaps it is simply the professor not having training in these techniques and rather teaching the way they were taught with the belief that it is sufficient for this generation of students. But this course was crucial to showing me that these methods can be adopted in the college science classroom and can be very effective and powerful teaching tools, regardless of the "age or maturity" of the students.
Course Product Description
The course product I selected for this portfolio was the "microlesson". For this assignment, students had to design and deliver a 50 minute lesson to their peers in the class. This had to include any presentations, handouts, or other supplies that would be needed if you were to take this lesson into the actual classroom. It had to be prepared using the standard lesson plan formats and tools provided in the course. The lesson was recorded to allow students to watch their teaching and write a reflection based on their own observations from the video, the observations of their peers, and how they felt about their performance in delivering the lesson.
For my project, I created a microlesson about the basics of papermaking. This included information about the general layout of the paper machine and the steps of the papermaking process (pulping, wet end, press section, dry end, and finishing). There was also a hands-on activity in which students could make their own sheet of paper by hand and match up the general steps of papermaking from the machine to the handsheet activity.
Click Here to See the Course Product for this Course and Others in the Portfolio.
Selection of Product for Portfolio
I selected this product for several reasons. It was one of the few times that I was able to deliver a science based lesson to a classroom of college students during my time as a graduate student. While I was a teaching assistant/facilitator for a college course for undergraduate engineering students for nine semesters while working on my graduate degrees, the course was about professional (soft) engineering skills. It wasn't about science. With this course product, I was given the opportunity to build and deliver a lesson about the subject I was passionate about teaching: papermaking.
I wanted to include the video of myself teaching this lesson, however it wasn't available, so I included the presentation instead. I wanted to include the presentation more than the reflection piece because it showcases both good traits of my lesson planning back then and things I needed to work on and improve.
I designed this lesson plan with a script so that it could be handed off to someone with less experience in the field and still generally be followed. This was inspired by the lesson planning materials from this course and another course that I took prior to my pursuit of this degree in Teaching and Curriculum. I think that type of layout was helpful for a novice teacher (such as myself at the time). It is also a good trait to have when working as an instructional designer who is not responsible for implementation of their lessons. However, I feel it is too rigid of a plan if I were making it for myself with my current experience. Back then, I felt it tethered me too much towards saying everything just right and just as it was written, and it took away from the delivery of the lesson. I remember being too focused on finishing the lesson and it resulted in me speeding through the material since the lesson I put together was not conducive for a 50 minute session; it had too much information to incorporate the lecture, group activity, and individual activity. I feel that is something I struggled with often in my early career as a scholar and as an educator. This course product gave me an opportunity to reflect on this lesson and to work on timing.
Another reason I included this in my portfolio was to showcase the initial stages of my use of non-traditional lectures for teaching. In this presentation, I focus less on the text of a slide and more on using the slides as the accompanying piece to my lesson. I like that I start the lesson with an overview and the objectives of the lesson, but more than that, I like that I have a warmup activity that prompts the students to tell me about their thoughts regarding papermaking. It's a great way for me to gauge student understanding on the topic and assess any misconceptions early in the process. It also allows me to take the students own words and ideas, put them in a common space for all to see, and highlight those that will inevitably guide us towards the lesson that is planned. I feel that is more engaging than just starting the lecture with the next topic, and it helps students feel ownership over the knowledge being generated in the class. This can help students feel more comfortable participating in the building of that knowledge.
Additionally, I like the use of both video and pictures to showcase the different parts of the paper machine. I do feel that I could have picked a better image of the paper machine for students to work with for the group activity. I also feel that I could have utilized my video editing skills to better highlight the different parts of the paper machine that I wanted students to focus on when looking at the material, or I could have recorded this footage myself. However, it is important for me to remember - and this lesson is a great showcase of this - that it is acceptable to utilize found media for lessons. I do not need to make everything myself. Multiple modes of communicating the information is beneficial for students who have different information communication preferences.
This course product also shows my incorporation of both a group activity and an individual demonstration for the lesson. It helped reinforce the concept of utilizing different teaching tools to help students learn. I could have just as easily used bullet lines and images of people making pieces of paper for the lesson as I would have seen it done in my other courses. This course and this project allowed me to practice new ways of teaching college students these concepts. However, I need to continue being conscious of both the time available in a lesson as well as my audience of students to ensure the concepts and vocabulary that I reference or present is within their realm of knowing and understanding.
Contribution of Product to Overall Program
This course and the course product I selected got me genuinely excited about teaching science at the college level. It gave me the opportunity to practice what I structured and designed my program of study for this degree to be: collegiate science teaching. One of the things I enjoyed so much about my educational training in high school was the vocational aspect of my science learning: going to the field, looking at specimens in class, poking and observing what was happening in front of us. It was encouraging to see these concepts can not only be applied in the college classroom (outside of the laboratory sessions!), but they can be effective as well. This was also one of the course products that inspired me to join the Future Professoriate Program to learn more about teaching through their seminar series (such as the Making the Most of Lecture Time seminar) as I wanted to pursue a variety of teaching tools that could benefit my students.
This course product provides one example of how I could start to prepare an actual collegiate science lesson when given the opportunity. I received a lot of helpful feedback from my peers during this microlesson, such as slowing my pace of delivery, going with the flow instead of sticking stringently to the script, understanding what is realistic to complete in a single lesson or timeframe compared to what is hopeful, and ensuring I have a better understanding of my audience when teaching - and even designing - the lesson. There is a lot that I would change with what I now know about instructional design, teaching tools, and other skills compared to when this lesson was made, but this course product is a step in the right direction for helping students learn in a way that is stimulating, engaging, and promoting student ownership of knowledge.