Sexual Selection – Post Teaching Reflection
October 26th – Guest Lecture – Biology 121 Ecology, Evolution and Behaviour
While I have given a couple of guest lectures in the past, I would consider this to be my first official guest lecture. Previously, my guest lectures were only part of a class (30 minutes or less) and were an addition to a course instead of a part of the established course curriculum. As such, preparing for this guest lecture required much more consideration of both the learning objectives and their integration into overall course content and objectives.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this teaching experience. The topic is one that I adore – males fighting for mates and females choosing which of those males will be rewarded with her affections. In fact, sexual selection is one of a few biological concepts that led me to become a biologist in the first place. So being able to teach a topic that I am passionate about and feel comfortable with was a fantastic support for an otherwise new experience.
The Story:
My mentor and I decided that I would first design my lecture before viewing their established lecture. Prior to structuring the class I read through the text and decided on the story I wanted to tell. 
From my experience running Nerd Nite Vancouver, I have become a strong advocate of telling a story when communicating science. This means finding the “so what?” before getting into the details.
“So what?” – Sexual selection drives evolution of heritable traits that improve reproductive success and, unlike other evolutionary mechanisms, is not random.
Who are the characters? – Males and females of a diverse set of species from the Australian redback spider to elephant seals
What are they doing? – Most of the time males are competing for females, and females are choosing their preferred mates
Class Design:
My mentor uses a class outline for each of their lectures. The outline includes components such as: 1) the assigned reading; 2) the learning objectives; 3) notes and sections for student to fill in throughout the class. I have never implemented an outline before in my teaching. That is not to say that I have not created an outline to guide my own thoughts and funneling of the “story” of the lecture, more that I have not used an outline to guide students’ learning. As this is a component of my mentor’s classes, we both felt strongly that I should try to create my own outline in a similar style to theirs. This outline was both a challenge and a blessing. It was challenging because it meant that I needed to determine each of the important points and the examples I was going to use to support these points well in advance of putting together my lecture sides. It was a blessing because it meant that putting together the slides was much easier with a roadmap.
Challenges and Lessons Learned:
Outside of designing the lecture itself, which was its own all-encompassing challenge, there were a few specific challenges that rose to the occasion.
Lesson 1: Moving Among Media – In the class, I was using a powerpoint presentation, a second computer with videos (because audio did not work well on the laptop I was using), i-clicker technology, and a document camera to fill in the outline. Prior to this lecture I had not worked with or practiced with the i-clicker or the document camera and so I was particularly anxious about moving awkwardly between all of the various tools while a growing murmur of students grew in the background. This experiment actually ended up going quite well, and if anything I found that working with the outline helped me stay on course and reminded me when to switch between media.
Come-to-Science Moment: Practice the transitions among media before hand.
Lesson 2: Clicker Questions – I spent so much time just trying to master a thoughtful and challenging clicker question, that I didn’t consider how to accurately relay the answer. After showing the question for students to read, I announced that they would have time to vote on the answer, which they did, I checked their answers, and then I had a slide prepared with the correct answer and discussed why that was the correct answer. What I failed to do was to explain why the other answers were wrong.
Come-to-Science Moment: My mentor suggested that when going over the clicker question answer, a more effective way to have students evaluate their own answer is to keep the incorrect answers up on the board as well and to discuss why they are incorrect. Next time I will incorporate this and also try to make the answer more of a “big reveal” by first going through the incorrect answers.
Lesson 3: Keeping up with the Outline – This fits pretty well within challenge 1, but I’m elevating it to its own special challenge because it required so much attention. I originally wasn’t sure how I was going to talk, ask questions, and fill out the outline, but I managed to strike a balance wherein I would lecture on a topic, and then fill in the outline while repeating the major points. One thing I overlooked was giving students enough time to fill out the outline. Once I had finished filling in the blanks, I began tying in the next examples.
Come-to-Science Moment: Next time I will make more of an effort to give a few additional seconds for students to finish writing before I continue.
Lesson 4: The Nerd Nite Model – Having spent three years refining a model for an engaging public lecture (fuelled by alcohol), it was difficult to move back to a classroom setting. A Nerd Nite talk does best when it tells a story, is mostly pictures, uses analogies and metaphors, and engages humor. I truly believe that all of these components also contribute to a good lecture. However, there is certainly a line at which the information is not as in-depth as it needs to be for a course. My lecture flirted with the style of a Nerd Nite talk, and in retrospect, I think my lecture would have benefitted from one or two fewer examples and a stronger effort to tie the examples into the bigger picture of evolution and sexual selection. One question my mentor asked me following my talk was “So the Australian redback spider throws himself onto the fangs of the female, and that’s really cool, but what does that mean for the genetics?” And they were right. What I did instead was move onto the next interesting example of direct benefits of female choice, when instead I could have taken the time to explain how males that are cannibalized are able to father more offspring than are males that aren’t, this means he is passing those genes on to the next generation as a successful strategy for mating, and those offspring may inherit that gene (or genes) for self-sacrifice.
Come-to-Science Moment: Examples are important, but need a stronger link back to key course concepts.
Lesson 5: Pace – One of the most significant points of feedback that I received from my mentor was to vary the pace of my talk. While my lecture was enthusiastic, there was not much variability in tone or in delivery of content.
Come-to-Science Moment: My mentor suggested working in pauses and differences in tone of voice for future classes to keep students engaged.
Next Steps:
The next guest lecture I will be giving is on November 22nd, and in that lecture I am going to focus on addressing the pace of my lecture as well as my integration of clicker questions. I am also toying with the idea of incorporating some small discussions into the clicker question format before having students vote. Stay tuned.