Post-Practicum Reflection, BIOL 115, Langara College, 11/18/2021

I taught my sixth and final practicum lesson in a majors introductory biology class at Langara College taught by Dr. Martha Nelson-Flower. I anticipated this being the most difficult of all the practicum lessons because it was a long lesson (110 minutes) on a technically challenging topic, and when I observed the class previously the atmosphere was extremely quiet. This made me concerned that it would be difficult to build and sustain engagement during the class. This lesson was also a quick (2 day) turnaround from my fifth practicum lesson on salmon sustainability issues at UBC, also a long and complex lesson. Designing and delivering both of these made for a challenging stretch! However, I think this was great preparation to be a full-time instructor when teaching multiple lessons a week is a routine part of the job.

In the previous lesson in a large lecture hall at UBC I never fully relaxed, and my delivery suffered a bit because of it. After reflecting on this I vowed to make my #1 priority to relax in the class at Langara, and not worry as much about saying everything I intended to perfectly. Fortunately I was able to achieve this! I’m very happy with how comfortably I was able to deliver the lesson, and it shows me the progress that I’ve made over the year.

One approach I took to help students apply transcription and translation outside the textbook context was incorporating applications to contemporary issues. The major one I connected is the human health application of mRNA vaccine development for SARS-CoV-2. I started the lesson by showing the spike protein of the virus that the mRNA delivered by the vaccine codes for, and immediately engaged student attention with a discussion about what it might be and how it related to the topic. I concluded the lesson with a wildlife conservation application by describing my research incorporating the physiology (gene expression) and infection of sockeye salmon, and then revisited the mRNA vaccines in more detail.

One of the CATL teaching and learning theories I implemented was aligning the material to “big ideas” in biology, in this case the relationship between genotype, phenotype, and natural selection. I wanted to make sure students didn’t get too bogged down in the myriad technical details of transcription and translation and forget their overall purpose. Therefore, I reviewed these big ideas and situated transcription and translation within them before teaching the details. I also found and included a really well done and concise (< 2 min) video from the University of Utah that illustrated transcription and translation leading to production of luciferase proteins in fireflies. The video concluded by mentioning the functional ecology of the light created by luciferase (attract mates, avoid predation), and I briefly tied that to natural selection and promised they would learn much more about that later in the course. I also added a funny anecdote about my sister and I feeding fireflies to our pet American toad when we were young, causing the toad to light up for a several minutes after.

In designing the lesson I followed Dr. Nelson-Flower’s lead and included many “check-in questions” to gauge student comprehension, typically a couple at the end of each major section (e.g. transcription). This worked well and was good practice for both me and the students, and I received feedback that they were happy with the variety of questions. I think the most effective one was showing an animated gif depicting part of the translation process and asking students to identify each macromolecule and action shown. This helped bring the process alive more than the 2D static images shown previously, and caused the students to synthesize their new knowledge about the processes and pieces involved.

At the end I had an activity for students to compare each of the components of transcription and translation to the housebuilding process because this makes for a nice analogy and visualization, but unfortunately ran out of time for them to work with partners, so I suggested they do this activity while studying.

I entered this lesson unsure about my ability to foster an engaging atmosphere for a technically demanding topic with a group of quiet students who were not familiar with me. However, I am very satisfied to have achieved this and gotten exclusively positive feedback afterward! I’ve learned that the general formula of a relaxed delivery, alignment with disciplinary big ideas, connections to real life applications, and activities to gauge student comprehension is very effective, and this is important pedagogical knowledge that I can draw on in future lesson design and delivery.

Post-Practicum Reflection, CONS 101,  University of British Columbia, 11/16/21

Over the summer my advisor Dr. Hinch helped me line up a guest lesson in CONS 101. He has been solicited to speak on salmon conservation and management issues to this class in the past, and thought this would be a good opportunity for me. I arranged the specifics of the lesson with Dr. David Bunn, a jolly South African professor who just took over the course after moving to Vancouver with his partner. He was fun to work with while discussing ideas for the lesson, and I enjoyed observing both him and Dr. Cole Burton teach lessons in the leadup to mine in order to get a feel for the class.

CONS 101 is a high enrollment course with 250 students. Many of those are from the Faculty of Forestry, but many others take the course as a non-majors elective. The class meets for 90 minutes in a large, steep lecture hall and streams video and slides asynchronously to complement the synchronous lecture. It seemed that synchronous attendance was typically ~80-100 students, but this still made for a large contingent in person. The size of the class and room, diversity of student majors, asynchronous streaming, and wearing a microphone while teaching were all new experiences for me.

Dr. Bunn’s course syllabus and schedule were structured by the following categories: grand global challenges, conservation frameworks, case studies / local instances, and ways forward: hope. I decided to generally match these themes and progression with the design of my lesson on addressing salmon sustainability challenges in British Columbia. I included some grand global challenges such as broad climate change impacts and the effects of hatchery releases by other north Pacific countries, but spent the majority of the time discussing local issues. Dr. Bunn was pleased about this because my lesson was one of few in the course addressing local conservation challenges.

Observing Dr. Bunn’s and Dr. Burton’s lessons helped me develop the idea for the “bridge-in” or “hook” for the lesson to grab attention. I haven’t been consistent with including these despite the Foundations of Pedagogy lesson design training, but they both employed effective ones that reminded me of their importance. Deciding how to approach this took more thought than any other single aspect of the lesson design, but eventually I came up with an attention-grabbing paradox that helped frame the lesson. I first presented a poll showing that declining wild salmon stocks was the #1 issue of concern identified by a poll of BC citizens this summer. On the next slide, I juxtaposed this with a headline from research showing that there is a higher quantity of Pacific salmon now than at any other time in modern history. So what gives? This mini-discussion was the first of several chances for the students to engage and provided a nice hook as well as a bridge to global and local challenges and how they are linked.

I included many links to Indigenous knowledge and practice, similar to my other practicum lessons involving fisheries resources. Some of the motivation for this was driven by transformative learning theory, and attempting to influence students’ frame of reference toward the role that Indigenous title and expertise could/should play in resource management. This was reinforced throughout the lesson by several case study examples and discussion points.

One disciplinary behavior I incorporated into the lesson is prioritizing goals for conservation and management efforts. Before getting into some examples from a litany of issues facing salmon, I showed the students the reflection/discussion questions we would tackle at the end, and one of them asked which issues they would prioritize and why. This way, they had the question in mind and could weigh each issue as they went along. The other question asked if there are public policy changes they might advocate for to benefit salmon. This was to highlight interdisciplinary forces in the bigger societal picture that affect salmon management decisions and conservation outcomes. I tried to include many of these nuanced considerations throughout the lesson in order to guide students toward seeing connections, an important concept I noted from the CATL session of “bringing everything together”. At the end, students were given several minutes to reflect and write their answers to these questions and then we finished with a class discussion in which many students shared thoughts with their peers.

Overall I am proud of how the lesson went. I think it was well structured and struck a nice balance between breadth and depth of issues covered. Regular opportunities for students to engage were successful in sparking a lot of great student discussion. Feedback from Dr. Bunn and the students generally concurred that the content and discussion in the lesson was highly effective. This was not an easy lesson to pull off logistically, and the physical environment in particular was a bit intimidating. Unfortunately I was not relaxed, and was concerned about properly presenting the nuances of the many issues facing salmon. Due to those two factors, I was not able to focus as much as I would have liked on an exciting delivery, and this was pointed out in some student feedback and comments from Dr. Bunn. I am confident that this experience will help tremendously in a more relaxed and dynamic delivery next time I am facing a complex subject with a large class. I’m very glad I gained this experience!

Post-Practicum Reflection, BIOL 1111, Langara College, 10/20/21

For the second term of the CATL practicum I sought to diversify my experience by teaching guest lessons in introductory as opposed to upper-level classes. I was also hoping to gain experience teaching at a community college, because I am highly interested in that career path. To inquire about this possibility I reached out to a former member of my research lab who teaches at Langara College, and she was able to help set me up with opportunities in both the majors and non-majors introductory biology courses (which I am very grateful for!). This practicum lesson was in the non-majors course taught by the department head, Dr. Chris Conway.

It had been a relatively long time since I had studied introductory biology content, with the exception of some of the comps studying I did. Although I am most passionate about ecology and conservation, I always find this content fascinating and causing me to be much more aware of the inner workings of life. This structure and function lesson was my first time teaching human anatomy and physiology content, and I enjoyed learning and teaching the material more than I expected. The students were all very attentive and engaged in lecture, discussion, and activities which also enhanced the experience.

The two disciplinary “big ideas” that I highlighted in the lesson were 1) structure is closely correlated with function, and 2) structure-function relationships result from natural selection. To encourage students to adopt a disciplinary way of seeing by contemplating structure-function relationships for components of human bodies, I did a think-pair-share activity followed by a lengthy discussion of a diverse set of examples (some offered by the students and some that I posed).  On the topic of natural selection I made the connection between genotype and phenotype, and gave a review of the basics of natural selection by highlighting its key points and common misconceptions.

One concept not directly related to human anatomy and physiology that I explained to the students is homology. The purpose of this was to give students a sense of how structure-function relationships develop across a diversity of animal groups, and to link with the big idea of evolution due to natural selection. This was done by introducing bird wing structure and function including a diagram of the bones that points out similarities to the human arm, and then followed up with discussion centered on a classic figure comparing forelimb structure of a human, cat, horse, bat, and dolphin. Discussion of homology in body structure and function between a shark (fish), penguin (bird), and seal (mammal) provided another link to selective forces resulting in structural adaptation.

The second half of the lesson covered more discrete content on tissue types. I made a connection to my research on sockeye salmon infections when discussing epithelial tissue, but focused on human structure and function for the other tissue types. With each type after describing the structure and function I made connections to help students notice some of the causal mechanisms of their own physiology, and we briefly discussed some of these. For example, the differences in healing time between bones and cartilage due to levels of vascularization, and the reasons for more adipose tissue in the abdominal area.

This was a fun lesson enjoyed by me and the students, and I received encouraging feedback from Dr. Conway. I was especially happy with the higher-level content and discussions in the first half of the lesson. If I did it again, I would alter the second half to include more hands on individual and/or group activities regarding the tissue types and their structures and functions. That way it will be less of a content blitz and the students will get a better chance to wrap their heads around the details for each one at their own pace.

Post-Observation Reflection, Science One Program, University of British Columbia

Topics: Diversity in Science (2/4/21), Impact in Science (3/30/21), Ethics in Science (4/13/21)

My program mentor Nolan Bett teaches Scientific Thinking and Literacy (STL) lessons for UBC’s Science One program. Science One is an integrated first year program encompassing a full course load of math, biology, physics, and chemistry that students take as a cohort. The STL component of the program is a more general look at scientific thinking and practice. I observed Nolan teach three STL lessons about diversity, impact, and ethics in science.

The lesson on diversity was focused on disciplinary practitioners in academia. Nolan started the lesson with an activity asking students to annotate a slide by writing two of their favorite scientists, before having them cross out any white males. He followed up this exposure of the traditional lack of diversity among prominent scientists by showing a photo of Marie Curie in a group of all males. The bulk of the lecture covered various interesting findings detailing aspects of diversity in science. Some examples of these include that diversity in co-authorship is less than expected by chance, ethnic diversity increased the level of impact (times cited) of published research, careers of women are shorter on average and they are more likely to drop out of research, studies with more female authors have a higher likelihood of including sex/gender related analyses, and there is a gender bias in study participation in neuroscience and biomedical research – a large bias toward males except for studies of reproduction. The takeaway for the lesson was that diversity is a positive thing in scientific research. Also, it may not be apparent in Science One because it is so diverse, but there is a legacy of a lack of diversity in the field to be aware of.

The lesson on impact explored the questions of how scientists choose research to cite, and how the media chooses what to report on. Nolan made the point that much of the research that makes the news as exciting may be cutting-edge and not well established, and there are many instances of these findings not holding up over time. He highlighted that scientists themselves often play a role in contacting media with a press release to stimulate coverage, and that topics that people easily relate to get the most coverage. He showed that articles with media coverage get cited more and posed the question of whether this is simply more impactful research, or whether scientists are influenced by the media in choosing what to cite. To answer this, he used a fascinating study making use of a publishing strike by the New York Times to compare citations for articles they covered and published versus those that they wrote about but were never published due to the strike. It was found that citations were significantly higher for the papers that had coverage published.

The lesson on ethics tacked the topic of questionable research practices in science. Nolan started by posing two difficult scenarios and asked the students to offer their opinions in the chat before discussing them. Then he surveyed the class as to what might be examples of questionable research practices and what percentage of scientists they think have engaged in questionable research practices. The content of the lesson included a study on the prevalence of these questionable practices, information about retractions and context for their numerical (but not proportional) increase over time, and some high profile cases of fraudulent science. This was the final STL lesson of the program, so Nolan concluded with overall takeaways emphasizing the iterative nature of science, the potential influences on what we study and what we find, and the importance of critical thinking.

I really enjoyed observing these lessons and they were valuable for me in a few ways. One is a better understanding of the roles these topics play in influencing practitioner behavior and in shaping the discipline. Another is gaining insight into the workings of an introductory science course, because my university level teaching has all been at the 400 level. Fortunately I had the chance to discuss each lesson with Nolan in pre- and post-observation meetings that we dovetailed with discussions of my lessons, so it was also helpful for me to be privy to his objectives for the learners and his mindset before and after teaching.

I thought each lesson was well designed to immediately get students reflecting and participating by illustrating something jarring, posing difficult scenarios, or asking interesting questions.  This was followed by a great balance of case studies from the literature. Nolan did a great job connecting the theories and general topics to a variety of real-world findings by incorporating several of these interesting case studies. Each one was broken down at a comfortable pace while responding to the high volume of engaged students’ comments in the chat. At the end, sufficient time was provided for general discussion of the subject and its takeaways.

I am interested in “stealing” these topics if I get the chance to teach introductory biology. I think it is really helpful to incorporate general scientific thinking and literacy into the curriculum to complement traditional content. I would also likely use some of the opening participatory activities that Nolan used as I thought they were very effective. These STL lessons and the ones in CATL have shown me the importance of making students aware of difficult subjects in the discipline. Not telling them how they need to approach them, but making them aware of the issues and encouraging reflection moving forward.

Post-Practicum Reflection, CONS 486, University of British Columbia, 4/12/2021

For my third practicum lesson I taught the last class of the semester in Fish Conservation and Management (CONS 486), the course I TA for. It had been close to a month and a half since we had an instructor led class in the course due to a long series of classes based on student-run presentations and discussions as well as a break for Easter. This combined with my lesson not being examinable content had me a bit apprehensive that the students would find it superfluous and not attend or engage. Fortunately I was very pleasantly surprised! We had full attendance and the students were engaged in the chat and during the discussions.

I taught this lesson on Atlantic lobster ecology, management, economics, and conflict. I chose this subject because lobster is Canada’s most valuable fishery economically, students on the west coast of Canada aren’t exposed to the subject much, and conflict in Nova Scotia’s lobster fishery has been a national news topic recently. Also, it has some really interesting dynamics that I related to many topics we covered in the course such as invertebrate fisheries, climate change effects, anthropogenically-induced evolutionary change, pain and welfare, transboundary management, and Indigenous fishing rights and governance. Similar to the previous practicum lesson on Pacific herring, I had to learn nearly all of the material while constructing the lesson. I enjoyed this topic just as much and I’m proud of what I was able to put together.

The two main things I had students consider and discuss revolved around conflict arising from management. One source of conflict is transboundary management at the Canada-USA border, and the other is the Indigenous “moderate livelihood” fishery. My aim for this was to promote consideration of multiple ways of seeing and disciplinary considerations required for management decisions.  The moderate livelihood discussion in particular is a very difficult one, with a variety of sociopolitical and legal implications. My goal in having students discuss these topics is helping apply what they learn outside of this topic to similar ecological management conundrums, as well as socioeconomic issues (particularly those involving rulings pertaining to Indigenous sovereignty).

Compared to my prior lesson on herring I adopted a more conversational pace while delivering the material, and was patient while probing the class’ responses to the topical discussions. In general this was the most comfortable I have been teaching a lesson! Nolan mentioned in his feedback that he thought the delivery and pace were very effective, and that he noticed this improved handling of the discussion. He was glad to see that I asked for clarification of some student responses, and for other students to try to expand on them. I was appreciative that the students gave very thoughtful responses to the questions I posed, and did a great job building on the responses of their peers.

If revisiting this lesson I would try to incorporate more findings from the literature regarding ecology, harvest effects, and socioeconomic dynamics. I did include some, but I didn’t end up having enough time to peruse all of the papers I downloaded on these subjects. I think with more effort I could strengthen some of this content and the linkages between them. That said, I don’t think any of these areas was substantially lacking in the lesson. I think the lesson is solid in general and the topics/questions used to spark class discussion were productive. One thing I would emphasize more as a follow-up to the discussions is the need for dialogue and collaboration to help make progress in the conflicts I covered, and perhaps look for an example of successful progress in a similar conflict.

Post-Practicum Reflection, FRST 495, University of British Columbia, 3/25/21

I taught my second practicum lecture in Biological Diversity and Forest Management (FRST 495), which is taught by my program mentor Nolan Bett. This course is based almost entirely on guest lectures from professors, disciplinary practitioners outside academia, and graduate students. About half the class are also students in Fish Conservation and Management (CONS 486), the class that I TA and the venue for my first practicum lecture.

Originally, I was planning to teach about the overall state of Pacific salmon ecology and conservation and had discussed this with Nolan and my advisor Dr. Hinch. However, I decided that the students are pretty well versed in this area after teaching a salmon-related lesson for my first practicum and observing several of Dr. Hinch’s lectures for CONS 486 that incorporated aspects of this subject. Instead, I got the idea to teach about Pacific herring. Pacific herring have similar ecological importance as a keystone species supplementing both marine and terrestrial trophic systems, and similarly high profile struggles over conservation and management. Taking on this subject meant more of a challenge as I had to learn nearly all of the content from scratch while constructing the lesson, but I was enthusiastic about doing so and am glad I chose the topic.

I put particular effort into highlighting ways of seeing and acting for three entities involved in the herring fishery and its management: First Nations, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), and the commercial fishing industry. I gave historical context for both the development of Indigenous and commercial fisheries and how they have been managed over time. I also framed a debate by relating the pros and cons of the last remaining commercial herring fishery in the Straight of Georgia. My aim for this was to show how the views of these three respective disciplinary practitioner groups develop, the socioeconomic factors that influence them, and how this affects management. With this context, I asked students to assess the management situation and consider/choose/discuss how they would approach regulations moving forward if they were a practitioner with those responsibilities.

To conclude the lesson I included an interesting study advocating for an approach incorporating ecosystem modeling and values to identify and prioritize tradeoffs in managing the herring fishery (Lam et al. 2019). I adapted the survey of values and management preferences that the authors had Haida individuals as well as members of the commercial industry respond to, and used that as a participatory annotation exercise for the students. As a follow-up we discussed how the findings from the survey could be combined with ecological data and put into use. I think this was an effective connection between some of the theories I included and how they could be used in practice.

In the future if teaching this lesson I’ll heed Nolan’s suggestion for improvement and allocate more time for probing the student responses during the participatory activities, especially rationale regarding opinions about management options. This potentially could have led to interesting thoughts surfacing that I hadn’t anticipated, or perhaps exposed misunderstandings that I could have cleared up. In any case, it would have given students more time articulate their thoughts, reflect on why they approach the subject the way they do, and try on other students’ perspectives and different frames of reference. To free up more time for these discussions I’d cut down on some of the historical context covering changes since the advent of colonial fisheries, and condense a timeline of events (3 slides) I provided.

Overall, I think the lesson was well received and I am proud of how it went! The students were engaged throughout in the chat and during participatory activities, and I received many thoughtful questions at the end. I was happy with the visuals throughout the presentation and the variety of content and perspectives I covered (and Nolan provided me with positive student feedback corroborating this). I think it had a nice mix of ecology, history, and socioeconomic considerations that provided a fairly holistic view (for a single lesson) of Pacific herring ecology and management in British Columbia. However, because of this ambitious scope I packed in a hefty amount of content and moved at a slightly faster pace than I usually do. I think this is further reason to assess which content is most essential for the key considerations I’d like to get across, and package it with more time for discussion and reflection in the future.

Post-Observation Reflection, FRST 495, University of British Columbia, 1/14/2021

For my first teaching observation of CATL I joined my program mentor Dr. Nolan Bett’s Biological Diversity and Forest Management course. This was one of the few lessons he will teach in the course, as it mostly draws on guest lectures (including one from me later in the semester!). The topic was conservation units, and the tricky task of determining how to protect species and the diversity within them. Nolan is an alumnus of the Pacific salmon ecology and conservation lab that I’m a member of, and he based the lesson around conservation of Chinook salmon.

He started with a poll question asking students how we define species, and then reviewed some of the concepts used to do so. Next, he discussed some of the subjectivity in definitions used by the Species at Risk Act (SARA) in Canada and the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in the United States. Next he related these real-world management issues to the theory of evolution by making the point that biodiversity arises through evolution, so one approach and/or way to conceptualize the topic is conserving evolutionary legacies.

The bulk of the lesson was spent examining how this may apply in practice with Chinook salmon conservation and management as a model. There are many different populations of Chinook salmon throughout their range and mixing between populations is low because individuals home to their natal stream to spawn, with a low straying rate (3-5%). Thus, populations are often uniquely adapted to their natal watershed and may also have different life history patterns. One interesting life history quirk of Chinook is that some fish return in the spring (spring-run) and spend the summer in freshwater before spawning in the fall, while others spend that time in the ocean before returning to spawn in the fall (fall-run). Nolan detailed the evolutionary origin of the spring-run trait, its distribution, the importance of it for harvest and diversity, and the conservation and management challenges to it (especially threats from dams). Following this information, Nolan initiated a group discussion with two questions. The first was specific to spring-run Chinook salmon and whether they constituted distinct conservation units as well as if they should be protected under SARA/ESA. The second was how to prioritize our conservation efforts toward spring-run populations and whether other life history or ecological traits should be considered. Then to finish the lesson Nolan made the point that how we define conservation units for salmon is applicable to diversity elsewhere and used a warbler example to illustrate this.

I noticed that the overall structure of the lesson was to pose a disciplinary issue to pique students’ interest, detail a specific case study that gives an idea of how complex an issue can be and how it is tackled in the real world, and then ask students how what they have learned might be applied to other topics or taxa in the discipline. I think each of these stages were effective in engaging the students and encouraging them to consider the impact of minute things (mutation of a single gene for spring-run Chinook) and comparably huge things (blanket policy for endangered species or conservation units).

I think the techniques Nolan used also helped students learn ways of seeing and acting as practitioners in the discipline. One aspect of this was showing how scientists uncovered the sources of evolutionary diversity causing migration timing in Chinook and habitat use in warblers. Another aspect was the discussion of how conservation efforts should be prioritized. The information provided, scenarios offered, and discussion based on priorities and feasibility is similar to how stakeholders and managers work to determine status and conservation plans.

I enjoyed observing this lesson and think it was especially helpful to see how it was structured, as well as the activities that Nolan used to get students engaged. I’m comfortable with detailing studies about a relatively specific topic and posing discussion questions that prompt students to consider how this information could be best used to design conservation and management strategies. However, I think what I gained the most from and will “steal” is the introduction of a difficult overarching topical question at the beginning, and the extrapolation/comparison to different systems at the end.

Post-Practicum Reflection, CONS 486, University of British Columbia, 2/1/20

I taught my first practicum lesson in Fish Conservation and Management (CONS 486), a fourth-year course for which I am in my third year serving as the TA. My adviser Dr. Hinch scheduled my lesson to follow on from his lectures about fisheries exploitation and harvest regulations because my research is applied to these issues for Fraser River sockeye salmon. My mentor for the CATL program, Nolan Bett, provided very helpful feedback (both general and content-specific) in the pre-and post-observation meetings. I’m really thankful to have his guidance!

I included 3 learning objectives for the lesson, but acknowledged that the material would not be testable in the course. The big picture ecological topics I used to frame the material were migration and stress. I included thorough coverage of fishing techniques and management both past and present, with a major theme being the compelling reasons to reincorporate selective fisheries historically practiced by First Nations that were quashed by colonial influence.

One of the disciplinary behaviors I included in the lesson was how to prioritize conservation management interventions based on evidence. I used my thesis research as a case study of a conservation issue: anthropogenic stress from encountering and escaping fishing nets and from high water temperatures. I asked students what future management actions they might advocate for based on these results and the background information I provided, and had them annotate their ideas on the screen before discussing the possibilities. Several of these matched the traditional methods practiced by Indigenous groups in the area. Another technique I used (after a suggestion from Nolan in the pre-observation meeting) was asking for a volunteer to predict survival curves on a graph based on results I showed in previous slides under similar experimental conditions. This was geared toward helping learners think like practitioners in the discipline by forming a hypothesis/prediction from consideration of available information. I also suspect this technique was effective in “startling” students into thinking deeper about the relationships being shown in the results figures. I’m grateful Nolan suggested this technique and I’ll look forward to expanding on its use in the future!

I learned that it is very draining to teach a lengthy lesson on Zoom, especially when the majority is lecture based. I missed having in-person cues and being able to gauge the audience throughout the lesson. I decided to go pretty ambitious for the scope and length of the lesson, and it lasted about 1.5 hours not including a 10 minute break. If I taught the lesson again I would keep all of the introductory context for my research and discussion of its implications, as I thought these beginning and end sections were effective and engaging. On the other hand, I would look for areas to cut and consolidate the coverage of my research methods and results, as it is possible I bogged down the class a bit by covering too many of these details. I only incorporated one participatory opportunity in this middle section, so I would also seek opportunities to increase this. Nolan concurred with these points and suggested that I revisit the learning objectives to guide decisions about what material to keep or cut.

Overall I think the lesson went well especially given it was the first one I’ve conducted on Zoom. I need to practice more with the functionality of the system, particularly switching between views if my setup gets altered as happened when a poll I had programmed failed to launch properly and kicked me out of presenter view to my internet browser (I pivoted to having students answer using the chat function). However, I think I handled the content and questions fairly well and I’m especially encouraged by the success of the participatory activities.