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.