No matter how experienced you are, how much time you have spent working in the field, or how long you have been studying as a student, it is still an extremely rare opportunity to be able to look at and hold literally all of Earth’s history in a single lesson. I am not talking about presenting pictures on lecture slides or timelines, I actually mean having the opportunity to touch the oldest and (~)youngest rocks or minerals on our planet (1944 AD to 4.45 Ga), with one in each hand if you so desire.

Dr James Scoates provided his 2nd-year mineralogy students with this exactly opportunity on November 30th. He constructed the class as a way to motivate his students to practice far transfer with the information and skills they obtained in his course. James started setting up the class in the hour before by putting up posters the students had created in a previous jigsaw lecture, containing each phase of mineral evolution on Earth, he put up pieces of paper around the room indicating all of the geologic time periods, and he hung two geologic timelines up at the front of the room. He also had two trolleys at the front of the room with trays of the hand specimens the students would be using during the activity.

James started the lecture by orienting the students to the room setup and revisiting the ideas of mineral evolution they worked with during the jigsaw. He did some reframing of course material for the students, most notably comparing mineral formulae to a language, calling them the ‘language of geology’. Very cool. He then continued explaining the activity for the class, showing their worksheets on the projector screen and dissecting them for the students. The students were asked to investigate one of the rocks on the trolleys (without knowing what it was), record their observations, and make some interpretations. Once the students finished, James asked them to reveal the information about their rocks, which, unbeknownst to the students, was taped inside the sample trays the whole time! It was a super elegant way to do a reveal. During the activity, James also used two computers (one for each projector in the room), and constantly used them both very effectively. For example, during the activity, he had the sheet they should be working on visible on one screen and a geologic timeline visible on the other.

Once everyone had identified their rocks and found the associated age information on the info sheets, they went to place the specimens around the room in the timeline James setup before class. James then prompted the students to go investigate the other rocks around the room and annotate a worksheet of the geologic timescale with what they learned through their investigations.

With about 10 minutes remaining in the class, James asked everyone to take a seat, and he went through a few slides summarizing their term. He did a fantastic job of showing them their journey through the course and motivating them by highlighting the skills and tasks they accomplished. He put videos of them working on different activities into the presentation, pictures of guest lectures (including my Biomineralization lecture), and highlighted some of the entertaining and well-done assignments he received, including their reports that had ‘field selfies’ on the cover. It was the most successful summary of a mineralogy course, or really any course, that I have ever seen. I learned a lot about the interesting things you can do to motivate your students to transfer what they learned in your course to the rest of their student careers and in the real world!

After my first iteration of this guest lecture, while planning for this year I realized that there simply still was too much content I need to cover in this lesson for a single 50-minute session. Through a few discussions with my mentors about this, Stuart Sutherland (the Professor for the course) and I started to think about the possibility of breaking the lab/lecture dichotomy, a very common course structure in the sciences. As a result, we made a bold choice: we would keep the ‘homing cards’ activity for the 50-minute lecture, where all of the students could participate (essential for the activity), and we moved the latter half of the content delivery (which is examinable) to each of the two lab sections in the course during the same week. We also developed and implemented a new ‘hominids lab’, for which the lecture material was a good primer and served as an introduction.

With this new framework, the extra time provided for the ‘hominin cards’ made a huge difference. I was able to annotate the timeline component much easier and in more detail, and we had the opportunity to discuss more during the large group component of this multi-faceted jigsaw. Saving the second portion of lecture for the lab sections was also an excellent way for students to get the material necessary for higher-order agency literally minutes before applying it in the lab. As Stuart and I teach this class with a bit of a flipped format anyway (i.e., often labs are like lectures and vice versa), this was an excellent example of how removing the dichotomy not only improves student learning, but also facilitates their success when conducting high-order actions based on course content in either the lecture or lab sessions.

That being said, the downside was that I had to give the second half of the lecture two times, once for each of the lab sections. This might be a hindrance to removing the lecture/lab dichotomy for some instructors. However, it provides the opportunity for TAs or guests to teach in multiple formats if the instructor is not willing to commit the extra energy for their students.

In March 2017, I had the pleasure of observing Dr Stuart Sutherland give two consecutive lectures on micropalaeontology. In our pre-lecture meeting, Stuart explained that this is a particularly challenging module for him, both because he has ‘expert syndrome’ of the topic (he did his PhD on it) and also because students are much less interested in microscopic than macroscopic life (as someone who studies bones, I can empathise!). Nonetheless, it is a very important subject, as micropalaeontology provides one of the best ways to determine the absolute age of sedimentary rocks (via biostratigraphy), which is of great importance in the oil and natural gas industries. So, Stuart took it upon himself to guide the students through the subject while pulling many tricks out of his hat to maintain their motivation throughout the two lectures.

At the beginning of the first lecture, Stuart segued into the subject by stating that they were about to ‘leave the macro behind’ and begin to look at ‘good things in little packages.’ Stuart is, in his own words, quite vertically challenged, so he made sure to nod and point at himself when he was saying this. The small bit of humour (pun intended) immediately got the students’ collective attention and broke the ice by making everyone chuckle.

Once everyone was on board, Stuart walked the students through the general outline for the next two lectures. He then put the LOs for the first lecture on the screen and asked the students to read them for themselves. After about a minute and a half, he rephrased the LOs and used his rephrasing to bridge-in to the rest of the lecture. He continued motivating the students with some real-life examples (besides biostratigraphy) of where the organisms we study in micropalaeontology are common in our everyday lives, such as the limestone that composes the Egyptian pyramids. The pyramids are made of a particular limestone that contains lots of a specific type of microfossil, which he used this to deliver information about the different microfossil groups.

He explained each microfossil group to provide the scaffolding for the rest of the lecture(s), then added another motivating ingredient: he exemplified their use in the oil and gas industry (like I explained, above) and how much money you can make as a micropalaeontologist as compared to a vertebrate palaeontologist (somewhat facetiously especially with me in the room, which added to the effect). He then used the framework of ‘benefits of micropalaeontology’ to continue his explanations of the different groupings of microfossils.

After some more information delivery, he used a sequence of slides exemplifying microfossil morphologies and sizes, including many pictures of himself compared to large objects (e.g., the Eiffel Tower) and some more somewhat self-depreciating humour. Then, after the first lecture was almost at a close, he introduced the content of the following lecture with a bit of a cliffhanger approach (and more humour) to try to maintain the students’ motivation until the next session.

Stuart began the second lecture by motivating students from another perspective. Many of the students in the class had already taken a mineralogy course, so he framed the content around biomineralisation and the impacts that life had on mineralogy. Long before life was making its own minerals (biominerals), small organisms began producing oxygen as a by-product. That ‘free oxygen’ in the atmosphere allowed for a diverse range of mineral species to form during what is called the ‘Great Oxidation Event’. After life started making its own minerals, new rocks, such as limestone, became ubiquitous on the earth, and, for a second time, changed the geological landscape. He then exemplified this by showing many examples of important rock features composed of biominerals, like the Cliffs of Dover, and asked the class if they would like to share any other examples they know of, which they did for about 5 minutes.

Throughout both lectures, Stuart continuously pre- and post-tested the students with iClicker questions and, if they were not able to correctly answer them, he took time to draw out the concepts on the board or explain them in more detail. He also broke up his information delivery with 4 videos (two per lecture) of some of modern examples of microfossils (e.g., hagfish slime, don’t ask…) and some that were simply showing their impacts on geology. It provided a good break to the lecturing (bookends), which was necessary, since this course is a requirement for a Professional Geologist certification in British Columbia and we had a specific amount of information to deliver and only limited time to do so. This was one of the few modules in the class that did not have a large activity ( due to both time and content constraints); regardless, I was very impressed by how well Stuart managed the content and the learners’ motivation throughout its entirety. It was an unusual circumstance where we could control neither time nor content, and I learned a lot by watching Stuart work his micropalaeo magic!

During this semester, which is the second of my CATL experience, I was offered the opportunity to design, coordinate, and deliver a component of a core course in my discipline that is also a requirement for professional designations. The course is EOSC 222 (Geological Time and Stratigraphy), and I got to work with one of my other mentors, one of the more involved and supportive of my teaching,  Dr. Stuart Sutherland. He is also on my research committee. I gave the lessons on Tuesday, January 31st and Thursday, Feb 2nd, 2017.

As Stuart is a paleontologist, the geochronology and geochemical aspects of the course were far out of his subject area. My PhD research falls under those disciplinary umbrellas, so it only made sense that I deliver that content, since I am also head TA for the course. I had TAed for the class for the last two offerings, and Stuart took over the course from another one of my now-retired mentors, Dr. Paul L. Smith just this semester. As such, Stuart immediately motivated me to help with the transition and our continuous improvement of the course. He did this by communicating to me how he perceives my value in both disciplinary expertise and in the logistical expertise from working with the course before the transition of professors.

To cover the necessary content, I was given two adjacent lecture sessions. For the first, I provided much of the necessary background information on isotope geochemistry, using worksheets and iClickers for pre and post assessment and active learning during the content delivery. Then, toward the end of the first session, I delivered the jigsaw activity that had both an at-home and in-class component.

For the activity, each student got one of three different parts of a magnetostratigraphic log. They were to go and read about how to identify changes in polarity in magnetostratigraphic data and plot the reversals on their part of the log (it was given to them as a worksheet). Then, they had to go around the class during the second period (which began with the activity) and compare their sections to those of others, and, in the process, group themselves into groups of three based on their logs. Then, they had to construct the full log as a group and answer some questions about what they saw and bu how it correlated to the global scheme. We worked through the questions and answers in the second class and finished off the lecture with the answers and more information about the activity they just did, which was the required course content.

All in all, it went super well and, based on the exam questions that I just marked this morning, greatly improved their scores for that section over last year!

It was interesting to not have much control over content that I was required to deliver. The content was entirely up to me for all my other CATL lectures up until this point; this was the first time in my teaching that I had such restrictions. I found that, while it this limiting in some aspects, it was actually liberating in others. It was limiting because there was a specific amount of time that, no matter what I wanted, I had to set aside to provide content. It was liberating because I didn’t need to spend much time concerned about the actual content and its accuracy, but could focus my energy on actually how to best deliver the material.

Very cool!

Rhy

In November 2016, I developed and gave a lecture to EOSC 220 (Mineralogy) on the subject of biomineralisation and the ‘Green Earth.’ The main objective for me, as this was an additional lecture for my CATL requirements this semester, was to experiment with active learning in large classes and become comfortable teaching something that I am not an expert in.

Before the lecture, Dr. James Scoates, the course professor, and I began by defining our LOs and how we were going to align our main activity with them. I had never used iClickers before, so I wanted to find a way to incorporate that technology into the lesson and also use it in a jigsaw-ish framework.

Since we were studying an event that occurred throughout multiple geological time periods (biomineralisation), James and I decided that we would split the rows of the auditorium into a stratigraphic section. I prepared the different ‘rocks’ that each group of 4 or 5 would have in the form of a worksheet with a description of the ‘sample’ and some extra room to take notes. The students were required to use the infomration on their sheets to answer iClicker questions that allowed us to watch the evolution of biomineralisation through time (in the form of the iClicker histograms), starting with the front row representing the oldest rocks and the time before biomineralisation, and ending with the back row as the youngest period with almost the same distribution of biomineral types as we see today. After ‘collecting data’ from their ‘rocks,’ we had the student reflect. Then, we finally revealed that the student just watched the Cambrian explosion happen in their classroom. The room got brighter with all the lightbulbs that lit up. It was a great experience!

Not only did I find the iClickers to be an interesting challenge, but it was my first time wearing a microphone in a lecture theatre; what a peculiar experience to hear your own voice coming from above! After getting over that, the lesson itself went smoothly and the time/content went well. The activity went as planned, and Dr. Scoates and I immediately met after the lecture for a feedback and future planning session. With the lecture fresh in our heads, we started to discuss what went well and what didn’t, finally resulting in a new set of slides and a list of ideas for modifying the activity.

The list, presented here almost more for my own future notes than for CATL requirements, are as follows (they may not make sense with the limited information provided above):

• Give example of overlapping ranges
• Lines on Knoll figure used in activity and emphasise time ranges
• Reveal at end of activity: strat section image – connect with them and build the section together (actual picture of room?)
• Make a table on the activity with rows, rock types, mineral types, and ages
• Last slide: image of organic vs geologic apatite and ternary diagram of 3 types of minerals with question – “are biominerals minerals?”
• No more LO recap, they started to pack up
• Keep polls, asking them to popcorn why they have skeletons – when they don’t get to grinding ask them what they at and how they ate breakfast
• Go to E with all iClicker Qs but keep Qs the same
• Pictures of rocks on actiuvity clicker slides and also pictures of different hard parts (eye candy!)
• Describe timescale at beginning in more detail
• Last slide – needs to be more impactful!
  • Either come back to 3 types of minerals at the end of the lecture with something similar to a ternary diagram and ask ‘are biominerals minerals?’ OR
  • burial video and burgess in BC, link to preservation and ask ‘was there ever really a Cambrian explosion?’

Before the end of my time in CATL, I should have another opportunity to give this lecture. I look forward to updating this reflection then!

Rhy

On November 9^th, 2016, I may have witnessed the closest we can ever get to running a perfect jigsaw in a large class. Dr. James Scoates ran the activity with more than 75 students in EOSC 220 (Mineralogy) and had them working to apply previously-learned concepts to completely new material in a group setting. The entire class was using theory they had gathered throughout the semester to solve real-world problems; this connected the techniques they have learned to identify and classify minerals to using those techniques with unknowns. So, this entire activity was based upon using the theory beyond the classroom and provided the students with the perspective that they can now apply what they have learned to the natural world.

The objective was for the students to each become experts in one of three mineral groups they have not encountered yet, share their expertise with others who studied different mineral groups, and then, as a combined group, solve three higher-order questions, one based on each of the mineral types.

James started the lesson by giving a brief introduction and handing some samples around the room to add context to the activity. The students also had some homework to complete online that started them thinking about the concepts tackled during the activity, but not the activity directly. This was to save time.

Two TAs were present at the session, and then began handing around the assignment before the class started. Cleverly, the sheets were already in groups of three, so the expert groups were already next to each other, saving time. James explained the activity, giving it the jigsaw name, and explains the timing. During this introduction, the two TAs dealt with the latecomers and made sure they were organized into expert groups, too.

After giving some time for them to read their part and become ‘experts,’ they got together in their expert groups for 8 minutes and discussed a few questions that James posed on the board. They were done this part of the activity only 17 minutes into the 50-minute class, probably due to the background information they got from doing the homework.

After getting into their jigsaw groups, James gave them additional instructions about when they will be switching from one mineral type to another and what is expected of them (they had to answer a higher-order question for each). He then made sure to keep a slide up with all of this important information as they went through each of their mineral types (actually two slides on two different screens running through two different computers – James uses this a lot and it’s awesome!). The students then got one sheet of paper per expert group and worked on solving the higher-order questions, mentioned above, together. As the students were working and time started running out, James began going through some synthesis slides. With the remaining 5 minutes he solicited answers for each of the higher-order questions from groups he visited that he knew had gotten the correct answer.

I have all of the supporting material (worksheets, homework, etc.) from theis lecture and still have some questions for James … so stay tuned!

On November 16^th, I had the opportunity to run a 2-hour long lesson in an isotope geology graduate course (EOSC 523). I was asked to provide information on isotopic analyses in archaeology, forensics, and palaeontology, which is the specific field of study for my PhD. I know most of the participants in the class very well and was able to plan my content around this to some degree. Also, because we were talking about humans instead of rocks for this class, it was a great way not only for me to connect real life examples and the theory I was providing, but also to help the participants put the whole course into a human framework and connect all of the theory they have learned with something that is tangible to them in the real world: themselves!

I have never had the opportunity to teach for a full two hours, so there more planning than usual that went into this lesson. I wanted to be sure that the students were well prepared for the higher-order activity I had planned (a nested jigsaw), so I carefully constructed pretests, discussions, and postests throughout the first hour of the class, when we went over the basics. I was particularly nervous about this activity, as it was prepared for graduate students and was intended to be particularly challenging and high-order. If it was too challenging, however, would be determined only when I delivered it for the first time.

Engagement and motivation has been a bit of a challenge for the professor of the course, Dr. Dominique Weis (also my supervisor), due to the participants not necessarily being keen about active learning (and being quite vocal about this). There is also a strong, but logical, divide in the class between those who are doing isotope geology for the graduate work, and those who aren’t. It’s about a 50-50 split, and the two groups of students even sit on the opposite side of the room from one another (not out of dislike, just out of habit, I suppose). To mitigate this, I arranged for one person from each group to sit together for the first part of the lesson so they could share with one another during discussions. To explain how I did this, I first need to explain my activity, a ‘nested jigsaw’.

What is a ‘nested jigsaw’? After my lesson in EOSC 425, where we did the hominin cards jigsaw activity, I modified my approach a little to limit the amount of time it took to share the results. With a class of 12, I decided that I would find two interesting case studies that applied isotopes to archaeological problems and mix up the two groups that the students normally sit. I split each of the case studies into 3 manageable chunks, either based on the different isotopic systems used, or the different sets of archaeological remains analysed. Each 6-person group had to first work together to figure out the regional geology of their case study. They summarized this as a together and filled out the worksheet, and then split into pairs to work on one of the three smaller parts, for which they had to interpret complicated datasets. I went around and helped them during this time, and delivered important clues when they were stuck. Then, the three small groups in each 6-person group shared their piece of the puzzle with the rest of the 6 participants, and together they had to answer a few synthesis questions. Once they synthesized, they presented their findings to the other 6-person group. All in all, it took about 30 minutes to complete the activity, after I gave about an hour’s worth of lesson (including, again, lots of pre and post assessments and discussions). Everyone got where I was hoping they would, so apparently it was just challenging enough!

So, back to setting up the room at the beginning of class. I made sure that I had preassigned the 6-person groups for the activity based on who I thought would benefit from the different case studies. Again, because of the small group size and because I TA for the course and share office space with soem of the students, I had the luxury of knowing the students quite well. After I made the 6-person groups, I took one person from each group and made pairs, keeping in mind again the students who normally worked together and those who didn’t. The case studies included worksheets, so I spread the worksheets around the room in pairs with different coloured sticky notes (indicative of their large, 6-person case study group) on the back. This spread everyone out in a good way and also ensured that there was lots of mixing between the two sets of students who normally don’t communicate much.

During the first hour, everyone was really engaged, asked lots of questions, and generally assessed well. The activity went really great (I am not even sure if I will change anything for next time), and, after the activity, we came back to a typical lesson situation and I went over some of the more interesting aspects of the relationship between isotopes and archaeology, before summing up on the big picture. I was surprised at the end to receive a round of applause from my peers, and about a half hour of additional enthusiastic discussion from the class after the allotted time was over. Overall, it was a great success and I look forward to doing it again next year!

Instructions:

PART A: (Post your responses to PART A in your own blogs.)

• Identify a focus area for your observation based on the CATL lesson we just completed on Learning Outcomes.
  • Choose one or two  things from this lesson to use as a guide for your next observation.
• Decide on a potential way you can incorporate something you learned in this CATL lesson in your teaching practicum.
  • During your practicum (both the design and the teaching) implement one or two things you learned in this lesson.

My response:

For my next observation, I am going to focus on the relationship between the LOs and the activities/assessments, and also see how those relationships vary depending on the specificity of the LO, the order of the verb(s) used, if it is more open or close ended, etc. Basically, I plan on using the frameworks given in the last CATL session to assess the cohesiveness of the different components of the class!

Fortunately, I had my first practicum right after the last CATL session, so I was already able to implement some of what I learned. I made sure that I used a range of types of LOs (low and high order, closed and open-ended and match them with my activities and assessments) and tested them accordingly. Additionally, I got some great feedback on my LOs during our session that I also implemented!

For my next practicum (Nov 16th), I will incorporate the same things as discussed above, and take what I learn from observing to try to establish a strong relationship between my activities and LOs, and also to apply the Learner Knowledge Agency Model to evaluate the order of the activities and LOs I provide. I will also keep in mind the Learning Outcomes Priorities and use that framework to modify what I have already planned (I am just starting to refine my lesson :). Additionally, I surveyed some members of the class to whom I am lecturing, and from that was able to derive some student-driven LOs to accompany the LOs I have set for them. This is particularly important in this situation because I am giving a class on almost the exact topic of my thesis, and, as one would suspect, have major expert syndrome!

More to come…

On Monday, October 24th, I was given the opportunity to lecture to a fourth-year palaeontology class (EOSC 425) for Dr. Paul Smith on human evolution. It was a lot to cover in 50 minutes (!), but with some help from active learning strategies, I was able to cover all of the necessary information and provide the students with something to take home after!

I designed the lecture around one large activity: a jigsaw. But, this wasn’t your run-of -the-mill standard jigsaw … we made hominin playing cards!

Each student was given homework to go to the Smithsonian website and research a particular hominin species. I gave them 9 guiding questions and they were asked to take simple notes. Then, in class, I formatted a flip chart paper for each of the species to look like a trading card (think: Pokemon), and the students were asked to fill the posters in with the information they collected as homework. I made sure to assign at least two people per species, and to group more consistently well-performing students (I had data since I TA the labs) with those who may not do the homework or show up to class. This worked out swimmingly, as each species had at least one person in class with notes about it!

In class, I prompted the students and introduced the topic with some big-picture ideas and some contextual information, then we dove right into the activity. It took them about 15 minutes to fill in their posters. Then, the trick was we were going to synthesise the information on their posters and make a human evolution timeline!

Starting with the oldest (Sahelanthropus) and going to the youngest species (us), each group came up and presented their playing card to the class and gave some details on it before sticking it onto the board over their temporal range (I drew the timeline with ranges before class). I augmented their presentations when necessary and also filled in some important information about the timeline that wasn’t specific to any particular species (e.g., when brain size started to drastically increase simultaneously in multiple hominins). After we finished the timeline, I brought everything back together in lecture (which we had very little time and too much content for; definitely room for improvement next year) and provided some additional context and some mechanisms for human evolution. I gave them a handout of the card format to add notes during their colleagues’ presentations. I have taken pictures of all of their posters and put them all online, so they can keep adding to their cards. The idea is for them to end up with a complete set of cards for studying purposes and to have kept them active during their colleagues’ presentations. This worked really well, I think! Most students had something written down for each hominin by the time we were done class.

I solicited feedback from the students after the class by sending out a quick survey, and in general they all really, really liked the activity but felt like the remainder of the lecture was a bit rushed. I noticed this too, and it was a result of running an elaborate activity for the first time and the activity simply taking a little too long. Next time, I think I will have the students prepare their information at home in the exact format of the poster, so the transfer of information will be faster! I will also refine my content to make sure I can deliver it in a more timely manner.

As part of my SoTL research was figuring out how to adapt jigsaw to different settings and to different types of content, this was the perfect launching point and I look forward to my second attempt next year!

As more feedback flows in from the students I will keep adding to this post…

Rhy