This is a first-year physical chemistry course offered as part of Applied Science stream of UBC’s Vantage college. There are normally 80-90 students registered for this course. These students are international students with outstanding academic records, but whose English level just short of UBC’s requirements for direct entry into its programs. For these students the lab component of this course is often their first hands-on lab experience and so this opportunity is very important for them to learn proper and safe laboratory techniques and report writing skills.
I have been a TA for this course twice: 2017 and 2018 (fall). My responsibilities as the supervisor of the lab sessions includes running the lab session, marking the lab reports as well as ensuring student safety during the experiments. I spent 1-2h/week for the lab and its preparation, 1-2h/week for office hours and responding to students’ inquiries about the experiments, 4-5h/week grading their lab reports, which adds up to 50hr/term. It should be noted that this does not include the extra work I have done for the students, outside of the requirements of my contracts, which are further outlined in my reference letters accompanying this document.
- Teaching Approach
The majority of students taking this course are excellent students with strong academic backgrounds. However due to students having weaker English communication skills, their engagement in class activities and labs may be lower than expected. For each lab experiment, I would ensure that students come to the lab having gone through the pre-lab instructions and videos and are aware of the higher-risk steps involved in the experiments. During the experiment, I closely monitor the performance of each team while they preform the work. To answer student questions, I implement a Socratic approach, leading them to correct conclusions by asking them targeted questions, rather than simply providing answers. I believe that critical thinking is an essential skill for engineers and that it is very important to develop this skill starting in first year.
In the fall of 2017 I gave two guest lectures in this course as part of the Certificate for Advanced Teaching and Learning (CATL – see section 5.1), and rather than simply following the provided material, redesigned the session to make it more effective. I adopted a different approach than the usual lecture style to better engage students in the classroom. In particular, I employed different ways to excite students to participate and respond to class questions. For example, watching short videos to introduce the concept of viscosity, running a Kahoot (an interactive class-wide quiz) game to encourage participation and reflection on the topic being covered, and leading open-ended class discussions. I effectively used a combination of all resources available in the classroom including slides, document camera and the blackboard to clarify difficult concepts for the students and ensure their understanding before moving on. This style of teaching created a positive learning environment; students enjoyed the session and understood the material.
Apart from my duties as one of the TAs for this course, I has also volunteered my time to offer midterm review sessions for both APSC 182 in fall 2017 and 2018 as well as for APSC 183 in spring 2018 (even though I was not the TA for this course, but this was for the same cohort of students). For these sessions, I selected some practice problems and ran the tutorial in a collaborative group work format in which students were given some time to work on the problems together before discussing the solutions as a class. I believe this style of tutorial teaches students to think critically and develop their own solutions, as well as develop team work skills. Throughout the sessions, I would answer any question or explain the unclear points guiding students to get the right answers themselves, rather than spoon-feeding them the solutions.
- Teaching interventions
Some APSC 183 students thought that the time allocated to in-class tutorials was insufficient to solve practice problems, and I therefore took it upon myself to organize extra problem-solving sessions for the students before the midterms to help them prepare. This was, it should be noted, entirely voluntary, and done out of dedication to my students and their learning. During these midterm review sessions, for which I designed and developed a set of practice problems, I first gave time to students to set up the equations/formula for that particular problem and try to solve it first by themselves, while answering questions and clarifying parts of the question from time to time. Then I started providing them with the solutions step by step based on students’ own response to my intriguing questions. This style of teaching compared to just providing the solutions to the problems appeared to be successful as students are actively engaged with the material and quickly become aware of their weaknesses or areas in need of more study.
In addition to this, again to enhance student learning and comprehension, I have introduced a two-stage collaborative exam for the midterm of this course, with the approval of the course instructor. As a student, I found group exams to be very powerful learning tools that reduce assessment anxiety and establish a sense of teamwork. I believe this kind of exam provides an opportunity for the students to engage in reflection and receive feedback on their work immediately after the exam which has been proven to enhance their learning [1], [2]. On the other hand, by purposefully designing the groups, I made sure that students were only speaking English among their groups, and so improving their English communication and discussion skills, which is one of the core objectives of the Vantage College program. This work was documented and led to two publications in engineering education.
- Challenges
One particular challenge for the students enrolled in this course is their English level especially for the first term. Being an international student myself, I have experienced the challenge of language learning, which can affect class performance and comprehension of the technical content of a course. Therefore, in all of my interactions with the students, I made an extra effort to use clear language and ensure student understanding before moving on to other material. I use a variety of class activities, games and videos to engage students and encourage them to actively learn the content in the classroom, while also allowing them to hone their communication skills.