I have been a teaching assistant for this course 5 times: 2016 (spring), 2017 (spring), 2018 (spring), 2019 (spring) and 2020 (spring). My responsibilities include assisting students during lab sessions, marking of assignments: pre-labs and lab reports as well as demonstrating chemical, biological, or environmental engineering experiments. I spend 4hr/week in the lab with 2hr/week marking and 4hr invigilating a final exam; which adds up to total of 60hr/term for 30-40 students. This course is required for students in the Chemical and Biological Engineering program.
- Teaching Approach
For each experiment, students are required to fully read the lab manual before the start of the experiment and to ensure this has been done properly, I usually ask a few questions from the groups at the beginning of the experiment as well as answers students questions about the set up of the experiment. While closely monitoring each groups performance, I teach students how to use the laboratory equipment, collect data, and critically analyze that data, and remind them of the safety precautions if any violations happen. During the labs, I am also responsible for giving feedback on the students’ assignments and guide them on the procedure.
- Teaching interventions
As a standard lab course, CHBE365 has a well-defined structure that builds up on students’ learning from a sister lecture-based course throughout the term. Therefore, it is very important that students start the experiment with the basic understanding of the science behind the experiment, rather than just measuring some parameters and collecting data. Together with the course instructor, I deliver a short introduction about the lab at the beginning of each session, trying to establish the connection between the theories already taught in the other course. In doing so, I raise a question after question linking each of them to a particular step in the procedure. I believe this style of teaching the lab helps to integrate the practice and the theory and helps students develop critical thinking skills.
As a senior TA for the course, I also lead the TA team and educate them on the students’ potential questions and misunderstandings as well as what worked well and what not in the previous iterations of the course, so the other TAs can also preform their role as best as they can. This leadership role is crucial for the proper functioning of the course.
- Challenges
For many of the students taking this biological engineering lab course, the lab is their first exposure to biological samples and aseptic techniques, therefore it is very important to establish an environment in which biosafety principles are precisely practiced. This is particularly important because any violation from safety procedures in the lab can harm not only the person involved but also other lab participants. This lab builds the foundation of biological engineering for students and learning the basic techniques such as working under aseptic conditions as well as handling biohazardous samples is critical for conduct of good quality research in this field in future. To this end, as the lead TA of the course, I try to be a role model and demonstrate what is expected from students by implementing those safety principles from the first session.