Category — (5) Formative Peer-Review of Teaching and Reflections

5.1) Review of My Undergraduate Class by Peers

I requested Dr. Ryozo Nagamune from my Department to  permit me to teach a portion of his course, as I am not scheduled to teach a course this term due to the parental leave. I gave two lectures and a tutorial in the winter term of 2011. The class size is above 50. The topic of the lecture is on vibration isolation containing analysis and design.

I requested three peers to review my class room lectures. Dr. Nagamune sat through all my lectures in the previous term, so I thought it apt to ask for his feedback. Dr. Peter Ostafichuk   is  a senior instructor, undergraduate advisor and a Killam prize winner in my Department. He never attended my lectures.  I am thankful to these two colleagues for sparing their precious time in attending a 1.5 hour lecture at 8 AM!  Finally, I requested Julie Stockton from the current  cohort to visit my class. Julie attended my second lecture for 1 hour (she had other commitments that day and I am thankful to Julie to spare the time to attend my class at 8 AM.)  Drs. Nagamune and Ostafichuk attended my first lecture. Their reviews are here Ostafichuk  Feedback#1 (Killam Awardee) and Nagamune_Feedback #2_(Colleague  responsible for the course this term).   Both these peer reviewers have engineering background. The feedback from Julie is here Julie-Feedback#3.

The guiding questions I suggested to the reviewers   fall into four broad categories: (a) Learning Objectives, (b) Learning Activities, (c) Learning Environment, (d) Content and Delivery. The questions are reproduced below.

Q1) Is the lecture well situated in the broader context of the course objectives? Are the learning objectives for this lecture communicated effectively?

Q2) Did the learning activities correspond to the learning objectives?

Q3) What type of learning environment is fostered?

Q4) Comment on the student engagement, and suggestions for improvement.

Q5) Comment on the content and delivery methods with suggestions for improvement.

Q6) Any further suggestions/thoughts/comments/observations you made during the lecture?

Dr. Ostafichuk felt that the learning objectives were well articulated and situated within the context of the course, a clear connection between the lecture and the course objectives. He highlights the discussion surrounding the videos and the commercial product in the beginning of the lecture. He felt that the discussions based around the questions from the notes “helped to foster an appreciation for the topic and why it was important ” and connections with prior knowledge was made. He notes a friendly and supportive learning environment fostered and the initially cautious approach from the student in warming up to the new instructor. He notes that when students were reluctant to answer “the instructor did absolutely the right thing (in my opinion) and helped to coach them towards the answers rather than giving up on asking the question.” On the engagement Dr. Ostafichuk notes that “All students (100%) seemed to be engaged at all times during the lecture. Each time I looked, everyone was either watching and listening, or taking notes.”  Of particular value to my future teaching is his suggestion to explicitly mention the think-pair-share concept in the very beginning of the class. I don’t think that this was made explicit to the students during the lecture. Overall he felt this to be a “very effective lecture.”  Dr. Ostafichuk’s suggestions about board work are certainly useful in my future lectures. I tend to flow with the student’s questions and thoughts which requires going off the assigned material. In this class we discussed a device used in F1 racing, which is an aside.  It is important to make it clear to students that some of the board work is a necessary aside from the main notes. I will keep this in mind.

Dr. Nagamune’s review is along the above lines with suggestions to increase the pace of the lecture. Most importantly, his remarks about the connection of this lecture with the overall course that he is teaching are re-assuring. A common problem I face is the lack of time in solving a lengthy example problem which gets started in the latter half of a lecture. I try to address this issue by working the problem step by step to a point where a question regarding the next steps can be asked which the student can think before the next lecture and which the students are able to answer if they reflect on the present and previous lectures. In such situations, I always make it a point to go back to the learning objectives (written on a board in the very beginning of the class)and explain the progress made in meeting them during that lecture.

Dr. Julie Stockton attended the second lecture and naturally missed the earlier lecture where engineering applications and discussions related to the isolators which Drs. Ostafichuk and Nagamune have seen. Overall she feels the objectives are well articulated. But the learning activities required to be more practical than was the case during that lecture. In discussing the feedback with Julie I understood that she did not realize the lab component of this course where students spend 3 hours on an engine vibration problem. The particular class Julie attended is intensely analytical given the motivation to do that from the previous lecture. Nonetheless providing an experiential element in every class room is a worthy  ideal to strive for. A point to ponder is “In what form does an apprenticeship teaching perspective assume in a large class room?”

5.2) Reflections on My Peers’ Classes

I attended three in-class lectures and one workshop video during the certificate program. I attended the lecture of Drs. Peter Cripton (Killam Award winner in 2012, not at the time I attended his lectures!) Carl-Ollivier Gooch (Killam Award winner) teaching second year students of MECH 2 in an integrated second year program in my Department. Both these instructors are teaching the same class, but with different effective teaching styles. I am impressed with the way they handled the large class room with different styles of teaching (powerpoint by Dr. Cripton and OHP by Dr. Gooch). Both these instructors have succeeded in engaging the class with good examples, questions, and worked problems. I also noticed how difficult it is to completely solve a lengthy problem in the assigned class time and inevitably one leaves the class in suspense. I personally think that this promotes the students to think outside the classroom, even though it may be a minor pedagogical infringement.

I have attended the class of Dr. George Astrakianakis  from the UBC School of Population and Public Health on the topic “Environmental Sampling.”  He is a member of the 2012 UBC Faculty Certificate Program cohort. The format of is predominantly a power point presentation to a small group of students. I enjoyed some of the recent and relevant environmental problems that Dr. Astrakianakis brought to students’ attention. These include Crofton Pulp mill and Powell rive spill in BC.  One aspect that I noticed can be introduced is the  introduction of discussion among students and with the instructor. My feedback to  Dr. Astrakianakis is here.

I have watched two video segments of a workshop on “Managing@UBC Program” co-taught by Julie Stockton from this year’s FCP cohort.  She is responsible for the design of Managing@UBC Program.  The video segments pertain to a “difficult conversation” between two colleagues in a  workplace environment. The audience, the structure of the instruction, and the learning environment are totally new to me. In fact, they are worlds apart from a regular Engineering classroom!  I am impressed to see the conversational style of this workshop with plenty of discussion among mature learners. There were discussions among the groups, much like what we see in a typical SoTL meeting in this FCP program.  Argyris and Schon’s “Ladder of Inference” was used as a framework to analyze the conversation in question and explore the ways in which the conversation could have been more productive by following a learning path rather than a judging path.  A challenge to this type of setting is to assess learning, in particular to assess how participants can apply the framework of “Ladder of Inference” learned from a particular example to a much broader set of encounters in one’s working life.  A few more examples would have helped. The videos seem to miss this angle. I felt that the quality of conversations/discussions can be taken to a different level by giving the workshop material in advances and asking what the participants think before presenting the “Ladder of Inference” as a valid framework. The feedback I provide to Julie is here. Watching this video revealed to me how different the teaching and learning environments are, across UBC.

5.3) Concluding Remarks

Class room visits to me are one of the highlights of this program. It exposed me to different valid teaching perspectives and how important they are in peer-review of teaching. I also learned a lot about my own class-room practice from peers’ feedback and identified areas for further improvement.