On Novemebr 30, I did my second practicum in BIOL463. The class was in the module “canonical development and cancer”. Rather than researching on a completely new topic, I have decided to design my class as an extension from my last practicum. I picked a scientific journal about generating an animal model for studying human cancer with CRISPR to talk about, and have assigned it as preclass reading. The learning objective of my class was by the end of my class, students will be able to model the general procedures of creating animal disease models using CRISPR. In my last practicum, I was teaching the background knowledge about CRIPSR; this time, my class material was based on a publication. I feel like the content I could cover was being limited, which I think is an unexpected yet good challenge for me.

I think time management was my biggest challenge in this practicum. My first discussion with the class was on a piece of data generated by a technique that I thought everyone knows (this technique is typically taught in second year). Unexpectedly, many students stumbled on understanding the data from that technique. Although we had very meaningful discussion about that piece of data and the rest of the class went smoothly, I did not have as much time as I would like for my last activity, which was a debate that I thought would be the most interesting part. My mentor still thinks that all discussions and activities were essential, and she would rather have a longer class time than to cut down any activity (I was very relieved to hear that!). Another thing I notice was the class energy was lower than before. Since it is the last week of class, students expressed that they have multiple deadlines and many exams are coming up. Unfortunately, this is something beyond my control, and I have experienced this phase before as well.

Overall, my mentor gave me very positive feedback. She thinks the structure and content of the class were very appropriate. I think something I could work on in my future practicum would be how to be more flexible in terms of modifying class activities according to time and students’ reactions. For example, before I started my last activity, I already knew time is running short. Instead of insisting on having a debate, I should use the same material I designed and have a class-wide discussion. This way, I could speed up the process by having students shared their opinions directly with the whole class rather than first within the group. I will also have time to properly wrap up the class.

On Novmebr 9, I did my first teaching practicum with BIOL463. I gave an introductory lecture on CRIPSR, a recently created gene-editing tool based on naturally occurring immune system found in bacterium. The learning objectives of my class were by the end of my class, students will be able to 1) understand the working mechanism of CRISPR; 2) apply the technique as a tool for genome editing. I am personally not an expert in CRISPR, therefore, I spent a lot of time reading up on background information. When I was planning the class, I decided to challenge myself to incorporate activities other than think-pair-share, which I am most comfortable of using and was frequently used in my mentor’s class. So apart from preparing questions for think-pair-share, I created a worksheet for learning the biological mechanism of CRISPR, and designed a group exercise asking students how to apply CRIPSR on research. Also, in order to have adequate time for discussions, I purposely included less slides for my class (15 slides for a 50-minute class). I also did not provide any recommended reading in order to keep some surprises for my class.

During class, most things went smoothly as planned. I was able to create a motivated atmosphere with a lot of interactions throughout the class. One thing that caught me off guard tho, was quite a few students were stumbled when doing the worksheet. During the preclass meeting with my mentor, she told me that many students had proposed using CRIPSR for their final term project, therefore we both expected that students have some degree of knowledge about it. I therefore created a worksheet on the CRISPR mechanism with all the processed being illustrated, and have put in blanks for students to fill up the name of the processes and biological components involved. To our surprised, many students did not actually know CRIPSR involve a series of molecular mechanisms. Both me and my mentor reacted quickly during class and started giving hints to students. After class, I started think if it would be a better idea to provide required reading in this case. However, my mentor had a very different point of view. She thinks that the fact that students could not complete the worksheet smoothly serves as a really good opportunity to remind students not to just go for the name or popularity of the scientific techniques when it comes to designing projects, it is also a good preclass assessment for both students and instructor to identify the level of students’ content knowledge. Although I hate to see students being traumatized of how little they know about the topic (or simply puzzled), I do agree with my mentor’s opinion. I think as an instructor, the biggest lesson learnt here would be to be flexible during class. No big chaos was caused because both of us immediately joined the students for discussion about the worksheet. This would be something that I will keep working on.

My mentor was particularly impressed of the various class activities being incorporated, especially for the last part of my class, I designed an exercise where students had to apply what they learnt in the first part of the class to come up with strategies on editing genes for a cystic fibrosis patient. The part of the activity nicely wrapped up the class by addressing the second L.O. of the lesson. However, I have to admit that it took quite a bit of time to design these activities. In real life situation if I were actually an instructor in charge of the entire course, I wouldn’t have enough time to come up with activities every class. So my goal here (this is also a long term goal of mine) would be to practice more in order to be able to come up with activities better, and to have better grasp of when and what active learning activity would be appropriate.

Finally, for my next practicum, one suggestion from my mentor was do not afraid to give students more time to think before answering questions. Often, when classroom was quiet, I tend to start talking without noticing students are actually still thinking rather than being irresponsive. This is something that I am aware of, and would definitely be more conscious about it.

Structure and observation of the class
On October 24, I sat into Dr. Pamela Kalas’s BIOL463 class on Gene Regulation in Development. This class has about 35 students registered. The entire course was divided into several modules and each one of them involves different aspects on gene regulation. The class I was in talked about gene imprinting. For each module, Dr. Kalas would pick a few scientific papers and assign them to students to read prior class. During class, she first started with giving a short talk on some background information, then went through the content of the assigned papers with the class. Dr. Kalas asked a series of questions related to the figures in the paper. For example, “what kind of information are you getting from this figure?”, “Why do you think a certain observation is seen?”, and “What kind of conclusion could you draw from this figure?”. She then allowed students to think about the questions, discuss with their neighbour, and share the answers with the class (think-pair-share). Dr. Kalas almost never “lectured” about the paper, rather, she asked meaningful questions to guide students to come up with the information or knowledge that she would like them to learn. During the discussion, she also walked around the classroom and listened to what students say. She would give hints to students who were stumbling on the questions, or redirect students to the right track if she found any misconception. During sharing time, students usually participated enthusiastically. However, for harder questions, students sometime hesitated to share. So Dr. Kalas would say she actually heard some pretty good answers during the discussion time in order to encourage students to speak up. In general, there was always an on-going discussion between instructor and students during the class.

Reflections
I have really enjoyed being at Dr. Kalas class because of the active dynamic of the class. Dr. Kalas was able to ensure most of the students participated actively. One key thing that I learnt is to be sure to design meaningful questions to ask in order to guide students to the right direction of thinking. Asking questions during class is one of the tools that could stimulate students to think. But certainly not all questions will help students to learn. One needs to be able to ask questions that could lead students to think about certain key points or concepts in order to help students in learning. Another thing that I learnt is how to be able to include every (or most) students in the class. It is inevitable that some students are more willing to share. In order to make sure most students’ voices were being heard, Dr. Kalas walked around the room and talked to different groups throughout the class. She would also invite some groups to speak first during the sharing session to avoid some students dominating the discussion. I think these are something I should model when I am teaching. However, I would like to challenge myself to use more than just this active learning technique. Given the size of the class and time, I could see how think-pair-share is an effective way to stimulate student participation while covering a descent about of content. However, I would like to enrich my class by using at least one more technique. I am currently in a process of coming up with other strategies. My goal is to create an enthusiastic dynamic with active discussion in my class.

When I was doing my observation, I focused on investigating how my mentor applied the principles of PCK. The class I went to was a forth year biology class focuses on gene regulation in organism development. This is such a sophisticated subject that could go really broad and in depth. I was interested in how my mentor delivered the content knowledge in a language that would be understood by senior undergraduate students. I discovered that the approach she used was simple – the use of student-led activity, think-pair-share. By using think-pair-share, my mentor asked a series of meaningful questions that would guide students to think through answering. She was able to gauge the knowledge level of students through informal assessment while students are presenting answers. She provided feedback and amended misconceptions immediately, which helps with students absorbing the knowledge. Since the language of content knowledge was developed by peers, students were able to understand better. This activity also enhanced the interactions within the class.

For my practicum, I am planning on model this skill. In preparation of my teaching, I will design a set of questions which will help stimulating students’ thinking about the subject. These questions have to be meaningful in terms of being able to guide students towards the learning outcome. During my class, I will pay attention to the language I use, and frequently ask for students’ feedback in order to adjust my pedagogical techniques.