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.