In preparation for my next practicum, I paid a visit to a BIOL201 lecture on February 16, instructed by Dr. Sunita Chowrira. Dr. Chowrira is an experienced instructor who cares about helping students to learn more efficiently. She readily uses active learning techniques to help enhancing students’ learning experience. BIOL201 is an introductory course on biochemistry offered to students by the Biology Department. This course serves as a prerequisite for many upper level biology courses, hence it has a high enrollment rate. A total of 750 students are split into three sections, with one taken up by Dr. Chowrira.

Today’s class was on enzyme kinetics. With pre-class reading and quizzes assigned, most students came with some knowledge on the topic. With a large class of over 200 students, my goal was to observe in what ways Dr. Chowrira was able to run different class activities to keep students engaged throughout class, yet still be able to control the crowd.  Students were sitting in rows, facing the podium in the centre front. There were two big projector screen side-by-side at the front. The instructor showed the learning objector on one screen, while teaching with Powerpoint slides on the other one.  Students could refer to the L.O. at any time during class to ensure they did not miss any key points. An in-class worksheet with some concept questions was available for students. These questions were designed to prepare students for the assigned problem set. Students were given time to discuss and tackle the questions as the class proceed. Other than worksheet, there were many iclicker questions asked throughout the class, in which Dr. Chowrira would show the class results and explain the answer after each question. Other than asking concept questions, the instructor also used iclicker to check on students’ understanding during class and their thoughts on homework and problem sets. There were questions like “How did you find the homework questions”, or “Do you understand the section we just covered”. Students were less embarrassed to share their thoughts in form of clicker questions. There was an useful gadget that I would like to use was the cam doc. It is sometime useful to write down notes for students as you talk, but the white board in class is too small for students at the back to see. The cam doc project document on the desk to the screen as live video. The instructor wrote on the paper as it was being projected on the screen.

After visiting this class, I had a better idea in how to run activities in large classroom without aid of TAs. It is important to have means to provide any form of feedback promptly to the class. Walking around the classroom during discussion time would be one way. Also, showing the class the iclicker results right away and explaining any major misconception would be very useful as well. My goal for the upcoming practicum will be to try running activities effectively to help with students’ learning and engagement during class.