Welcome to my first blog post… EVER! In this post, I reflect on my first observation of a lesson taught by one of my three CATL mentors (Brett), which took place on January 20th, 2021. I observed Brett’s web-oriented course, EOSC 110 – The Solid Earth: A Dynamic Planet. In this lesson, Brett taught his students the theory of plate tectonics. Please note that I paraphrase any conversations Brett and I had together.
Brett values creating a welcoming classroom environment. He does this by saying hello to every student that joins the lesson and asks them how they are doing. He encourages everyone to turn their cameras on to make it feel like more of a community setting, rather than everyone feeling like they are isolated. He values engagement and participation throughout the lesson, where he invites students to ask questions throughout the lesson by turning on their microphone or typing it into the chat. He also implemented quiz questions throughout the lesson, where he would give students ~20 seconds to think about their answer and then get them to simultaneously submit their answers into the chat. Lastly, Brett taught his lesson by telling a story with separate but related ideas in chronological order. As the lesson progressed, he would discuss ideas of the story and then tie them together to make the objectives of the story more obvious to students. For example, he told the story of how the theory of tectonics came to be. This story started with Alfred Wegener compiling evidence for the theory of continental drift, which was completely rejected by the scientific community. Then, Brett discussed how Marie Tharp discovered the key missing component to Wegener’s theory decades later. When she added her evidence to Wegener’s, this became the theory of plate tectonics, which has been widely accepted by the scientific community.
The lesson started with a bridge of a couple of questions, followed by learning objectives. These learning objectives were repeated and highlighted anytime the direction of the lesson began to focus on a new objective (or new idea). The slides in the lesson were typically clean, where they had few words, large font, and sometimes had a supplementary picture or schematic if necessary; sometimes these were on their own slide. The cleanliness of the slides kept me as the observer from being overwhelmed with information (such as a wall of text in 8-point font). The pictures, animations, and videos all seemed like appropriate supplements to the lesson too, where nothing seemed random in the sense that it wasn’t directly related to the text and it wouldn’t make sense if you came back to look at the slides later. For example, after tying together the theory of plate tectonics, Brett showed an animated video of the movements of the continents over a large portion of geologic time (Cretaceous to present). This construction of not only the continents and their features (i.e., mountain ranges, seaways), but the plates and oceans, ties together so much evidence people have collected and work that they have collaborated on to create such a dynamic understanding of our planet. This video even goes a bit beyond the present and shows what scientists think the continents, plates, and oceans might look like in the far future. The lesson ended with a brief mention of what they were going to be learning about in the next lesson. I think this works as a nice and simple bridge to the next lesson so that students have some time to possibly reflect to themselves on questions such as “Does this lesson sound like it builds on what I learnt today? What do I know about that topic? Am I looking forward to learning about that topic? Why/why not?”.
Some of the teaching behaviors that I identified from Brett during his lesson that are common and somewhat specific to my discipline are lecturing, call and recall, using animations/videos, using real-world examples (i.e., talking about the Mid-Atlantic Ridge), referencing deep time (i.e., talking in millions of years ago), and referencing old, white, able-bodied, European males (i.e., Alfred Wegener). I admire that Brett acknowledged sexism that has been prevalent not only in general but in the discipline of geoscience, where he brought of the example of Marie Tharp, where (1) she was never allowed to go on any sea voyages to collect evidence for plate tectonics because women were thought to be bad luck out at sea, and (2) her male boss would not let her work on the theory of plate tectonics because it is too complicated of a theory for a woman to understand or figure out. When he discussed this, he showed a picture of Marie Tharp’s boss “man-splaining” how tectonics really work.
Brett and I met two days after my observation of his lesson on January 20th, 2021. Our meeting consisted of us asking each other questions about certain things he did and didn’t do in this lesson paired with me giving him constructive feedback. It was nice seeing that he was excited to hear feedback on what I thought worked and could be tweaked. For example, I asked him if students find it helpful when he points out when he is moving on to a new learning objective by revisiting the learning objective slide. First, he told me that he saw this used when he was sitting in on a lesson that one of his colleagues was teaching a few years ago and he thought it was such a great idea. Then, he said he has received a lot of positive responses from students since he started implementing this practice of revisiting learning objectives throughout his lessons.
While teaching and asking the students questions during the lesson, Brett used the theory of constructivism. I didn’t know what the theory was called until he told me the name of it once I described what I observed to him. An example of what I observed was him asking the students a question about what would get them to pull from their previous experiences. He asked the students how they would measure the depth of the ocean in the early 1900s before SONAR was invented. Students came up with quite a few unique answers, although, none of them would have worked. The point of the question was to make them realize some of the hurdles that scientists would have to go over to collect evidence for their hypotheses back in the day. I asked him this question because I would like to implement it in my teaching if students find it helps with their learning by keeping them organized and focused during the lesson.
I pointed out to Brett that I really liked the animations he used, in particular, I liked the animation of the process of a mid-ocean ridge spreading because we don’t have actual video of this process taking place, so students might not fully understand how they spread. He responded to this comment by saying that before he put the animation in the lesson in previous years, quite a few students mentioned to him that they were confused about this process, where they didn’t understand if the ridge kept expanding, or if and how the ridge kept the same width. The implementation of this schematic indeed helps students visualize how mid-ocean ridges operate (heat rises, lava erupts, lava cools, plate spreads—all acting simultaneously). From this post-observation conversation, I learnt that Brett learnt to implement these practices and tools over the years by observing his colleagues and receiving feedback from his students.