EOSC 221 – Introduction to Petrology, is a second-year geology course for majors that has a lesson and lab component. I am very familiar with the themes taught in the course as I was a lab Teaching Assistant for the course in 2019 and 2020. Although I taught the lab component of the course, I never attended a lecture to see what students were learning in class. This course is traditionally taught face-to-face and in a lecture format, where lectures are not recorded. However, this term the course is being taught online where lessons are recorded. In addition, this term is being taught using a flipped-classroom approach instead of a lecture format. In the lesson that I observed on February 4th, 2021, 36 of 60 students attended.
Instead of listening to a synchronous lecture, students are assigned asynchronous reading of the relevant annotated lesson notes and a pre-lesson quiz (with multiple attempts) where they can check their understanding of concepts before they attend the synchronous lesson. The synchronous lesson I attended involved the instructor (Lucy) asking students poll-type questions using the Zoom poll function and discussion-based questions, where students discuss in the Zoom chat, annotate the lesson slides, and talk aloud. These questions reflected key points that were given in the pre-lesson readings and assessed what the students understood from the readings. After ~30 minutes into the lesson, Lucy provided the students with a worksheet, where they got to work in breakout rooms with a few of their peers for the rest of the time to practice applying the new concepts that they learnt about in the readings and reviewed in the first part of the lesson.
Some of the teaching values that I identified from Lucy’s teaching include nurturing, motivation, apprenticeship, and engagement. The value of nurturing was demonstrated when she checked in with her students’ well-being at the beginning of class. This value was also demonstrated when she checked in on all her students during the worksheet activity, and when she stayed late after the lesson ended to help students with the worksheet and other questions they had about the course materials. Lucy values motivation, where she tries to get students to build a personal connection with the material they are learning. For example, when discussing the genesis and characteristics of andesitic and rhyolitic lavas and rock types, she used an example of a volcano close to Vancouver i.e., Mount St. Helens. She asked students if they have ever heard of the famous Mount St. Helens eruption, and if anyone has ever hiked the volcano. In doing this, Lucy also made a connection between the theory students were learning and the real-world application of the theory (i.e., magma evolution through processes such as partial melting, crystal fractionalization, and assimilation). Lucy demonstrated the value of apprenticeship in a couple of ways. For instance, when introducing or reviewing new jargon she would provide the students with an opportunity to practice using the jargon by asking them questions where they respond in the Zoom chat, for example, “This is a porphyritic rock, these are phenocrysts. What do we call the stuff between the phenocrysts?” Where students responded with “groundmass”. Another instance of apprenticeship lies within the worksheet that she provides her students with, where they get to practice using ideas that were introduced to them in the pre-lesson readings. Finally, the value of student engagement was highlighted throughout the entire lesson, where she was constantly getting students to participate in activities.
Lucy is trying to teach the students how geologists approach investigating the evolution of a melt and the formation of intermediate and felsic rock types. She initially teaches students about the tools and strategies that geologists use to understand the composition of different minerals, and then how those apply to the crystallization history of a rock type, and in turn the evolution of a melt. Then she gets students to apply the tools and practice the strategies learnt to simplified and hypothetical examples, and then afterward to real-world examples.
I really like the hybrid version of a flipped-classroom Lucy does. I like that students get to read annotated notes beforehand and come to class to practice applying their knowledge in the class with the support of their instructor and ask questions about material that was unclear. I particularly like that Lucy does Zoom poll and discussion-type questions for the first half of the class and then gets students to work on a worksheet for the second half of the class. I would like to practice this style of teaching if I was an instructor or co-instructor of a course. I feel like it may be hard to practice flipped-classroom as a guest lecturer if the students are used to only getting a lecture in the class that you are guest lecturing in, as several of the students may not do the pre-readings and in turn not participate in the class activities. Regardless of whether I go to teach a lesson with more of a traditional approach or some degree of a flipped-classroom approach, I think I would be able to steal the practice of having the students complete a worksheet in breakout rooms for the second half of the class. I like the idea of having time carved out for the students to apply what they have just learnt so that they can move through the experiential learning cycle and gain concrete experience.
Lucy and I briefly chatted after the lesson I observed. I asked Lucy what it was like teaching a flipped-classroom in an online setting with respect to student engagement. She told me that since moving to an online setting, students are actually more willing to participate in class discussions and ask questions regarding material that is unclear (especially in the Zoom chat). This fascinated me as it seems that the online setting somehow helps students become more comfortable in engaging in lessons. If I were to teach in a face-to-face setting, I would like to create that comfort that students feel in an online setting, however, I know that may be challenging and it may just be the fact that students feel more comfortable in the online setting because they don’t have the pressure of their peers staring at them as they ask a question, in addition, their peers may not be able to put a name to their face, making it feel a little more anonymous.
I asked Lucy for any general advice that she has for me before I teach a lesson for her. She said to practice being patient when asking a question and waiting for student responses. For example, she said that if students begin to respond in the chat function to not acknowledge the first time a correct answer pops up, but to wait for multiple people to respond. This advice made me reflect on what I do when I ask questions. I normally wait for ~15-30 s for someone to respond, but I don’t often wait for everyone to respond before I say “Yes that is correct!”. Waiting for people to enter their responses into the chat before acknowledging the correct answer(s) gives everyone a chance to put in their ideas instead of shutting everyone down after only one or two people have responded. Lucy also brought up that with this flipped-classroom style it can be challenging to balance talking time with activity time, for example, sometimes the first portion of the class goes on for too long, and then there are only 10-minutes left for a 25-minute activity. To try to plan to allow enough time for the worksheet activity, she encouraged me to try to use between 10 to 15 Powerpoint slides for when I teach a lesson for her class, where each slide is either regarding a poll question, a discussion question, or an idea to review that students may find tricky.