On March 8th I observed Dominique teach her class EOSC 333 – Elemental and Isotopic Geochemistry. This course is normally face-to-face but because of the COVID-19 pandemic it is currently being taught online via Zoom. EOSC 333 is a 50-minute class for geology majors that takes place from 9:00 to 9:50 am on Mondays and Wednesdays. For this lesson ~15 of 27 students were present.
Dominique values student engagement and active learning, where she is constantly creating space and opportunities for her students to ask questions and interact with the course materials, and before moving on to a new idea or starting an activity she asks students if they need anything clarified. She also values constructivism, where during the lesson she provided students with opportunities to reflect on their own previous knowledge about a subject by prompting them with a question (i.e., regarding mid-ocean ridges or ophiolites) and express their previous knowledge out loud or in the Zoom chat, where she would then supplements them with new information so they can build on whatever foundation they came to class with. Lastly, Dominique values motivation through recognition, where she shares and acknowledges her grad students’ experiences and work throughout her lesson (i.e., figures her students have created from their research, conclusions they have come to with their research).
Dominique demonstrates pedagogical content knowledge, where she has the ability to teach her lesson like a coherent story, where she builds ideas off each other and clearly states linkages between ideas if students are not expressing that they can see these links. She knew what activities to do for particular ideas being taught, and knew when to stop and ask if anything needed to be clarified (e.g., she made sure students understood A before moving on to B, as she knew students could not understand and complete B without understanding A). Active learning was apparent throughout the entire lesson, where students were constantly given the opportunity to reflect on an idea that they had learnt about and apply their understanding to questions provided by Dominique. She also provided the opportunity for students to go through the experiential learning cycle throughout the lesson, where students learnt about an idea and its importance, watched her apply the idea, asked questions on how/why she applied things the way she did and then tried to apply their understanding in a similar activity. Lastly, Dominique practiced formative assessment strategies throughout the lesson, where she provided low-stakes participatory activities such as call and recall questions and discussion-based questions.
The first ~20 minutes of the lesson was primarily lecturing combined with call and recall questions, where students would answer questions in the Zoom chat or out loud. After the majority of students answered a question, Dominique would ask for someone to elaborate on how they came to their conclusion (if no one already did that). Having students explain how they came to their answer is an excellent way for both the student and instructor to check the extent of their understanding of the idea being discussed (i.e., a form of formative assessment). Dominique’s slides have mostly pictures/figures/graphs/diagrams and very little text (< 10 words/slide). Having minimal text allowed for little distraction, where students could listen to what Dominique was talking about and focus and follow along with her as she discussed whatever graphics she had on the slide. Before finishing up with the lecturing portion of the lesson, Dominique asked if students need any clarification to make sure that students felt comfortable going into the class discussion/activity.
For the discussion portion of the lesson (~20 minutes), Dominique showed a slide with 5 questions on it (e.g., What is the depleted mantle?), where she would ask students about what their thoughts were for each question, working from the top to the bottom of the list. When prompted with a question, students wrote their answers in the chat. If people were not getting the answer correct, she would prompt them by going back to the relevant diagram the question was referring to, or she would get them to reflect back to previous lessons/labs where they may have discussed the idea before. When students began to figure out the correct answer, she gave them praise and asked them to elaborate on their answer, or she will elaborate for them to save time. Students mentioned to Dominique that they were not very active during the discussion portion because they tired because it was Monday morning and they were feeling exhausted from midterms. After working through the questions, Dominique led students through a tree diagram of isotopic elements and encouraged them to annotate the slide and discuss why they chose to annotate the slide the way they did. Before she asked students to annotate, she gave an example of what she expected them to do. However, when students began to annotate the slides, Dominique’s Zoom/computer crashed. After a few minutes, she returned and asked students to annotate their own notes instead of her slide. The last couple of slides Dominique went through included calculations, where Dominique reviewed the equations and discussed the importance of understanding them (i.e., how to calculate the depleted mantle and the importance of understanding rare element distribution). Dominique made sure that students were comfortable with these ideas and equations because the students were going to be working on them in the lab component of the course later in the week. With a few minutes remaining until the end of class, Dominique gave a brief summary of the major ideas that the students learnt about in the lesson on a single slide. Once the summary was over, Dominique held an open question period for 10 mins, where students were free to leave or stay and listen to their peers’ questions and concerns.
From observing Dominique, I learnt a lot about being flexible as an instructor. For example, even though Dominique was cut out of the Zoom call for ~6 minutes, she still finished right on time, and at no point did she seem rushed during the rest of the lesson when she returned. In addition to this, Dominique tried to understand why her students were being particularly quiet during the lesson (in comparison to previous lessons) so that she could help them engage with the materials more. Because they were feeling so burnt out from midterms, she offered an option to make the midterm weigh less if they got a poor grade on it, and the weight could be reflected by their final exam score; the students appeared to be thrilled about this option. These actions made me remember that classes are there for the students to learn and grow and that life happens and sometimes we need alternative solutions to aid both learning and mental health. Dominique also acknowledged her students’ names when they answered her questions throughout her lesson in order to build connections and make the students feel seen. Another thing that I learnt was that Dominique does not share the learning objectives or outcomes with her students until after the lesson, where she adds them on the lesson slides and uploads them on Canvas after the lesson is complete.