On March 10th, 2021, I instructed a 50-minute synchronous lesson over Zoom for Dominique. For this lesson, ~12 students showed up (which seemed to match with the attendance that Dominique had, perhaps slightly fewer students). The lesson I taught was on the geochemistry of large igneous provinces (LIPs). Dominique provided me with the learning objectives for the lesson I would be teaching, the relevant textbook and chapter provided for the students, as well as the lessons she was teaching before and after this lesson to help me bridge my lesson materials to hers. Students are expected to come to class having read the required readings, however, Dominique mentioned to me that she does not think that many of them review the readings.
I created the lesson from scratch, which was a challenge as I am not as well practiced with isotopes when it comes to geochemistry. As I created this lesson I realized I lacked pedagogical content knowledge because I was unsure of what areas of the lesson students may struggle with and the best approaches to supplement their learning with. In addition to this, I relied heavily on the textbook for information and examples to use for teaching. Because of this, I went to the default method of how I teach, which was to plan a lesson that had lecturing and mostly call and recall and discussion-type questions for active learning and formative assessment. I also incorporated my own research into the lesson to help create motivation at the beginning of the lesson, showing that what they are learning in this class could be applied by them to investigate a variety of questions related to LIPs if they choose to pursue an undergraduate thesis project or a graduate degree. In addition to this, I showed them some cool field photos of me working on LIPs, letting them know that studying geochemistry can take you to unique places if they are interested in fieldwork and traveling. I noticed that sharing my experience with the subject at hand with them at the beginning of the lesson helped engage them because they became very active in the Zoom chat.
For one of my discussion questions, I asked students to look at a series of MgO vs. major element oxide diagrams and describe the patterns that they are seeing and then interpret what they mean and how they came to their conclusions (i.e., What minerals are being fractionated out of the melt? How do you know?). For one of my discussion activities, I asked the students to interpret four different chondrite-normalized rare earth element graphs that I displayed on the screen. I asked them what the patterns reflected with respect to melt-generation and rock-forming processes. These discussion questions were successful as the students indicated to me that they had been introduced to these graphs in previous lessons, just for different rock types and geologic settings. Doing these discussion activities helped students apply a familiar analytical tool to examples that they had not practiced interpreting before, thus supplementing their data interpretation skills, which is a critical skill for a geologist to have.
Next time I think I would like to try a 20-minute lecture paired with formative assessment questions (i.e., poll questions) with 30-minute activity to increase the amount of engagement and active learning in the lesson or teach the lesson as a flipped classroom. I did not realize that the students learnt the geochemical tools in the first half of the term and the second half was on the application in different settings. Knowing that now, I would create a worksheet that would allow students to work together and apply more of the geochemical tools they have learnt about to a particular LIP setting, perhaps one mentioned in their required readings or the LIP that I was working on for my thesis research. For the activity, I would give students ~ 20 minutes to complete it and then leave 10 minutes to debrief the activity and hold a discussion and question period regarding both the activity and lesson materials. For next time I would also get more sleep! I was very nervous about teaching this lesson because I was not as confident in myself as I have been in previous lessons I have taught in other courses. Basically, I was afraid that I would provide the students with incorrect information, and I was afraid of not being able to answer student questions. Anywho, this wasn’t the case at all when it came to me teaching the lesson, however, I felt very fatigued and because of this, I think I was less coherent than I could have been. I think it is important to be coherent as it may make students feel more at ease during a lesson, for example, if you seem confident and fully present as an instructor then your students may feel more comfortable learning from you and thus be more attentive and engaged because they get the impression that you know what you’re doing and that they are in good hands.