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.

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 20^th, 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.