Tag Archives: Post-observation

On November 16^th, 2021, I observed Prof. James Scoates teach a lesson in EOSC 220 – Mineralogy, a 3-credit, second-year geoscience course. The lecture portion of class occurs on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm in ESB 1012; there is also a weekly 3-hour lab component that takes place (different lab sections occur on various days and times), however, I will not be observing labs. The layout of the lecture hall is instructor focused, with desks all facing the front of the room where there is a podium, a wall of whiteboards, and two projector screens. In this lesson, students were learning about the fundamentals of carbonate, phosphate, and sulphate minerals and their role in geologic processes.

James’s lesson was worksheet-driven, where he had the bulk of the activities on worksheets that he and his TA’s handed out at the beginning of class. He started off the lesson by telling the students that they will be doing a jigsaw activity and proceeded to explain to them how it works. As he describes the logistics of the activity, he shows the steps on the projector screen so that students can follow along. Explaining the logistics of an activity to the students rather than throwing them into the activity absolutely minimized confusion, as none of the students had questions after he explained it, and the transition going into the activity was very smooth.

Since the activity was dominantly worksheet driven, James acted as a facilitator more than a traditional instructor. He did this by not lecturing at all, and instead, dictating the transitions between parts of the activities, letting students know when it was time to read vs. time to chat loudly, letting students know when to form pairs and when to merge pairs into groups of four, helping students find groups, constantly circulating the room to help students with their questions, and facilitating the end of class discussion. This approach to teaching is learner-centred, and it is clear from this teaching style that James values active and group learning.

There were three different versions of the worksheet (i.e., carbonate, phosphate, sulphate), all with the same layout. Each worksheet started off by identifying what that group of minerals is, then lead into another section on where they form, geologic processes they are linked to, their relevance in society, and questions that remained unanswered about these minerals. The backside of the worksheet had notes sections for when groups would merge to teach each other about what they had just learnt. The information on these worksheets was complimented by question prompts displayed on one of two of the slides (where activity instructions remained fixed on the other) to get students thinking about how each group minerals compare, how they are related, and what geologic processes they are associated with. The layout of these worksheets enabled students to take charge of their own learning, by getting them to actively engage with the material (i.e., reading, discussing, reflecting, researching) during class time, in comparison to lecturing, which is passive and far less engaging.

As mentioned in the previous paragraph, James would put up prompting questions on one of the two projector screens at certain points of the activity to encourage students to think about the bigger picture of the concepts that the students were learning about. About 10 minutes before the class ended, James got all the students to wrap up their small group conversations and asked them to share their thoughts about the prompts on the projector screen. Students who would raise their hands were given a microphone so that when they shared their answers, the entire classroom could hear them. While students would explain their thoughts, James would show images of the geologic processes that the students were talking about on one of the two projector screens (i.e., the plate tectonic cycle). James had these supplementary slides prepared and knew that having these visual aids would help students visualize how the concepts they had just learnt about connect to bigger picture ideas in geology.

Once a student finished answering a question, James would validate their answer and summarize what was just said, plus fill in any important gaps of information if needed for students to fully understand the relevance of what was being discussed. Giving students the opportunity to apply their newly learnt knowledge by prompting them to think about how it connects to different geological processes (that they are likely learning about in other classes) shows that James values both experiential learning and the far transfer of knowledge. The impact of this is that students get to see examples of the application and importance of the content that they are learning about in real-time. Getting students to share what they have learnt not only from the worksheet but how they have connected what they have learnt to bigger picture ideas in geology through classroom discussion shows that James values formative assessment, as he is able to assess if the students met the learning objective for the lesson.

I had a discussion with James after his lesson where I asked him questions about decisions he made when creating his lesson, his journey from transitioning from passive to active learning, and his experience transitioning from virtual space to in-person.

James incorporates active learning in all his lessons, which are typically worksheet driven (like the lesson I observed); these worksheets serve as material for students to read, reflect, and discuss on. James used to collect these worksheets, but doesn’t anymore, as collecting and checking over them was far too much work and didn’t really benefit the students in any way; instead, these serve as their notes. Using worksheets, students get to learn by reading and discussing in groups, working together to think how newly learnt concepts apply to big picture ideas in geology. James assesses students in a formative fashion during class through discussions, by asking groups to share with the class what they have concluded after working through the worksheet together. Summative assessments are done via low-stakes quizzes and higher-stakes exams.

James discusses his pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), and how he has developed and refined it over his years of teaching. One of the main practices he does to continue growing his PCK is that after every lesson he teaches, he goes into his notes about the lesson he just taught and annotates his notes on what did and didn’t work and how the lesson should be refined for next time he teaches it. James uses PowerPoint slides as a supplement to his lessons (e.g., for displaying instructions, question prompts, etc.), so he keeps these notes on a hidden slide in each lesson, that way he more-or-less keeps everything in one place.

James managed to keep the students engaged throughout the term, with virtually no lecturing. He said there was resistance at the beginning, as students wanted to have lessons recorded, so to have students “buy-in” to not having them recorded, he discussed the science behind active learning with the class and they stopped resisting. He said he doesn’t like recording lessons as students don’t actually learn anything since they just skim recordings for key information and memorize it. On a side note, he said his third- and fourth-year students in other courses he is teaching are more enthusiastic about engaging in his lessons than in previous years.

On November 9th, 2021, I observed Dr. Denise Gabriel instruct ISCI 330A – Topics in Integrated Sciences, a third-year level, 3-credit course, which is an “Interactive examination of a theme common to all areas of science”. This course is held in KLINK 464 on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30 am to 11:00 am. Of the 25 students enrolled in the class, 24 were present. The layout of the classroom is instructor-focused, where large tables face the front of the classroom, the direction of the instructor and a single projector screen.

The lesson was designed in the following repeating sequence: introduction to new ideas, self-reflection solo or in pairs, brief lecturing, group discussion, followed by a summary of the newly learnt ideas. At the beginning of the class, Denise made it clear to the students that this is a capstone lesson of all preceding lessons; the lesson topic was “Our adaptability via Genetic and Learnt Traits”. Before she proceeded with the lesson, she gave a brief overview of how the ideas taught preceding this lesson link to this lesson topic. I think this was a nice way to highlight key concepts that the students need to consider thinking about and linking to each other (plus any new ideas) during their reflections and discussions for the remainder of the lesson.

Throughout the lesson, Denise gave students the opportunity to reflect on their previous knowledge, then briefly lectured to provide more information for context, and then built an understanding of the concepts together by classroom discussions. This lesson format shows that Denise values active learning and metacognitive practices, as she ensures to hold space for the students to reflect and actively engage in discussions regarding course materials with their classmates’ multiple times throughout the lesson.

For reflections, Denise would often get the students to do a think-pair-share. These paired reflections were successful because the first few minutes of the reflections would start out quiet as students reflected, and then chatter would build up in the room until Denise would call back their attention. These reflections usually lasted 10 minutes. I noticed that Denise didn’t often explicitly state how long students have, just asks them to discuss the question(s)—perhaps there has been some sort of expectation set throughout the term that the students are used to? Or maybe this is a strategy that has other purposes built into it (e.g., time management).

When introducing new ideas, Denise ensured to review any foundational definitions/topics related to that idea to ensure that everyone could follow along and participate in the reflections and class discussions. For example, after introducing the idea of genetic adaptability, Denise asked the class how much they know about the basics of genetics and how genetic adaptations occur. The response from the class was vague, so she decided to briefly recap the basics of what genes are, how zygotes are created and how mutations occur to ensure that the students would be able to understand the difference between genetic adaptations and cultural adaptations.

When lecturing, Denise ensured to simplify and connect pieces of complex ideas together. For example, when a diagram on heritability was shown on the slide, Denise ensured to go through the entire diagram in steps to break it down into digestible chunks. She then proceeds to provide a couple of well known “real world” examples and how they break down in the diagram (i.e., to supplement what she was verbally describing, she simultaneously had visual cues pointing to the spot in the diagram on the slide). Breaking down these complex ideas and connecting them to examples made the lesson ideas very digestible for students, as no one appeared to be lost, and students were able to attempt to link their own ideas to the diagram during a classroom discussion. The action of breaking down an idea, providing examples that apply to that idea, and then getting students to apply their own experiences to newly learnt ideas highlight that Denise values experiential learning and far transfer of knowledge in the classroom.

During classroom discussions, Denise acted more as a facilitator than an instructor; asking question prompts to get the students to share ideas out loud and recording key points on the board that were related to the lesson topic. To build onto what was being said, Denise would validate student responses and either ask the students to relate what is being said to the new ideas they are learning about (i.e., is what the student shared cultural or genetic adaptation? Why?), then, Denise would clarify any necessary gaps that were missing regarding the relationship of what has been said with the lesson topic. When people are reluctant to share their experiences/ideas during class discussions, Denise shared her own examples (general well-known ones or personal) with the class. Doing this ensured that students had enough examples to think of the new information they are learning in different ways, and to help encourage them to share their ideas with the class—which it did, as students would begin putting up their hands to share their ideas after Denise would share an example.

At the end of the lesson, Denise left the students with a question (written on the lesson slide) to reflect on regarding their experiences with the contents in the question prior to the next lesson. Doing this helps to bridge the lessons together and gives the students the opportunity to practice self-reflection, thinking about how the application of ideas transfer to different areas of life (i.e., far transfer of knowledge), and to create intrinsic motivation to connect with and engage in learning about the subject matter.

After the lesson, I had a fruitful chat with Denise where I provided her with some constructive feedback on her lesson, asked her about her pedagogy, how her experience has been teaching since returning to in-person teaching and talked about some learning theories. I won’t discuss all these things I just listed; however, I will bring up some highlights that I thought were quite insightful in the paragraphs below.

From our conversation, I learnt that Denise values a democratic classroom, where she asks students how they feel, and allows them to vote on future deadlines and how they would like to be assessed throughout the course (e.g., final exam vs. final assignment, doing a presentation or handing in a written report, presenting online or in-person, etc.). I listened to her once the lesson was over, having a meeting with the students about how they want to be assessed in this course, and she said something along the lines of “We have learning objectives for the course, how we meet those is up to you”. Being flexible on how students are assessed in the classroom allows for more inclusivity with respect to assessment (e.g., allows for students to choose the most comfortable option for them).

Finally, I learnt that Denise has noticed a change in her students’ attitudes since coming back from learning virtually during the pandemic. She noted to me that it is more difficult to engage the students in classroom activities and that they now seem to want more lecturing before so that they don’t have to physically “do” as much work. She notes that almost all of the students want the lessons to be recorded so that they can go back to them and “listen” to them—Denise was firm on not recording her lessons, and instead for students to contact a friend in class to discuss the lesson if they have to miss a class. This highlights that the virtual learning during the pandemic, for these students at least, likely meant a lot of passive learning (i.e., just being lectured to online with minimal student interaction), and now they seem to be more used to that style of being taught. However, Denise does not value passive learning, and clearly communicated to the students those students need to participate in class in order to learn the topics; being lectured at will not allow them to truly understand the material and work on seeing how concepts apply outside of what is being taught in the classroom.

On October 26th, 2021, I observed Jim Evans teaching a lesson for his ISCI 312 – Symmetry classroom. Note, he is not one of my CATL mentors, but I am doing my Term 2 practicum in his classroom. Of the 57 students enrolled in the class, 37 attended in person. Jim does his best to run the class in a hybrid manner, by teaching in person and recording all his lessons (since coming back to in person due to the COVID-19 pandemic) live over Zoom, however, I did not take note of how many students attended the lesson virtually. From my observation of this lesson, I think that Jim values lecturing paired with pedagogical content knowledge, experiential learning, and low-stakes formative assessment. Jim’s lesson was lecture-dominant, where he had ~10–15 minutes carved out near the end of class for a low-stakes formative assessment.

When introducing the idea of frieze patterns, Jim showed how concepts that the students had previously learnt about (in this case, the lattice, translations, and 2-D point groups) linked to frieze patterns. He did this by showing how when you combine a 1-D lattice with a 2-D pattern, this creates a frieze pattern. He then showed the 7 possible frieze groups, what symmetrical operations are used to create each group’s pattern, and where the unit cell lies within these patterns. To assess if the students were able to follow along with what he had been lecturing about, he had the students complete some practice questions identifying the respective frieze group of a couple sample frieze patterns.

Prior to Jim’s assessment, he walked through a sample frieze pattern problem so the students could listen to and observe his thought process and approach to solving such problems. Modelling this gave the students a foundation of what type of questions they may be asked during future assessments and how to possibly approach solving these types of problems. The formative assessment that followed this example was in the form of presenting a couple sample problems of different frieze group patterns on the lesson slides and getting the students to attempt to identify the unit cell (e.g., location and shape) and decipher the appropriate group (e.g., P2mg) for the frieze pattern either alone or with nearby peers. Jim gave the students ~5 minutes to solve each pattern. During the time the students worked on the questions, Jim remained at the front of the classroom instead of circulating around the room. Once the 5-minutes was up, Jim would ask for volunteers to share with the class what they got for their answers and how they approached solving the problems. He offered volunteers to come up to the whiteboard to draw out how they solved the problem, but no one was comfortable enough to do so (perhaps because of a fear of being wrong in front of their peers).

Regardless of giving the students a demonstration and having them work together on these patterns, a lot of the students struggled with coming up with the correct answers. I think this struggle signified that there was (1) a lack of ability due to a lack of exposure since this was a new concept to the students, and/or (2) an inability to identify the simple symmetrical operations that make up each part of a pattern (so a lack in understanding of the fundamentals preceding this new concept) leading to the lack of ability to combine the operations together to determine the frieze group pattern as a whole. Because of this struggle, Jim had to spend a bit of extra time going over each of the sample patterns with the students. Since there was a prevalent struggle in understanding how to successfully identify frieze groups in different patterns, I think that Jim could have (1) gone back to the fundamentals of identifying 2-D point groups and the isometries that construct frieze groups and assess which one of these concepts the students may still be struggling with, and then (2) provide more sample patterns for the students to work through during the class so that they could become more aware of why they struggle with the process of working through these problems, confront that/those issue(s), and then become confident in their ability to identify frieze patterns. I also think that during the time the students were working on the frieze patterns, Jim could have circulated around the room in an attempt to listen in on how the students were going about solving these problems to get some immediate feedback if the students are going in the right direction or if they are completely stumped.

Something I liked from Jim’s lesson is that he had a list of “Key Takeaway” points at the end of the lesson, which acted as his summary—this served as a nice list of items the students are expected to understand to succeed in the course. Something I thought was missing from this lesson was the far transfer of how frieze patterns represent themselves in different disciplines. I think this would have been useful for the students to either see some examples provided by Jim or two have been given some time to find how frieze patterns prevail in the students’ respective disciplines and then share them with the class. An example of where frieze patterns manifest themselves in my discipline is in the atomic structures of minerals, which translates well to how frieze patterns exist in crystalline materials that may be more prevalent when in other disciplines (e.g., DNA in Biology).

Overall, Jim’s lesson slides were very “clean” (minimal text, large figures), and there were clear communication guidelines between Jim and the students who were attending in person (raising of hands to ask questions). However, I thought there was a bit of a disadvantage being a student attending via Zoom with respect to communication in a hybrid class setting. For instance, when student’s in-person ask questions, the students attending via Zoom were not able to hear those questions. To combat this, I think Jim could have repeated student questions before providing his answers to them to help provide context to those attending virtually. Another disadvantage is that those who attend via Zoom are not able to see Jim’s physical cues in class, e.g., where he points to on the screen when singling out a step in a problem. To combat this, I think Jim could have heavily annotated his slides prior to the lesson, or he could have attempted to annotate them live (although, he only has a mouse for such annotations, so it may be tricky to draw). Finally, students attending virtually don’t often (if ever) have their questions answered. This is because (1) Jim doesn’t stand next to the computer the entire time that he teaches, so when he walks around and lectures he is not aware of the questions being asked in the Zoom chat, and (2) it is incredibly challenging to teach in-person and virtually as one person, as you are not always able to manage all the questions that may arise virtually. Perhaps a way to combat this would be having a TA sit in the classroom and monitor the Zoom on their personal laptop, where they could put up their hand (physically) for those attending virtually and state their questions (if needed) or respond via the chat function.

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.

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.