Tag Archives: Post-practicum

On November 30^th, 2021, I taught a lesson on “Crystallography of Crystals and Viruses” as a guest instructor for ISCI 312 – Symmetry. Of the 57 students enrolled in the class, ~44 attended. Unlike previous lessons I have taught for this class, I did not attempt to simultaneously teach and record the lesson over Zoom.

I wanted the final Symmetry class to be a “capstone” lesson, where students got the opportunity to connect most of what they learned throughout the semester and see how it can be applied to a new concept that I was asked to teach about—crystallography. I designed this lesson to incorporate the ideas of far transfer, experiential learning (ELC), and (PCK). For the topic of crystallography, I decided to introduce the students to organic and inorganic crystals in the first half of the lesson, and then viruses in the second half of the lesson. I chose to look at this broad scope of ideas through the lens of crystallography because this is an interdisciplinary course where many of the students will eventually (if not already) work with crystalline materials. Furthermore, a learning outcome for the course is that the students should be able to connect related ideas (far transfer; ELC) with respect to symmetry in different areas of life (e.g., systems, disciplines). To provide the students with practice identifying such connections in my lesson, I led them through a series of group-based activities (PCK) to help them connect and understand that different materials (e.g., crystals and viruses) are all made of the same foundation—a lattice structure. Note, the concept of the lattice structure is not new to them, as they learnt about lattices and symmetrical operations that could be applied to them throughout the term.

For the lesson, I designed a 4-part activity where students practised self-directed learning in small groups. I provided each student with their own worksheet that had a series of tasks to complete which were guided by action and question prompts. This activity acted as both their notes for the lesson and practice working on problems with respect to crystallography. I made sure to inform students that the activity was not for marks/it was not “due” at the end of the lesson, and that it was okay if they did not finish it by the end of the lesson, as the activity is hefty and will help them prepare for their final exam. Below I have summarized the activity design and what happened during the lesson.

Part 1 (15-minutes) of the activity split students into pairs, where each pair of students would either be given blue worksheets for “inorganic” crystals, or yellow worksheets for “organic crystals. For this activity, students were asked to research general characteristics of these types of crystals, look up the atomic structure of a crystal of their choosing that falls within the category of organic/inorganic to practice seeing the symmetry in the crystal structures by drawing and annotating 3D models, and provide an example of how understanding the atomic structure of this crystal has benefited society/contributed to our understanding of the natural world. This activity was somewhat successful, as I gave the students a brief demonstration of exactly what I was looking for them to do before they began the activity and some of them were able to complete the activity in the amount of time given. However, I during the lesson I realized that the students had not been exposed to 3D lattices until the previous class, so they were not used to looking for symmetry in atomic structures. Because of this, some students were falling behind because they were confused when they couldn’t readily see symmetry in the atomic structure of the crystal that they chose to investigate. The major problems I came across during this activity were (1) technological, as this was the first time the students used software to look at 3D models of crystal structures, so they struggled to figure out what exactly they were looking for, (2) lack of knowledge and understanding, as students didn’t realize that atoms in a lattice could actually fall on the outside of the lattice structure and that the symmetry is often more obvious when you begin to expand/repeat the lattices, and (3) burnout, several students were slow at processing what to do because they were exhausted in general, and they are not used to doing self-directed learning activities in this class.

Part 2 (18-minutes) of the activity got students to pair with a group that were assigned a different crystal type than them (i.e., organic group pair with an inorganic group). These groups were tasked with teaching each other what they had learned thus far, and then answer a series of questions along the theme of “how do we measure the atomic structure of crystals?” I think that this part of the activity was successful(ish) because some of the students moved onto this task and were able to complete it, and others decided to continue working on part 1. If I did the activity again, I think I could axe out them researching about how to measure the structure of crystals and lecture them on it to help save time and to give them a little bit more time to work on Part 1.

After part 2, I paused the students and reviewed the key ideas (i.e., differences between inorganic and organic crystals, types of instruments we measure crystals with) that the students should have found to ensure no one was falling too far behind for ~8 minutes. During this, I had a student question one of the examples I gave for organic crystals. Here, I realized that our disciplines think of organic crystals with different definitions; in geology, anything considered “organic” is defined as biogenic, and in medicine, anything “organic” is bonded with carbon. For next time, I think that at the beginning of the lesson I should have a brief class discussion on how different disciplines define these terms and the context that we will choose to look at them in the lesson.

Part 3 (18-minutes) of the activity got students to stop looking at inorganic and organic crystallography and instead investigate viral crystallography. Here, students remained in the groups that they formed in part 2, where they were tasked to research what part of a virus holds symmetry (and why), the 3 different types of viral structures, and then asked to investigate the viral structure of a virus of their choosing. For the virus students chose to research, they were asked to create a poster with a schematic drawing of the virus with its symmetry annotated, a type of diffraction method that has been used to study the crystal structure of the virus, and how understanding the structure of the virus has benefited society. I think this part of the activity was somewhat successful because over half the class was able to complete it, however, a few students had decided to work on previous parts of the activity or work on other tasks. It’s important to note that the students had a poster presentation in the next class, so I think a lot of them were wanting last-minute feedback from the course instructor with respect to that, and their final exam was scheduled for 2-weeks after this lesson, so some of the students began to panic and ask the instructor questions about that. To help the students focus on the lesson materials, I think it would have been beneficial to have the instructor either state at the beginning that they will not answer questions about coursework for upcoming items (i.e., upcoming group presentations and the course final exam) until after class, or simply not come to the class—although, the lack of presence of the instructor may have made students less inclined to stay and participate during the lesson.

Part 4 (5-10 minutes) was to get students to tape their posters to the wall and do a gallery walk, but there was not enough time to do the gallery walk due to some interruptions that occurred at the beginning of class. Instead, I took photos of the posters and got the course instructor to post them on the course Canvas page so that students could look at them on their own time. I don’t think that cutting out the gallery walk activity was a detriment to the students learning, however, it could have provided the opportunity for students to question each other’s work, as some of them clearly had issues interpreting their viral structures (i.e., drawing an icosahedral virus capsid and claiming it had a hexagonal crystal structure).

To wrap up the class, I asked a few students to share a benefit they found with respect to studying inorganic and organic crystal structures, and viral crystal structures, and then shared a summary slide of takeaway concepts, which reflected the big ideas that they should have come across during the lesson. The brief discussion was successful, as a few students readily shared their findings which tied in very nicely to my summary slides (alas, some students successfully understood the big idea of the lesson).

I will not lie; this lesson was very ambitious—it was what would normally be 2 to 3 lessons condensed into 1. If I were to do this lesson again, I would either make the tweaks I mentioned in the paragraphs above or redesign it completely. If I made the previously mentioned adjustments, I think I could save some time during the lesson by lecturing on content that they are not expected to deeply understand (i.e., diffraction techniques). However, if I were to redesign the lesson, I would probably focus on one crystallographic group (inorganic crystals) for ~2/3 of the lesson, and either get students to freely research how what they have learnt applies to other items (e.g., viruses) and have a group discussion on what everyone found and the implications of these findings (e.g., what big picture ideas are we converging on in crystallography?), or I could lecture and provide examples of how it applies to other items (which is less interactive, boo).

Finally, the last lesson I guess lectured for I lost the “power” in the class to the other instructor, and in turn, the student’s attention and respect. To try to regain power in this class, I tried my best to be more assertive by not using minimizing terms, direct statements, eye contact with students, and speaking through the chest. I knew the students were tired and would not take me seriously, so I also stated that it is essential for them to work as hard as they can during the lesson so that they can learn the material and succeed in the exam. I normally don’t like to talk about things in terms of exams, but in this classroom, the students have been completely transparent with me that doing well on the final exam is what they care about at this point in time, so I had to use that as leverage to gain their attention maintain focus on the lesson. This worked quite successfully as I was able to catch their attention quite quickly when trying to transition through different parts of the lesson.

On October 29^th, 2021, I taught a lesson on “Symmetry in Music” as a guest instructor for ISCI 312 – Symmetry. Of the 57 students enrolled, ~38 students attended the class in-person, and 2 students attended via Zoom. For this lesson, I wanted to do as little lecturing as possible to maximize time for active learning and formative assessment in a group environment. To maximize the in-class time, I recorded a 14-minute pre-lesson lecture, where I provided them foundational materials (i.e., examples of cyclic groups in music and their symmetrical operations) and optional supplementary resources that would help them to successfully participate in the in-class activities and discussions.

Teaching this lesson was incredibly challenging (content-wise, logistically, and power-wise), which made it a good learning experience for me, but under stressful and somewhat undesirable circumstances which may have negatively impacted the students learning experience. For instance, I am not familiar with concepts in music, so I had to try to teach myself fundamental concepts in music theory so that I was able to link it to symmetry and communicate that knowledge to my students. When teaching, my understanding of the concepts was not as solid as I would have liked. This made me feel less confident in teaching the subject as I was unsure if there were gaps of fundamental knowledge when I was teaching (which there obviously was). For example, the instructor of the course would keep interjecting during my teaching, which I appreciated to a degree because we both want the students to succeed in understanding the materials, but it also bothered me because I wish he could have supported me more before I taught the lesson by ensuring that I had all the essential material needed to align with the LO’s that he wanted the students to achieve (which were quite vague). The combination of feeling less confident and having the instructor interject during my teaching made me feel like I lost the trust of the students and in turn their engagement with the course materials. I have to teach for this class again for my final practicum, so it’s frustrating because I feel like I have essentially lost the “power” in the class, and this loss of control and respect may make the students less motivated to learn from me because they may think that I am not qualified/competent enough to teach them what they are expected to learn. To ensure this does not happen again I will need to set up clear boundaries with the regular course instructor about how they will act while I teach in their classroom; and to regain the respect of the students, I will need to be more assertive and confident when instructing them.

A technological issue occurred when I was lecturing, where the laptop I was using froze ~2/3 of the way through the lesson. It was slightly frustrating because this happened right when I needed to communicate new background information to the students so they could successfully complete the next activity and the visual aids on my slides would have been incredibly helpful to prepare the students for it. Regardless, I had to improvise on the spot, where I decided to refer directly to their activity worksheet and teach concepts using the first question in the activity as a demonstration for us all to work together on. This course of action was successful as the students were able to understand the ideas that I communicated to them and complete the activity with minimal struggle. My biggest stress at the moment when the laptop crashed was not that I could get the students to move on to the next activity, but that this was another layer of my lesson not going to plan, and possibly leading to my students disengaging from the lesson activity and not trusting me.

Logistically, an issue that I think really impacted the student’s ability to learn and participate during the lesson was the fact that the pre-lesson material was not uploaded until 1:30 am on the day of the lesson; this was not enough time for most of the students to both recognize that materials have been uploaded and go over the material prior to the lesson (at the beginning of the lesson I assessed this by asking them if they were able to look over the materials posted). For this class I did not have the ability to upload materials on the Canvas course, so to prevent this from happening again (if I am a guest-lecturer) I will try to give the course instructor the materials I need to be distributed at least a week in advance so that they have some buffer time to upload the materials to Canvas. Regardless, to accommodate for this issue during class, I discussed some of my summary slides of the pre-lesson lecture slides in more detail than I originally intended to, and I reviewed the assessment questions related to the pre-lesson lecture materials in detail by getting students to attempt to answer the questions and then discussing the answers as a class.

Another issue I experienced was with respect to the content I taught. After the lesson, the instructor and I debriefed where they realized that the students were struggling with grasping some of the concepts I was trying to teach about because he had not yet taught them about cyclic groups to the degree that I was expecting to understand them. If I knew that the students lacked this understanding of cyclic groups, I would have either taught the students about them in general first before applying them to music theory or I would have removed cyclic groups entirely.

At the end of the lesson, I handed out my post-lesson surveys (which are how I am collecting data for my SoTL project). A few of the surveys indicated that the lesson seemed scrambled and made things confusing for the students, causing them to disengage. Another survey respondent said the “Check Your Understanding” activities they completed in class should only be for participation marks because the material was “hard”. In contrast to some of these students’ experiences, a couple of students indicated that they were fascinated by the lesson material, very engaged in the activities and that they wanted to do their final poster project inspired by topics in this lesson; it was nice to know that this lesson was not a lost cause.

From teaching this lesson, I learnt a lot of lessons, which I will summarize in this paragraph. If an instructor gives me sample slides for their lesson, I should not feel pressured to use what they have provided me with to create my lesson, unless clearly specified by the instructor. If I am to use particular slides, I need to make sure the purpose of these slides is clearly communicated to me so that I can align them with the lesson learning outcomes and properly teach the students what they are expected to learn. If I am collaborating on an activity with an instructor, I need to ensure they are willing to meet some of my needs (e.g., clear communication guidelines, posting what I ask of them on time to Canvas). When collaborating, I need to ensure that I have enough time to read over their work to double-check that what they have done aligns with the learning outcomes of the lesson and is worded in a way that is easy for the learners to understand.

If I were to do this lesson again under the same circumstances, I would make some major revisions to the first ½ of my lesson. For example, if the students had not learnt about cyclic groups yet (or, at least had practice working with them yet), I would have introduced such groups and provided some generic examples of them, and then applied them to music where the students could work on practice questions together. Teaching the students about the fundamentals of a concept before applying it to a topic, such as music theory, would have made it easier for the students to understand how to apply symmetrical operations to a more abstract concept. I would keep the second half of my lesson, which was an introduction to symmetry in sheet music and identifying frieze groups in sheet music, more or less the same, because (despite the technical issues) this activity was really successful (minimal confusion, everyone completed it in the allotted time) and I think it was an easy to understand example of how to apply the abstract concept (frieze groups) to a real-world example in concrete-space (sheet music).

In contrast to the statements above, If I were to do the lesson again knowing the students were unfamiliar with cyclic groups, I would have applied symmetry to music through concepts they had already been familiar with (i.e., 2-D point groups, group theory, and frieze groups) and had activities with respect to those concepts. This way I could have just got them to think about how to apply familiar concepts to music theory to keep their focus on the application of concepts instead of learning new concepts and immediately applying them under new circumstances in a single class, which can be overwhelming and lead students to disengage from the lesson (as reflected in the survey results I received).

On October 5^th, 2021, I taught a lesson on “Symmetry, Nature and Beauty” as a guest instructor for ISCI 312 – Symmetry. This is a third-year level 3-credit course in the Integrated Sciences Program that runs in the Winter 1 Term on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:00 to 3:30 pm (~ 1 hr 20 mins) in Henry Angus Rm 241. This term there are 57 students currently enrolled in the course, and the course instructor is Dr. Jim Evans. Of the 57 students enrolled, 44 students attended the class in-person, and 8 students attended synchronously via Zoom.

The ideas for this lesson I got the students to explore were scaffolded around how symmetry plays a critical role in driving evolution (e.g., changes in and beyond an organism’s body plan, changes in niches, preference driven by visual biases, etc.) and how symmetry is not always indicative of health and fitness. For this lesson, I wanted to do as little lecturing as possible to maximize time for active learning in a group environment and a formative assessment based on class discussion. This lesson-tyle is different from how Jim has been instructing the course this term, as he mentioned to me that the lessons have been lecture-dominant with more brief (5- to 10 minute) opportunities to work with practice questions in-class. To maximize the in-class time, I recorded an 18-minute pre-lesson lecture, where I introduced myself, my CATL project, and provided them foundational materials that would help them to successfully participate in the in-class activities and discussions. To check if students watched the pre-lesson lecture, I asked them a few questions related to the new ideas I introduced with formative low-stakes multiple-choice questions. To respond to the questions, each student was given a folded piece of paper with the letters A-B-C-D (each letter is displayed on one of four folds; this is the poor-persons clicker-question), where they would flash their answer to me so I could get an idea where everyone stood with their understanding of the ideas we were going to discuss in more depth throughout the lesson.

After the click-question assessment, I taught the idea that symmetry plays a role in beauty and attraction. I did this by using an activity (which I borrowed from Denise—a previous guest lecturer) based on studies that have been done on facial symmetry. In the activity, I showed students 4 sets of faces, where each face had 3 different versions: the original, left symmetry, and right symmetry. During the activity, students would vote which image was more attractive using the A-B-C-D cards. I then used another study to supplement this idea to take the idea of symmetry and beauty a step further which revealed to students’ symmetry only influences our perception of beauty and attraction to a degree (i.e., there are elements of beauty and attraction in nature that are beyond symmetry), and that beauty is subjective and therefore “in the eye of the beholder”. To take this a step further later in the class, I asked students how attraction is affected by organisms with and without vision. The students came to the realization that something can only be taken advantage of once an organism becomes aware of it and becomes attracted/unattracted to it (i.e., organisms without eye’s can’t select mates based on variations in symmetry because they cannot observe symmetry).

In my pre-lesson lecture, I introduced the idea that symmetry influences evolution, and showed them some fundamental examples of how it applies in nature using various examples using simple and complex organisms in the Animalia and Plantae kingdoms (e.g., symmetry in angiosperms; symmetry in birds) and its implications (e.g., how flower symmetry can impact the success and evolution of insects; fitness and natural selection in barn swallows). During the in-class lesson, I got students to use this foundational understanding of how symmetry and evolution influence each other by asking them to confirm or refute the claim of “symmetry is indicative of an organism’s health” by researching an organism of interest in groups of 4-6 students. The application of using their existing knowledge of a topic and applying it elsewhere is an example of both Far Transfer and Experiential Learning Theory. The impact of this activity not only enhanced engagement throughout the classroom but gave the students the practice of systems thinking (a key disciplinary behaviour—elaborated on in the next paragraph) and collaborative research by getting students to work in groups. In their groups, students collected evidence, discussed their findings with respect to the question prompts I provided for them and displayed their findings to the class on a poster by a gallery walk.

In this class, the disciplinary behaviour I was trying to teach was systems thinking. The steps I took to do this was in multiple ways providing various examples of how symmetry in nature manifests in various ways and on different scales with respect to size, and how symmetry can be influenced by genetics or the environment. I supplemented this idea with a group self-directed activity centred around the claim “symmetry is indicative of an organism’s health” for students to confirm or refute by following guiding prompts that I made to help them come to their conclusions. In the activity, I asked students to look at how the organism is its own system, how symmetry varies throughout the organism and how it can affect the overall organism (i.e., what symmetry/symmetries has/have the most impact on health and fitness and why), and how external systems (i.e., the environment it lives in) can impact its symmetry and influence its health and fitness. I think this was quite successful because students began to realize the various types of symmetry a single organism can have, and how these symmetries may or may not be influenced by genetics or nature, and how they may/may not be advantageous to their health and fitness.

After teaching this lesson I noticed there was a transformation in how students thought of the lesson topic at the beginning of the lesson and how it changed at the end of the lesson—this demonstrates Transformative Learning Theory in the design of my lesson. This transformation occurred during the student self-directed group research activity and was expressed during the classroom discussion near the end of the lesson. Students expressed that they initially only associate symmetry with fitness evolution, however, through their self-directed group research activity and class discussion, students discovered that the idea of symmetry driving evolution is biased towards organisms that can observe symmetry, and that there are also benefits of asymmetry that drive evolution.

In this practicum, I learned a lot about teaching in person since I have done most of my teaching virtually thus far. It was strange teaching again in person; I have never taught a class of that size before in person. I think teaching larger classes (>25 people for me) online prior to teaching this lesson in person helped me feel less anxious than I thought I would have. Although, there were some struggles that I forgot regarding in-person teaching. Here are some examples of my experiences teaching in-person and with my activity:

• A couple of hours prior to when I was scheduled to teach, Jim mentioned that he records his lessons on Zoom while he teaches in-person and that Zoom “crashes” almost every time he does this. As I taught my lesson Jim monitored the internet, and with little surprise, my Zoom “crashed” not too far into my lesson (Jim discovered this was because the internet dropped at 12:20 pm). From this experience, I would prefer not to teach in this hybrid manner as it took away ~5-8 minutes of class time from the students in the classroom while Jim and I tried to fix the issue (we could not get Zoom running again), and even when Zoom was working, it was challenging to monitor the Zoom chat and waiting room while doing activities in-person.
• Another thing I discovered was that I do not project my voice loud enough for everyone to hear in a ~100-person lecture hall. I found the situation frustrating because I was not provided with the suggestion or opportunity to be set up with a mic. For my next lesson in this classroom, I will ensure that there is a mic set up for me so that everyone in the class can always hear me clearly—if they can’t hear me, they are not going to pay attention, what was the point of coming to class at that point?
• Something I found with the group activity was that some groups of students finished it much faster than others and didn’t need the full 30 minutes they were allotted. For next time, I will either make the activity more challenging with some deeper-thinking questions, or I will give them less time to complete it and allot more time to the class discussion.

On March 30th I taught EOSC 221 students about megascale metamorphic processes (i.e., contact and regional metamorphism, pressure-temperature-time (P-T-t) paths, prograde and retrograde metamorphism) using a flipped-classroom approach. I approached teaching the class similar to how Lucy teaches her students (see my “Observation 2” post), where I assigned the students with asynchronous readings of the lesson notes 5-days before the synchronous lesson took place. For this practicum, I modified the pre-reading notes that Lucy originally created, I made the majority of the synchronous class questions, and I developed a new worksheet for the students to complete during the class. Lucy graciously provided me with feedback as I developed the worksheet and tested it out for me (she completed the worksheet as if she was a student) which was quite helpful as it made me aware of things I needed to modify before giving the activity to the students.

The synchronous portion of the lesson involved polling questions via the Zoom polling function or by annotating my Powerpoint slides, and discussion-based questions where students discussed their ideas in the Zoom chat and spoke aloud to explain how they came to their conclusions. After ~35 minutes, I assigned the students into break-out rooms with ~3 people per room where they applied the new concepts that they learnt about on the worksheet that I provided for them. During the time that they were working (~12 minutes), I jumped around into different rooms helping students with any questions they had. When the time was up, I pulled everyone from their small groups and briefly discussed some common questions students had and gave them instructions on where to upload the worksheet.

The teaching and learning theories that I implemented in my teaching approach (that I am aware of) include assessment and feedback and Experiential Learning Theory. The formative assessment involved the in-class polling and discussion questions where students received instant feedback and the summative assessment involved students working on an activity where they received some instant feedback, but most of the feedback was given after they submitted the activity. Using the flipped-classroom approach, students went through the experiential learning cycle as follows: (1) read through and thought about the class material beforehand, (2) came to class and thought about what they read and practiced applying their knowledge via the formative and summative feedback assessments, (3) reflected and thought about if they understood how they applied what they read, (4) thinking about how they could apply their knowledge differently for next time. In addition to the formative assessments, the worksheet activity provided an opportunity for students to apply their new knowledge and gain concrete experience in drawing and interpreting P-T-t paths from made-up garnet analyses in different metamorphic terranes (i.e., contact and regional). For this activity, I gave the students an example of how to plot and draw the first of six P-T-t paths. I wanted the students to have ~25-minutes to work on the activity, however, I only left students with 12-minutes because of poor time management. Although we ran out of time to complete the activity during class time, the students were given 2 days to complete the activity, where the submitted assignment is worth 1% of their overall grade. From looking through their completed worksheets, it is apparent that the students struggle with writing equations and deciphering between regional and subduction-related metamorphism. This feedback tells me that if I use this activity again to give the students more practice writing equations during the lesson (before the activity) and for me to better specify the differences between the different metamorphic terranes.

It was nice to see that the formative assessments I provided during the synchronous lesson (i.e., the polling and discussion questions) showed me that most of the students did the pre-readings and understood most of the key ideas. These questions I asked throughout the lesson provided not only me with feedback, but the students with feedback on their understanding of the ideas that they were learning about. I think that having set the expectation that the first portion of the class time is reserved for a mix of low-stakes questions seemed to make the students comfortable in participating in the polls, discussions, and annotating my slides. The students were also comfortable asking questions if they were looking for further clarification on an answer. Again, I think they were comfortable doing so because the class time is carved out for them to test themselves with the guidance of an instructor.

Regarding disciplinary attitudes, I was trying to teach the students how to use their critical thinking and interpretation skills with respect to large-scale processes through deep time in the reading materials and in the worksheet activity. To do this, students were given only a couple data points (i.e., Pmax and Tmax and their corresponding P’s and T’s) to plot for each path. Students then had to interpret a path that the rock sample would have taken by reflecting on how they think the samples moved from through the crust over time. When students began drawing their path, they became confused as they were not sure what rate a rock would be buried and uplifted. When they confronted this issue, they realized that the path is time and that geologic processes are dynamic through time, and that with a lack of data we cannot assume a particular path, thus we have to interpret the path with the information and knowledge we have.

From my practicum, I learnt that it is challenging to manage time in a flipped-classroom, where discussions may go on for longer than planned. If I were to teach this lesson again, I would ask fewer questions during the lesson time so that I could leave more time for the worksheet to be completed during the class time in their small groups – I did not at all account for how much time student questions would take up, which was the main factor for me going overtime. Allowing more time for the worksheet activity would encourage students to complete the worksheet and give them the opportunity to ask questions and get immediate feedback. Lucy and I briefly met right after the lesson, where she gave me some advice to save time if I were to use this approach again in the future. Regarding the formative assessments, she said if the majority of students get a question correct to confirm the answer and move on as the answer does not need an in-depth explanation. She also mentioned to me that I should practice saying student names when they answer questions in chat to help create more of a personal connection with them. I did think about doing this, however, I always get nervous about pronouncing people’s names wrong… But I can always ask for them to correct me, so I will definitely practice doing this more in the future. 🙂

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.

Hello again!

In this reflective post of my first practicum, I discuss the process of my lesson preparation, my experience during my lesson, and my post-lesson check-in with my mentor, Brett. Please note that I paraphrase any conversations we had.

About a week before my first practicum, Brett and I met briefly via Zoom, where I asked him a few questions about the dynamics of his class (EOSC 110 – The Solid Earth: A Dynamic Planet) to prepare for my lesson. Brett informed me that in addition to quiz questions he asks students throughout the lesson he also includes a participatory learning activity. The activity is normally uploaded onto Microsoft Teams for students to annotate. I was (and still am) unsure on how to fully use Microsoft Teams, but Brett suggested that I create an activity using PowerPoint slides which he would then upload for me on Microsoft Teams for the students. I asked Brett things I should consider when preparing my lesson, and he mentioned that the students are non-majors, most students have English as their second language, and all students are unfamiliar with geology jargon. This was very helpful to me so that as I created my lesson I was conscious about avoiding non-essential jargon, and when introducing new ideas or new jargon to check-in in with the students by implementing quiz questions to make sure they understand it before moving on with the lesson.

A few days before my first practicum, Brett sent me two items: a lesson on the rock cycle and igneous rocks that was being taught the day before mine, and a list of learning objectives with a few slides that were taken from a version of the lesson he taught last year. He decided to split the original lesson (which was the different types of volcanoes, and their explosivity, shape, products, hazards, and global distribution) into two separate lessons, so it was up to me to modify the materials he gave me to create a lesson that focuses on volcano shapes, explosivity, and products, and create quiz questions to and a participatory activity for that lesson. I appreciated Brett sending me materials taught in the lesson prior to mine so that I could see what the students knew about igneous rocks and processes and reference back to that material to help the students connect how processes discussed in that lesson relate to the processes that would be discussed in my lesson.

Some of the CATL teaching and learning theories that I tried to implement in my teaching plan included the Theory of Constructivism, Active Learning, Assessment, and Pedagogical Content Knowledge. Regarding the Theory of Constructivism, I tried to create a context for the lesson and building knowledge from previous experiences with volcanoes by getting students to reflect and post their answers by prompting them with a few questions. I also encouraged students to build knowledge from the previous lesson that Brett taught by asking a couple quiz questions relating the material of the previous lesson to the current lesson material. From this, I noticed students were quite responsive throughout the lesson and were not afraid to contribute when I asked students to help create definitions for new ideas on some blank slides. For Active Learning, students worked in pairs and discussed prompted questions amongst themselves and then drew and annotated two different types of volcanoes with their partner. From this, I saw students implement elements from the lesson into their drawings and creating a story, showing how processes at different scales affect the shape, explosivity, and products of volcanoes; this may touch on Experiential Learning Theory, but I’m still working on my own understanding of the theory. To assess students’ progress throughout the lesson, I incorporated quiz questions to see if they were meeting the LOs. This allowed me to see when students were understanding an idea, or when they weren’t quite understanding it. This helped me gauge where students needed more help or when an idea needed to be re-explained. Lastly, I incorporated a bit of Pedagogical Content Knowledge. Throughout the lesson, I wanted to draw attention to how microscopic (small-scale) processes affect macroscopic (large-scale) processes, for example, how silicate content in a magma affects its viscosity, and in turn, the shape of a volcano and the explosivity of a volcano. Not only did I echo this during lecturing, but it was also incorporated into the learning activity. The results of the learning activity and the quiz responses showed me that overall students were building an understanding of how to think about volcanic processes. However, I think I would have gotten a better sense of how students were affected by this if I facilitated a class discussion where students discussed how the processes they learnt about affect each other.

I chose to approach the lesson from the point of view of how humans are impacted by volcanism because (1) it is easier to become motivated about a subject if it impacts you in some way, and (2) this lesson was preparing students for a more in-depth lesson on volcanic hazards. I think this was successful because this allowed students to personalize the meaning of the lesson to them, thinking about how volcanoes have or could impact their lives. Students were very responsive to my questions regarding their thoughts and feelings about volcanoes with respect to society and themselves. Throughout the lesson, I was trying to teach students how to relate different magmatic processes at different scales. To help guide students, I chose to start from small-scale processes (silicate concentrations affecting magma composition and viscosity) to large-scale processes (volcano shape, explosivity, and products). I think this approach was successful because most of the students were successfully meeting the learning objectives for the lesson. I think that the lesson could also be taught successfully from going large to small. I simply chose to go from small to large scale processes because their previous lesson that was related to this material was talking about small-scale processes, so I thought it would be easier for students to build up (scale-wise) from that. To help students apply what they learnt outside of the context they learnt it in, I asked students to look at a map of the Earth’s active tectonic plate boundaries with current active volcanoes and consider questions such as (1) Do people often live near active plate boundaries and volcanoes? (2) What types of volcanoes occur near you? Near UBC? (3) What types of hazards should these people be aware of in these settings?

If I did the lesson again I would definitely keep the learning activity, however, I would fine-tune the instructions and provide a sample for each step of the activity to help guide students. I looked at their drawings and most were on the right track but there were some common key elements that were missing in most of their drawings (i.e., the correct shape of the volcanoes which is caused by different viscosities which is attributed to the concentration of silicate in the melt). I think another fun idea could be to get a group of students to draw one type of volcano and another group a different type, and then each group could teach the other group about the volcano that they drew. Something else I would change would be my example photo for a volcano with rhyolitic lava since it was not as accurate as it could have been. It was a stratovolcano but should have been a dome and it is important for students to not mix those up. I think this mistake stems from my own lack of exposure to seeing photos of rhyolite domes throughout my education, and I don’t want to repeat the cycle! Regarding videos I incorporated in the lesson, I would make sure to maximize the videos (theatre mode) and add the video link on the slide under the video. I didn’t realize that some students were watching the lesson off their phones or small-screened devices, so not maximizing the videos must have not been very useful to them. Lastly, I would like to ask for student feedback after the lesson via a quick < 5-minute survey, just checking what points were clear and not clear and why, and if students felt if they were motivated and felt included and why/why not.