Cool Things about Teaching

• Course: EOSC112
• Date: April 1st, 2019
• Class Size: ~200 people
• Topic: Future climate

During my teaching practicum during term 2, I decided to teach two consecutive classes on a similar topic. During my previous lesson, I introduced students to climate models and the process of how models are created. During my next class, I wanted to build on their experience and introduced them to a more complex “real-life” climate model that has been used to predict the future of the planet for the next century.

This class was designed as a lecture-based session (with clicker participation). Although, l could have been more creative and structure the class differently. I think I reversed to my most comfortable way of teaching (but not the optimal one) due to lack of time to prepare for it properly and also, I was afraid that doing worksheet activity gain would be too much for the students. Thus, if I am going to teach this section next year, I want to create something more hands-on for the students, rather then just lecturing.

Throughout the lesson, I tried always referring them back to the previous class, to build on students’ experience and show them the link between what they did with what they are studying now.  I also added a clicker question, asking students to choose the most effective way/ action they can take to reduce warming (reduce CO2 in the atmosphere). I gave them a list of options. Then I showed them the infographics (see below) with the actual impact they will make with their action. Through this activity, I wanted to emphasize the importance of personal choices/ action on the future of our Planet. Unfortunately, most of the actions at UBC are focused on the importance of recycling. Although it is a crucial step we need to take, such action is not enough to mitigate a drastic temperature rise in recent years. So, I wanted to share this idea with students to introduce a sense of urgency and to empower them to do something more than just our convenient behavior.

This infographic shows climate choices. Credit: Seth Wynes/Kimberly Nicholas, Environmental Research Letters, 2017

The thing that I think went wrong:

• I was too nervous, and as a result, my pace was too fast, and we finished 10 min earlier than expected
• I did not explain the graphs properly (pointing out the axis, units, explaining each line)
• My gestures were hectic, and my hand movements were excessive

The course instructor, Dr. Waterman, was observing me during the lecture> she identified several strength and weaknesses in my presentation.

Strengths:

• She appreciated the worksheet I designed, she commented on a  great design; appropriate level; and that it was well-timed and was well-executed.
• she also commented on my proficiency in utilizing active learning techniques (clickers) during the lecture. She also noted that I did a great job in reacting on the spot to student responses and targeting my lecturing accordingly.
• Dr. Waterman also commented on my ability to design/ update the lecture materials for the course. She said that the content was excellent because it was current, high quality and diverse (e.g. IPCC projections, as well as how personal choices impact one’s carbon footprint). She also mentioned that I was very responsible in posting helpful class resources in a timely fashion.

Suggestions for improvement:

• The clicker questions for the worksheet debrief were perhaps a little too easy to be optimally effective and maintain engagement.  She encouraged me to continue to experiment to find the right balance between being affirming and challenging/engaging students.
• It appeared sometimes challenging for me to keep all students attentive during the frequent shifts between group work and debrief for the worksheet exercise.  It is challenging to have to try to repeatedly bring students’ attention back to the front.
• Dr. Waterman also suggested to project your voice more and/or turn out your microphone amplification.

References:

“The Climate Mitigation Gap: Education and Government Recommendations vs. Effective Individual Actions” Wynes, S. and Nicholas K 2017 Environ. Res. Lett. 12 074024 , iopscience.iop.org/article/10. … 088/1748-9326/aa7541

Course: EOSC112

Date: March 29, 2019

Class Size: ~200 people

Topic: Future climate

I am continuing to challenge myself to change my lecture style from instructor-focused to student-centered teaching. During my 1^st teaching practicum in Term 2 of CATL program, I decided to teach a class that I have been TAing for 5 years. The course schedule has been modified this term, and as a result, an additional class in the last module of the course, The Future Climate, was added to the class schedule. As the previous years only contained 3 lectures per module, there was a need to design an additional one. I was assigned to collect the additional material on future climate section and update already existing lectures with up-to-date information. As a result, I thought it will be a great opportunity for me to implement what I have learned during CATL in designing a lesson.

I was trying to structure my lesson in the form of activity that was leading students through the Kolb’s cycle. My activity was consisting

During this lesson I was trying to accomplish the following goals:

Channel A

• DEVELOPE a simple climate model
• COMPARE different policy outcome using simple climate model

Channel B:

• To understand the uncertainty in human action (predicting how parameter will change in 2050)
• In reality, the best option is not usually the one that is most effective, but that is more affordable.
• There is multiple of possibilities when we talk about future
• You can only work with what is available, but not with what is needed.

Overall, the activity went well. The timing of each part was in good pace, with no rushing at the end (which was very surprising as I usually tend to over- budget the activities I crate). Students seemed to be very engaged in the discussion, but for the next year, I would make the writing portion a bit more condensed. Also, I was suggested to modify the model slightly to make the estimates a bit closer to the real world.

During my teaching practicum I wanted to achieve the following goals:

• Teach a large class
• Improve the class activity
• To improve my class management skills

I decided to teach a large class as most of my teaching experience comes from teaching small classes (30-40 people), so that is why I chose to teach an EOSC 114 class with ~260 students. I also chose this class as I am unfamiliar with subject material, thus during my class preparation I would need to work both the PCK and PK aspects of my teaching.

I also wanted to gain more experience in designing and improving various activities for teaching, as I am going need this experience during my CATL project. During the class, I was responsible for teaching part of the lecture ( 2 lectures, morning and evening classes)  where students are doing a worksheet exploring the effect of the meteor impact on the Vancouver area. The way the worksheet was originally designed is that students enter the provided parameters into the meteor impact simulator ( a website that calculates the effect based on the input parameters) and explore how it affects the magnitude of the impact ( i.e. building, earthquake strength and etc). However, I found this set up is a little bit disengaging for students as they just follow the instruction without going through the KOLB cycle.

Thus, I created a worksheet consisting of two parts:

• Part students get familiar with how to use a simulator and where to extract the data for their further work. I played around with various parameter settings and came up with the set of parameters that produce the meteor with various impacts (i.e. large earthquakes, huge thermal radiation that will result in ignition of paper, the collapse of poorly structured buildings and many others for students to explore). Although the initial conditions were fixed, I let the students decide themselves what kind of data they want to record (e.g., I asked them to choose the events that are the most dangerous or something that students find interesting). Thus, students did not just copy the results of the simulation but filter the information obtained through the website and use the judgment whether something was worth recording or not.
• Once the students were familiar with how using the settings, I asked them to design their own experiment where they can explore how a change in one input parameter will affect the impact on Earth. Students were free to choose what parameter to change (meteor diameter, an angle of collision with Earth, density or velocity of the meteor) and to explore the changes. I also constructed the worksheet in a similar way they would write their lab reports: starting with the objective, then the table where they record their input parameters and decide what they change and what things they will observe, then a place to record their observations and lastly a small conclusion of their experiment.

I found this activity to go quite well, students seemed to be very interested in the topic and were experimenting with various setup. I also asked students to work in groups of 2-3 people that also make the activity more engaging for students.

The highlight of this activity for me was a bit unexpected but in a good way. While designing the worksheet I was trying to find parameters that will result in the generation of tsunami, but I could not find any to achieve even a small one. After reading certain posts/documentation to the program, I found that those features were not yet available. However, during the class, one group find the optimal parameters to generate a tsunami and students were very excited to achieve smth that I thought was impossible. I think that this was one of the best outcomes from my classroom where students exceeded the expectation and even did a better job at exploring than their instructor.

During my first teaching practicum, I found myself to be extremely nervous, even though I was teaching a smaller class. However, while I was teaching this course I found myself to be more relax and more confident in what I was doing. I did not have a problem in answering students question, asking students to share their observations and generally to hold student attention. However, I think I was more confident because I was co-teaching lecture and my mentor who was present in the classroom. that is why for the future, I would like to conduct the whole lesson myself to make sure that I can manage and conduct the whole lesson without the presence of any senior instructors in the room.

Some of the identified drawbacks of my teaching

• I found that teaching 50 min class is way harder than teaching a 3hr ones as you need to be very efficient in the way you teach and n the way you structure your lesson
• As a result, the worksheet I created was a bit long and thus requires to be cut in half for future use.

During my first teaching practicum, I was teaching a 4^th-year course at my department (EOSC470 Biological Oceanography). This is an upper-level course offered though EOAS Department at UBC where students are exploring the marine ecosystems, factors, and processes responsible for distribution and abundance of marine organisms.

I wanted to create a more engaging fun lesson as I noticed that the “level of fun” is decreasing with the increase in course level in my department. Thus, almost all upper-level courses in my department are primarily taught by lectures with little focus on any activities (with the exception of worksheets and small group discussions). On the other hand, the lower level courses have a greater variety of various activities that are more creative and engaging for students.

So, my goal was to challenge myself to teach a hard upper-level topic in a unique and engaging way. During the lesson, I was aiming to accomplish the following aims:

• My challenge was to structure the lesson in the more experimental learning set up, rather than as a “standard“ lecture.
• Simulate the “real-world” experience in a group discussion setting
• Build up teaching confidence in teaching the material

Experimental Learning Set Up

I chose a topic of Estimation of Secondary Productivity. This is a quite complex topic that describes different methods how the secondary production can be estimated with the stress on the limitations and assumption of a given method.

I tried doing Experiential Learning lecture where the main role in the classroom was given to students rather than the lecturer. Thus, all the quality and the amount of information that is produced during the class is entirely dependant on the students. This is a completely new approach for me as I am more comfortable having more control over the class. Hence, My role was only to moderate the lecture to make sure that students understand their roles and the outcomes of this lesson and also help if I see them struggling during the activity.

Group Discussion Setting

I believe that all scientific discoveries and inventions are primarily done through collaborations rather than individual work. That is why I structured my lesson as a group discussion to simulate the teamwork in the scientific community. The goal was to compete for funding from a research agency to obtain the money to perform the experiment using one of the methods to estimate secondary production. However, to make the classroom experience more unique, I structured the group work in a game format similar to the “Mafia.”

Using my skills and experiences from a resource development for various courses, I designed a completely new game that I called “Science Mafia.” The game is designed to simulate the experience in scientific community and allow students to have an ability to practice the role-playing, skills. So each team had a chief scientist who was responsible for presenting the outcomes of their group work, reporters who helped taking notes and regular scientist that had various roles ( e.g., one scientist were more interested in the disadvantages of the method, the other was more interested in highlighting the significance of the method).

Example of cards for class activity

Thus, each student was contributing to the overall conversation within the group and while focusing on different aspects of the method that I wanted them to pay attention too. However, each group was doing only one method that they were assigned, thus, to make sure each group can learn about another method each of the groups had a “spy” whose role was at the end of the class to switch to another group and share with them everything they learned about other group methods. Thus, all groups had a chance to learn about all the methods. In addition, spies also could switch the roles their team members have so any one of them can end up with a different role each round.

Teaching Confidence

I have never taken any courses related to Biological Oceanography and of course, never took the EOSC 470. Thus, not only I am lacking the Pedagogical Knowledge, but also, I am limited by the Content Knowledge.as a result, I was not feeling confident in the material I chose to present. However, I made it as my additional challenge to become confident in things I had never done before or studied myself.

To make myself more confident, I designed a lesson plan where I scheduled minute by minute activities and wrote down specific steps how to conduct the activity, how many minutes each step of the activity should take to make sure I have enough time to finish the exercise. To have a certain structure in the class, even though the outcome of the lecture will primarily lay on the students allowed me to have a certain control over the group dynamics and the course of the lesson.

Disciplinary Behaviours

I was trying to emphasize the following aspects that are common in my area:

• Independent work. students were expected to read and analyze paper on their own and make a summary based on the given questions given
• Group/ collaborative work. During the classroom, students were role-playing the “scientific ”
• Proficiency in Analysis of the scientific literature, limitations, and assumptions

However, to make sure that students can pay attention to these behaviors, I wanted to make sure that they have some background knowledge in the studied topic to have enough confidence actually to practice these behaviors. Students also need to have a certain level of expertise to find certain activity effective. Thus I asked them to read a paper and do a small analysis before coming to class. As the class is made up of 4-year students, I felt that this wouldn’t be very problematic for them as they have been already trained in how to read and analyze the scientific paper.

Short Coming and Future Work

Overall, I think the class went OK. I was happy with the amount of work being done during the group’s discussion and the level of participation ( in general) of the students in the actual material. I also asked the students to give me a written anonymous feedback on my lecture. Based on the feedback students liked the following aspects of my teaching:

• Interactive class, funny set up and engaging activity
• Papers were straightforward to read
• Good public speaking
• Clear
• Well prepared

The following shortcomings have been identified:

• Improve the motivation of students to “do their homework.” Although the lesson before it was emphasized that students have to come prepared for the class by reading a paper and taking notes, it seemed that only a few people accomplished it. Thus, next time I can stress out that the material that will be covered in class will be part of the midterm and they will only get as much material as their group work. Thus, poor participation and preparedness to the lesson may result in very poor material gathered during the class, and, as a result, will not be sufficient to get a good grade on the final exam. The other way is to make sure students are ready is to set up an online test/quiz that will allow me to ask students the required questions and make sure that their level of knowledge is sufficient enough for the participation in the classroom.

• class management The other issue that I have been identified by my observer is the lack of class managements skill due to low self -esteem. I found it to be impossible to pose yourself as an effective instructor and hold student attention while you doubt yourself and your teaching style. As a result of doubting myself whether my lesson is “ good enough” for the upper-level class, I found myself to be extremely nervous, talking too fast during the explanations,

• Flexibility. Also, for the future, I would like to learn to be more flexible in my teaching, as I over-plan certain things. For instance, I planned 2 min “breaks” where students were basically given time to rest from the actual material and participate in a conversation with peers. I thought that the would be highly desired for the students and will even take more time. However, I found that students were not engaging in any talks with each other or their conversation was minimal. Thus, I should have modified my lesson plan right away to shorten that break time and allowing more time to do a discussion on the studied topic rather than trying to push them to engage in those conversations.

• Lesson Summary. To have a more solid summary at the end of the class was a requested thing both by the observer and students. Although at the end of the activity, the groups produced the worksheets that had a summary of each method. After class, I compiled all the material they had and uploaded all of their work on Canvas. However, there should be some sort of clear summary at the end of the class. Although I did mention about the information, they will be asked on the final exam, and what kind of things they supposed to know, maybe a summary slide would be nice to put on n my presentation so that students can access how well they performed during the class and how much they actually covered in their group.