As a graduate student in plant pathology, I am naturally curious to learn more about my field of study, microbiology, ecology, as well as other subjects that uncover the workings of nature. I want to impart that inquisitory spirit and awe of understanding the world to students. While I think it is important for learners to be given information through traditional lectures, I believe a person learns best when they put in their mental energy and review material. My own personal experience looked like typing keywords into Google Scholar to find scientific papers about population genetics. I did not know much about population genetics, but I had a chapter in my dissertation devoted to studying the population genetics of a particular fungus. Throughout my graduate journey, I have been learning how to learn, which involved wrestling with unknown and confusing concepts. As a student in the classroom, I appreciated working with classmates to read through scientific papers or lab activities. Collaboration in the classroom reflects how I, as a scientist, continue to learn, talking through questions and literature with my fellow graduate students and professors.
As an instructor, I present materials in various ways, such as text on lecture slides or in the textbook, lecture notes, illustrative explanations on the chalkboard, supplemental videos, and one-on-one tutoring during office hours. To encourage engagement, I incorporate activities that require learners to recall information, describe observations, or share their opinions based on their own experiences or other courses. In addition, I utilize group activities, projects, and review sessions in the classroom to promote collaboration and enable students to learn from each other. I review material constantly and connect the material covered in previous lectures to current concepts to help students strengthen information retrieval. I have used these methods while guest lecturing or teaching introductory meteorology for non-major students.
While teaching introductory meteorology, I implemented poll questions throughout the lectures. I often start the class with a question to review a concept from the previous lecture, or as a primer for the current lesson. Poll questions in the middle or end aim to encourage students to recall or apply concepts covered in the current lecture. I created Depth of Knowledge study guides, which indicate the level of understanding (i.e., recall information, apply concepts, or relate course concepts to broader topics) students need to exemplify on the exam. The study guide also contained associated sources (e.g., lecture or textbook) and practice problems to give students various options to study.
I believe students become more engaged with the course material when they can incorporate their interests. In class, I ask students to share their experiences and use their examples to describe concepts. I also share my experiences or real-world examples that enable students to connect course material to their fields of study or personal lives. I also encourage students to share without being prompted. In the meteorology course, students readily shared their experiences with various storms, such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and sandstorms. For the same course, I created a semester-long writing assignment that involved comparing climatic conditions between two locations, State College, PA, where the students were attending school, and their hometown or a city of their choice. I aimed to promote scientific writing and literature research through the writing assignments and implemented an iterative process to give students feedback on their writing and to break up the research paper into more manageable sections.
Although my teaching style and methods impact student engagement and learning, I believe my attitude plays a role in enriching learning. I maintain excitement and enthusiasm while lecturing and create an inclusive environment for inquiry and curiosity by prompting students to ask questions and affirming them when they share. Inclusivity involves accessibility, so I prepare material in different formats, such as hard copies, and provide subtitles or transcripts to videos I show during class. Although I’m an educator, I also need to be constantly learning. I admit when I do not know the answers to questions and strive to research and answer those questions in the next class. Since I can learn from my students, I value their feedback, which has come directly through course evaluations (SRTEs) and surveys midway through the semester and indirectly through students’ performance on assignments, quizzes, and exams. As a teaching assistant for the meteorology course, student surveys informed me how to incorporate students’ interests and help them succeed on their exams. The feedback influenced the assignments and activities I implemented in the meteorology course when I became an instructor.
