Teaching Experience

at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor:

Outreach

Teaching Workshops

Teaching Philosophy

In the classroom, gaining a student’s interest and participation is the greatest task of a teacher.  Both the process and evidence for learning is by doing, whether by writing, presenting, measuring, or by active listening and discussion.  The challenge for the teacher is to inspire interest to start the process of learning, provide the direction and focus the energy of both the individual student and the class as a whole.  Students should be able to comprehend new subject material as well as have the ability to make their own informed decisions and opinions about concepts and data they face in the future.  My teaching goal is to create an environment that allows students with different strengths to interact with material in several ways, with variety in both the presentation of material and in the assessment of how students have reached their goals.

Learning process

Often in general biology classes, courses are arranged with a large lecture format for first exposure, with discussion and lab sections designed for the learning process to take place in smaller groups.  As students specialize in topics such as aquatic ecology, smaller settings emerge.  As an undergraduate, the most memorable classes I took were ones that included inspiring topics and intensive projects.  Learning occurs only when a student is engaged with the material; too often students are passive when the only presentation of material is a lecture format.  The college setting is most beneficial when learning and teaching happen with the added benefit of interaction with other students and the instructor. 

Goals

My goals for student learning include both knowledge and comprehension.  In learning the details within a course, students should also learn key concepts and methods of analysis that they can retain long after graduation.  Understanding the basics of the scientific method, for example, will enable students to critically examine new data or viewpoints they will face in the future.  This is particularly important with the current “hot” topics of global change and evolution.  Gaining a general knowledge of the interconnectedness of ecological systems also allows students to appreciate the world around them and understand the impact our society makes on the rest of the planet.  In today’s world, citizens need to be able to make their own decisions when presented with information as well as support their opinions.  Fundamentally, students should learn to challenge ideas with a basic scientific framework as well as communicate and work with people who differ in background or opinion. 

Enactment

In order to reach these goals for my students, I prefer to structure classes around projects when possible.  I first set the tone for the course by emphasizing approachability and interaction between students as well as with instructors.  Small groups encourage interaction and following a flexible timeline keeps everyone focused and moving forward.  Since students often have different backgrounds and levels of preparation, the activities necessary to carry out projects allow students to approach the subject matter from different directions.  Requiring activities such as reading for research, analyzing data to test hypotheses, and presentation of project results not only allow multiple opportunities to clarify ideas, but also prepares students for functioning in their chosen workplaces after graduation.  For example, in one of my discussion classes, interactive groups allowed two people who had very different backgrounds and opinions at the beginning of the semester to choose to work together to present a successful web project by the end of the term. 

Assessment

Students definitely have different strengths when it comes to assessment.  In a recent laboratory class I taught, I had students that could do very well on exams, but did not have any writing skills.  Conversely, I had students that could produce very well researched and thought-out papers, but performed poorly on detail-oriented exams.  In the end, the different strengths of the students balanced out and grades reflected the amount of effort student chose to put into their projects and the course overall.  Assessing the degree to which students were able to comprehend the subject through writing or presenting projects is more important than simply providing multiple choice exams which rely on last-minute cramming of knowledge which will likely be lost in time for their next test. 

Experience

In my time teaching at the University of Michigan, I have been fortunate to be able to teach a wide variety of classes with wide ranges of enrolled students.  When I started, I was able to step into a very defined course, Introductory Biology.  After several terms, I moved on to teach more specific topics such as Introductory Microbiology, Introduction to Global Change and Aquatic Ecology.  Teaching freshmen and upper classmen, as well as both Biology majors and non-majors with a number of different faculty has allowed me to observe and test out very different styles of teaching and assessment. 

Growth

I believe that students that leave biology and ecology courses with a fundamental understanding of the scientific method and how life functions will help move society in productive directions.  I am still striving to incorporate more interactive styles of learning because I believe that the interactive experiences they have while learning ecological knowledge and comprehension will enable students to work well with people of diverse backgrounds and to think critically about key issues in our society.