The Balancing Act

Lately, I have been devoting practically all of my time to teaching at the great expense of making progress on my dissertation. It is so difficult to prioritize research; when I don't make much progress on processing samples I have only let myself down, but when I don't ultra-prepare for my teaching commitments I feel like I am letting down all of my students. This is especially pronounced this semester because I am TAing for a class that I find really interesting (Biology of the Marine Environment) so I view each lab as an opportunity to show the students all kinds of different videos, photos, stories, etc to make the information that they need to know more interesting. It keeps them engaged, and I think that they do genuinely enjoy the lab (they are required to complete weekly reflective journal essays so I know, for the most part, what they are thinking), and I really get a lot out of the opportunity to teach about something that I enjoy, but I am worried about my ability to prioritize. Especially since, if I become a faculty member, this is a conflict that is likely to continue. Hopefully this problem would become less pronounced after teaching the same course for a couple of years, but the prospect of re-doing the course periodically to incorporate new techniques and technologies begs the question; when will we fit in all of the other things that we are supposed to be doing?

Interactive Virtual Demonstrations

After class last week I took some time to go through some virtual demonstrations. I had recently been looking for videos that would "tour" the inside of different cell types for my intro bio lab (a largely unsuccessful search; the only video that I found was much too complex for my students), so I was pretty impressed by this interactive program in which you can explore all of the different parts of the cell: http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/insideacell/

I showed it to my class and posted it on the discussion board but, honestly, I'm not sure that any of them care enough to actually look at it. Which, for me, is one of the problems with the interactive tools; for students that are interested and take the time to explore, these programs can be excellent, but for students that you are dragging through the material against their will, this type of technology might be giving them too much control. As much as we, as instructors, would like to think that everyone in all of our classes is there because they are genuinely interested in the course material, this is often not the case, and it is only because you are taking these students through the material step-by-step in front of them that they are actually learning anything. Might a switch to interactive tools lead to a larger discrepancy between overachieving and underachieving students? Wherein those who would learn the material anyway are benefitted by the ability to interact with the demo, but those students who are only learning the material because it is fed to them piece-by-piece suffer when they become more responsible for their own learning experience? And, as instructors, what is our obligation to students who are unwilling to actively participate in course activities? Should we go even further out of our way to try to stimulate them to engage in the learning process, or allow them to fail, survival-of-the-fittest style?

In the case of my class, the virtual cell was simply an extra resource that I pointed out to them in case they were interested, but in some classes, where these interactive materials are becoming more integral to student learning, this potential for an increased disparity in student learning may become a concern.

Web 2.0

As I was searching for educational wikis this week I came across one whose creator was motivated by a desire to see the use of more advanced technology in schools (he was actually referring to K-12 schools in Ireland). One of the points that was made by the author was that today's students are so technologically savvy that, for them, coming into the classroom requires that they power-down. At home these students are chatting online, starting up websites, YouTube-ing, searching Google Earth, etc; at school they are exposed to little more than PowerPoints which, for them, is a fairly remedial technology. I can easily see how a teacher might feel overwhelmed by the amount of technology out there and, unlike children, they are unlikely to spend our free time playing around with these programs. This could cause a rift between students' educational lives and their use of technology. I wonder what the influence of this compartmentation might be when these students reach the job market or the university level. Will they view YouTube as having educational value? Or will their idea of education be so separated from their technological lives that they will have trouble viewing technology as a means to an end rather than a completely different topic? And are we already having this problem?

The site (which aims to teach students to make videos with Google Earth):

http://www.googleearthireland.com/

Skill development vs course material

Our use of Google sites in class last time made me reflect on how nice it would have been to have a website when I was applying to graduate schools where I could have directed potential advisors to look for more information. That way I wouldn't have had to overload my initial e-mail with everything they might want to know. As this reflection makes me think that this would be a valuable tool for students during their job/graduate school searches, it would be nice to incorporate it into a class. However, given that I have no activities that would lend themselves well to publication via Google sites, the question becomes, "to what extent do I shape my class around the material I want to deliver vs. the techniques/technologies that I would like my students to know".

I think that this is an issue that we all face. Given that you are supposed to be teaching a course on, say, Herpetology, is it valid to also place emphasis on the students' ability to construct an informative PowerPoint, analyze data, or construct a Google site? I try to emphasize the development of these skills, but sometimes it comes at the expense of some of the course material, whether through splitting the attention of the students, or taking up time that I would have spent covering course material in class. Personally, I think that this is totally worth the expense, but I know that many professors are not of that mindset. They feel that exposure to statistics should occur in a statistics course and, presumably, exposure to useful technologies should be given within the context of some sort of technology course. The problem with this approach is that students, constrained by their schedules and course requirements, are unlikely to take classes specific to these topics. Should departments therefore develop integrated strategies to ensure that their students are exposed to relevant external material in a piecemeal fashion? A "I'll take on statistics in Limnology if you take on presentation skills in Animal Behavior" approach? This would obviously require a coordinated effort, the like of which seems unlikely to occur within my department, at least. So, I suppose that for the time being I will stick to taking the time to expose students to external subjects where I can, knowing full well that I can't do them justice to the topics within the constraints of the course in question, but also in the knowledge that if no one takes the time to expose them to these various skills, they may make in through their college experience full of knowledge but lacking in their ability to convey it.

Teaching Perspectives Inventory

Today I completed my Teaching Perspectives Inventory (http://teachingperspectives.com). I must admit that I was a bit incredulous as I was taking it, but I have to say that my results probably fit me fairly well. My dominant perspective came out as Developmental (Effective teaching must be planned and conducted "from the learner's point of view") with Transmission (Effective teaching requires a substantial commitment to the content or subject matter) not far behind. I think that these suit me fairly well because I like to stress key concepts that underlie patterns observed in nature (which I relate to examples within the context of the course in question) and I love to over-prepare for every lecture (both in terms of studying all of the literature associated with the content I plan to present, and in trying to make the presentation interesting enough to capture the attention of the class). It's interesting to me that a lot of the traits discussed under these two perspectives are things that I already had in my teaching philosophy, although I didn't identify them at the time as being associated with any particular perspectives.

As to the things that have influenced my teaching perspectives, I think that the years that I spent as a naturalist on a snorkel boat have probably had a long-term effect on my teaching strategies; since the passengers came from all types of backgrounds I would try to start all of my presentations with some key concepts upon which I could build (e.g. how islands form for the Hawaiian islands presentation or how the isolation/size of islands influence their biota for the reef life presentation), and as a large part of my job there was to get the passengers excited I focused on making my presentations as interesting as possible. Additionally, since people would ask you all types of questions, from "what was that fish with the long nose" to "why is the ocean that color" I felt that I had to be constantly learning all kinds of information in order to prepare for their questions.

As for why I apparently identify less with the other teaching perspectives, even then, when I was working educational trips for a conservation organization and was supposed to attempt to inspire people toward social reform, I found it hard to stress the importance of social action; I always felt that if I could get people excited about how interesting marine life was that that part would fall out on it's own. I guess that's why social reform didn't come out as one of my top perspectives! Apprenticeship and nurturing came out fairly low, as well; probably because I think that biology topics generally involve things that everyone should know (whether or not they are going to use this information at their jobs) and I feel that there should be professional distance between an instructor and their students (I want everyone to succeed, but I probably stress accountability over nurturing).

I have never blogged before, and I certainly never thought that I would ever do so, so hopefully this entry isn't too much of a disaster!