Blog Entry #2

The reading this week covered weekly class preparation, running a discussion, and class plans. There were many useful areas of interest in these chapters.

• The section on lesson formats gave some interesting points that I will need to consider. For the most part Biology has a lot of lecture, and I have always planned on using PowerPoint as my main tool in teaching. The main reason I would use it is somewhat selfish. I don't like to write things out in front of groups. I think that the cons listed in the book can be minimized by practicing tempo and allowing some room for questions or limited discussion. In the worst case scenario, I could always prepare extra slides covering different material and keep that in reserve should it become relevant.

• The effective discussion questions were also helpful for me because I think that I would likely have used some of the "don'ts" without realizing that I was hindering discussion development or being esoteric.

There were a lot of things in here that could be implemented in Biology as a whole provided that the teacher specifically picks the right lectures to apply the techniques.

• Discussions are helpful for getting students involved, but there are limited situations where the come into play in many science classes. Intro classes are often way too large, so those classes need the lecture format where the teacher imparts facts on the students. Higher level classes allow for discussion. Here the class sizes are smaller and the topics are a little more varied. This would be a good place to drop in a discussion every other week or so. This would be good if therre are scientific journal article to read or bioethical topics to discuss.

• Another thing that could be implemented in the discussion style of teaching here is the idea of being the Devil's Advocate. There is a lot of common ground in this part of the world. Many of the people in class have the same background and ideas, so a discussion could fall flat quickly when one person talks and the rest agree.

• Grammar and writing reviews are very important in science. Whether it is a class paper or an actual scientific journal article, a scientist needs to be, if not eloquent, at least understandable. If you can't get your point across then you can't get funding or the accolades you deserve. This is a must for people learning to be in the sciences.

I plan on using much of this information when I begin teaching classes.

• Labs are excellent places to have discussions and debates because the groups are smaller. I think that when I can find a good place to have a debate I would like to split the groups up based on how they feel on an issue(provided there are approximately even sides) and have them debate the opposing view from their own. I think that when you need to look at the other side to argue it it is more difficult to dismiss it out of hand.

• I will at some point, in any lower level classes at least, have some time talking about grammar and sentence structure. It won't be like an actual English class, but something to remind people the getting your point across clearly is important. In the higher level courses, I will probably have some sort of paper that the students will need to peer review. This is important in making it readable for me and getting students used to the peer review process that many journals employ.

• I want to be an organized teacher that has thing ready beforehand if at all possible, because those are the type of teachers that I like the best when I am a student. Having things ready for the students seems to be easy enough right now. Perhaps this will change, but I hope it doesn't.

I have been looking around at websites that offer information on college teaching and one of my favorite sites so far is http://www.facultyfocus.com/. It has a lot of information on all sorts of things including those covered by the readings we covered this week.