I have been marching through “How To” posts in a somewhat
sequential (by career state) order, and I intended to next write a third one on
“How To Get a Faculty Position.” However, events have conspired to cause me to
write an out-of-order post that I had been planning to get to eventually.
This year, at the request of the Awards Committee in our
Biology Department, I applied for McGill University’s Principal’s Prize for
Excellence in Teaching. Having been chair of the awards committee in the past,
I knew how hard it was to convince people to apply for awards, and so I agreed
to do so even though I had little expectation of success. I prepared an
extensive dossier, collated quantitative and qualitative student comments and
ratings, requested letters from past students, and so on. Then, some six months
ago, I sent the application off to the university and promptly forgot about it.
Amazingly, just a month or so ago, I started to get emails congratulating me on
receiving the award. I was quite surprised to have gotten the award as I know
that many other professors at McGill are excellent teachers.
Then came invitations from a number of offices at McGill to attend the Fall
graduation ceremonies at which the award would be given. As I am on sabbatical
in California, however, I had to decline. Just this last Friday, however, I got
another request from The McGill Reporter to provide information for an article
about the award winners. The request was for me to answer by email a series of questions
including the following:
How would you describe your teaching style?
What are your strengths as a teacher? Weaknesses?
What are the biggest challenges of teaching? And the greatest rewards?
What are the most important qualities a teacher should have?
Any advice for students thinking about becoming teachers?
Rather than doing a quick and inefficient job of answering
the questions, it made more sense to simply write the post about “How To Teach”
that I had intended to do anyway. So here we go – a bit out of order in the “How
To” series but suitably timed in other respects (the award is to be presented tomorrow, Nov. 10). For the below points, I have borrowed heavily from the teaching
dossier that I originally submitted as my application for the award, which is why it is even more self-referential than previous post.
Inspiration-based
teaching
My
approach to teaching is centered on the integration of two goals: to challenge
students and to inspire their interest in the subject. Perhaps we could call
this “inspiration-based teaching” so
as to starkly contrast it with classical “information-based” teaching.
Information-based teaching fails because most students quickly forget detailed
information, no matter how good the teacher. Little long term value thus results
from cramming students full of facts, formulae, and figures. This information
is, after all, freely available online all the time. (Of course, CONCEPTS can be critical.) It is much more important
to challenge and inspire students with an engaging and inspiring narrative. I
implement this inspiration-based teaching model through several key elements.
Hands-on
learning even in huge classes. Instead of using only images and text on slides to illustrate concepts,
I bring the REAL THINGS to every class no matter its size – the examples below
come mainly from Introductory Biology, which can have over 600 students. Every lecture
is accompanied by multiple physical objects. In one lecture, I brought in a
gorilla and human skeleton – no small feat as the former is very heavy. In
another, I brought in a measuring tape and spread it out across the entire
width of the room to illustrate in a concrete way just how big an 18 m whale
shark really is. I even brought in two live snakes, which the students loved (the
image shows students clustered at the front of the room after class to see the
snakes). In student comments, appreciation of these hands-on opportunities was
repeatedly expressed, and here are some edited examples.
 |
| Showing off a snake - many students had never been near one before. |
I really enjoy seeing some tangible
objects, ie skulls of polar bears, snakes, etc.
In the first lecture he actually pulled
out a tape measure and showed us how long a shark was, which was really
interesting! Also he has this stuffed animal that's a fish, and he used it to
explain the different parts of the fish which was really cool.
In addition, in today's lecture he
brought out two skeletons of different species of primates. The Gorilla, and the homo sapien. We
were able to see first hand the structural differences between the two, and how
they affected the way of life of both species.
I loved that he always had something to
add to the lecture. He brought in snakes for the reptile section, a fake penguin for the
birds lecture and did the drunk dance for the evolution section. Terrific!
love the in-class demos
I love how he bring in objects to show the class (eg. Platypus, gorilla skeleton.
I really appreciated all the material he brought to
the lectures.
i enjoyed how he brought in other props for his
lectures.
Teaching as performance. I try to make my lectures into performances, perhaps
a legacy of my interest in performing arts as a high school student. As the
most overt and concrete example, I use a tongue-in-cheek “interpretive dance”
to weave all of the evolutionary mechanisms into a single metaphor based on the
“Drunkard’s Walk.” If only a single item
could be used to encapsulate my teaching, this video would be it. I did the
performance in multiple classes for more than 10 years before finally
videotaping it and posting it on youtube November last year (2014). In less
than a year, it has been viewed 1653 times and a number of other profs had said
they either show the video in class or do their own version (of course, the
latter is much more fun for students to watch). Numerous students have said to
me years later that this was the most memorable lecture of their entire
university experience.
Integrate with research. It is sometimes argued that, at universities, teaching
and research are two solitudes, or simply that time invested in one trades-off
with time that can be invested in the other. To some extent these sentiments are
true. However, at the least, integrating your own research into lectures helps
students see how the material you are discussing is directly relevant to
current research at the university. And, of course, lecturers tend to be more
passionate and excited when talking about their own research, which the
students can really tell. In addition to this approach, I suggest two other
routes. First, integrate the published research of other undergraduates at your
university into your lectures. I think undergrads are inspired toward both
teaching and research when they see the research that has been conducted by the
undergrads who came before them. That is, people sitting in the very room
where they are now sitting conducted research that is now being used to educate
students only a few years later. Second, try when possible to incorporate a
research project into the class and, when feasible, encourage students to work
toward publishing the projects. For instance, I teach an upper level undergrad-graduate
class that has, as one its core elements, the preparation of a meta-analysis (or
other project) with an eye toward publication. I have taught the course five
times and students (including some undergrads) have thus far (Nov. 8, 2015) published
a total of 11 papers that have been cited a total of 693 times. Perhaps it is a
bit absurd for a class to have an H-index but so far it would be 9. The point
isn’t that this is a great class, merely that teaching and research can work
together to mutual gain.
Engage social media. The current generation of university students gets much of its information through social media and professors would do well to embrace this technology. Before and after lectures, I tweet relevant topics (#biol111: see examples above) for students, and at least 50 students in the class were immediate “followers.” I have also generated educational videos, including The Adaptive Radiation of Darwin’s Finches (6,793 views this year) and Wooly Bear Caterpillar Cocoon Time Lapse (10,306 views this year). In comments, students repeatedly pointed to these activities as enhancing their appreciation of the course and their “connectivity” with the professor. I have yet to make any social media activities compulsory or testable, and instead use them to connect with the students who are really genuinely interested in the topic.
 |
| A few #biol11 tweets. |
Have
fun
----------------------------------------
Previous "How to" posts
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