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Each of my courses has a syllabus that briefly describes
the course, states the goals & objectives for the
course, identifies prerequisites, my office and office
hours, lecture dates and titles, texts and reading assignments,
format of exams, exam dates, lectures that will be covered
for each exam, worth of each exam and grading system.
Lectures are presented in as simple a manner as possible.
Students are encouraged to actively participate in class
discussions, bring to the attention of the class, course-related
information they see, hear or read in scientific, as
well as popular media. I want my students to feel so
passionate about their studies that it becomes a mission
for each one of them to optimize their learning experience
and maximize their acquisition of information! Towards
this end, at the beginning of each semester, expectations
are emphatically outlined and students are provided
tools for developing and practicing good studying habits
and for acquiring good time management skills. Still,
I continue to be concerned about those students who
feel that exams in Human Anatomy are too difficult &
that exams are formatted unfairly. I’m still trying
to find a way to reach these students, even though I
know that these complaints come largely from a few vocal
students who do not put in the necessary, required time
and effort for this course. Admittedly, my exam questions
are not “rote memory” type questions, but
rather ones that require synthesis and understanding
of concepts.
My biggest challenge for each of my classes has always
centered on how to get students to read class assignments
before coming to class. As well, I am always challenged
with the varied levels of preparedness of students enrolled
in my classes. One of the things that actually seem
to be working is an adaptation from a story that my
colleague Marty Tracey related to me. He told me that
when he was a graduate student, his professor would
sometimes call on a student to finish a given lecture.
So, at the beginning of the Spring 2005 semester, I
told the students in my class that periodically, I will
call on someone in the class to deliver the last 5 minutes
of lecture. Since that announcement, I noticed a marked
difference in students’ preparedness as well as
their level of participation in class discussions!
I received my first major teaching assignment in 1986
when I became an Assistant Professor at FIU and was
assigned a Human Anatomy class with 98 students. Students’
evaluations indicated that my lectures were either adequate
and clear or difficult and confusing. I had never taught
a class this large, and with such a diverse group of
students. During lectures, I spent large chunks of class
time providing background information because of the
nature of questions that students asked. At the same
time, I still tried to cover planned lecture material.
Also, I had overestimated the students’ level
of preparedness. After this experience, I encouraged
students to consult with me during office hours rather
than use class time to remedy individual problems. Subsequently,
I organized my lectures with a degree of flexibility
that allowed me to more readily accommodate a class
with diverse levels of preparedness.
Now, for every class that I teach, whether the enrollment
is 2 or 352, by the end of the first week of class,
I am privy to the academic background and academic load
of each student in my class. This information allows
me to better assess the composition of my class and
helps me to fine-tune my lectures to match the mix of
enrollees. The process I use is detailed below.
1. On the first day of classes all students are asked
to fill out a student information form
INFORMATION SHEET:
Name____________________________________________________________________
Year of College____________________________________________________________
Major (curriculum emphasis)__________________________________________________
Career Intentions___________________________________________________________
Course load this semester____________________________________________________
Courses taken in biology or related subjects______________________________________
What is your method for studying? _____________________________________________
How do you best understand and learn? ________________________________________
What works best for you in the classroom? ______________________________________
COMMENTS:
*Modified (I added the last 3 questions) from L.M. Elson
(1975) It’s Your Body, McGraw
Hill Book Company
2. There are one to four (volunteer or appointed) class
liaison(s) in all of my classes with 60 or more students.
I have found this to be very effective for a number
of reasons:
- Some students prefer to have a peer representative
communicate with the professor instead of personally
taking on that responsibility.
- The liaison provides the voice for the students
too shy to speak up.
- The liaison serves as an effective conduit because
the liaison/s and I establish an open and assessable
line of communication at the beginning of the semester.
Another strategy that is effective has its origins
in a course that I taught more than a decade ago. The
course met four days a week during the summer term,
and a lot of material was packed into a very brief period.
I realized that if there were problems in how I was
conveying information to students during this intensive
session, if not discovered immediately, could be devastating
for the students by the end of term. In an effort to
prevent this, I did the following: during the first
week of classes, I experimented with a number of teaching
approaches. I wanted to determine which would be the
most effective teaching format. During the second week
of classes, I solicited positive and negative feedback
from the students to ascertain their grasp of presented
material. This process provided great checks and balances
in determining the effectiveness of my teaching and
on whether students were actually learning. For large
classes, I encourage students to form study groups and
sometimes I randomly form the groups for them.
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