Talking about your teaching Flashcards
Do you enjoy teaching? Why?
I love to learn and my students teach me something new every day. I enjoy learning new things or researching, and love creating new lesson plans for my courses.
Besides that, to hear that a course they took from me made the difference? Priceless!
It is a challenge to teach for a diverse body of students, but I really like to prepare classes, do research prior to classes, and be prepared to be as clear, as consise and reach a diverse group of students.
How would you summarize your teaching philosophy?
My main teaching goals are as follows, while my teaching strategies are adaptable to their needs.
(i) Enable student to apply their newly-acquired knowledge and skills to tackle real-life problems. It is a high cognitive ability that I want them to master. However, to get there, they must go through a learning process which requires mechanistic understanding of the links between individual, population and community processes based on principles of mass conservation.
Quizzes
Case study activities
(ii) Promote scientific thinking. Hands-on activities that take students’ special interests into account can motivate them to understand the scientific process.
(iii) Facilitate learning through effective note-taking strategies.
Describe, in your opinion, a challenging aspect to how we currently teach in higher ed and how your experience and/or training would help meet this challenge.
https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/guidance/teaching-and-learning
1) Flexible Learning
Flexible learning is about empowering students by offering them choices in how, what, when and where they learn: the pace, place and mode of delivery.
2) Internationalising higher education
Promoting a high quality, equitable and global learning experience can help prepare graduates to live in and contribute responsibly to a globally interconnected society.
3) Education for sustainable development
Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is an interdisciplinary approach to learning that covers the integrated social, economic and environmental dimensions of the formal and informal curriculum.
4) Enterprise and Entrepreneurship in Higher Education
Enterprise and entrepreneurship education can add value to the learner’s journey, whether they are interested in starting their own venture or being enterprising when working for someone else in the private, public or voluntary and community sector.
Which of our current classes can you teach?
Range Plants, Environmental Biology, Rangeland Condition and Manipulation, Wildlife Management, and Introductory Biology courses for majors and non-majors.
Tell us about your teaching experience
I am currently co-supervising a master’s student working on morphometrics applied to plant systematics.
What teaching techniques do you use in the classroom?
- visualization: audio clips and videos, local field trips.
- cooperative learning: case studies, think pair share
- flipped classroom
- Work based learning: use real-world data for analysis and visualization
What methods do you use to engage diverse students?
I apply in my classroom a diverse set of activities which embrace multiple learning styles. I use pictures, images, diagrams as well as mind map activities for visual learners. For verbal learners I use reading and writing activities, such as minute paper, think pair share, writing exercises, quizes. Auditory learners may benefit from having recordings of the lessons. For kinesthetic learners (individuals who prefer to learn by doing) lab activities, experiments, field activities, etc.
What new classes would you want to teach?
If there is interest by the department I could teach R and Rstudio applied for Natural Sciences, Integration of Ecological theory and Agronomic Application
The basics of R for Natural Sciences Introductory course that will teach students to manage and visualize data in R and RStudio. By the end of the course, they will be able to import data in R, develop data management plans, data “wrangling”, data validation and quality control, data visualization, reproducibility, and collaborative data analysis. Lectures would be “flipped”, and class time would be focused on experiential learning using real-world data.
Integration of Ecological theory and Agronomic Application
The objective of the course is to offer a multidisciplinary learning environment that will enable future agronomists, biologists and related professionals to interpret and solve agronomic problems through the application of ecological theory. We will use case studies to analyze ecological management strategies that help reduce production costs and promote business sustainability while maintaining or enhancing biodiversity.
What are your teaching strengths/weaknesses?
teaching strengths: I have a good relationship with students, I am attentive to students’ needs (I have empathy), I am a good collaborator (I have taught many classes in collaboration with other lecturers), I like to try new ways to improve students’ learning ability (creativity).
teaching weaknesses: overplanning, feel nervous when speaking in public
Describe a time when you felt challenged in the classroom?
We are living unprecedent times. The last class I taught I had a student that was doing a treatment for mental health issues. She opened it up for me because of dificulties to keep her focus in the material and her hability to come for class. I felt challenged because it is beyond my capacity to control a situation. What I did was tried to be more flexible with due dates, but it is a hard situation.
What steps have you taken to improve your teaching?
- developed a collaborative network
- took many development teaching training workshops and courses offered by the UNL (teaching assistant course, inclusive leadership, online learning and teaching) - CIRTL network
What technologies have you used in the classroom?
- google drive for students feedback activities
- padlet - on demand class
- R and Rstudio
- power point for the presentations
- zoom breakout rooms for think pair share activities
How would you engage undergraduates in this field?
- Provoke conversations and challenge students
- Encourage social media usage
- Be clear about how and when to get in touch
- Use quizzes to monitor progress and communicate with students
- Celebrate greatness and accomplishments
What ideas do you have for collaborating with another faculty member on a topic of interest?
- field ecology course
What steps would you take to teach a course you have not previously taught?
- think about who is the audience and their interest on the topic
- define the learning objectives and assessments
- write a syllabus
- prepare the classes
