Self-Reflections

2025 SPRING

This semester I taught two sessions of KINE 307, one face-to-face and the other online. Compared to the last semester, there was not significant change in my teaching. Overall, the semester went well, and students achieved their goals at the end. Based on students’ final reflections, they used a variety of self-regulated strategies such as rehearsal and time management. They believed they learned useful information that would help them with their future pursuits. They also developed a sense of self-regulation. I especially liked this student's reflection on her development of regulated learning and hoped all students can come out of my class like this:

"I've created a conceptual map of self-regulated learning. This course has encouraged me to take a more active approach to my studies, divide tasks into weekly objectives, think about what I know versus what I do not, and accept how I learn best. I've learned that self-regulation is much more than just a list of tasks you need to get done. It is the ability to be flexible, think critically, and make changes. And that is something I will carry far beyond this class."

It seems that in both sessions students would like to have more integrative activities. For the face-to-face class, students wanted more peer-sharing and group talk activities, while for the online learners, thy wished to have in-person or online labs. These are all good suggestions and can make both sessions more engaging. Next, I will try to allow more time for students interact with each other in the classroom or in the online forum. At the same time, I am planning to design more application-centered activities such as case studies so that students may practice/connect what they learned in the textbook to the real world. 

2024 FALL

This semester I taught two undergraduate courses and one graduate course. The overall student evaluations match my expectations. Because I put so much effort in the face-to-face course, the majority of that class were extremely satisfied with their learning outcomes. The item that was scored lowest (80%) was the “procedures for determining course grades were appropriate.” The reason, by reading the comments left, might due mainly to students’ misunderstanding of the setup of the gradebook, even though it was explained verbally and on the final project page. The same occurred in the online course, and it has been consistent that students were not satisfied with their grades. The graduate course evaluation came out as a surprise. Only two out of 16 students filled out the evaluation form, and the score is an all-time low among all courses I have taught. Based on the evaluations, my first-time teaching this course seems to be a failure. 

KINE 307-501

This class can be easily one of the top 3 classes I have ever taught. Different from the past few semesters, this time the whole class has kept a high level of engagement. Every time I threw out a question, almost everyone was thinking and willing to give it a try. This level of engagement always prompts me to be fully prepared and to give all I have. With this mentality, I read a few more books and incorporated additional information into my teaching, and I felt my teaching was more coherent and systematic than previous semesters. I was able to deepen my own knowledge base and broaden my students’ understanding of motor development across the life span.

By the end of the semester, nearly all students have achieved their goals that they set in the beginning and the mid-term. I can feel their excitement about the knowledge they acquired when reading their final reflections. They believed the information can significantly help their understanding of other classes and their future professional careers. Besides the knowledge of lifelong motor development, they also recognized their learning habits were reshaped, by following my emphasis on self-regulated learning. Some students specifically identified a few preferred learning strategies such as using active recall and think aloud. 

This semester I did a little change in quizzing the class. Specifically, in the beginning of the class, I gave a quick review on what I covered in the previous lesson and then had a quick quiz. This gave students an opportunity to recall what they learned and activate their memory before the quiz. Regarding the Plickers, not all students liked the laminated papers, mainly because sometimes they put the card in a wrong direction or my phone might scan it incorrectly when they put it down. For the next semester, I plan to use iClicker instead and see how this software works. 

KINE 307-599

The online class went well as usual. Students’ final reflections revealed they gained much information about lifelong growth and motor development and they believed that the course helped them with their preparation for professional schools. One common problem I observed is that some students had a habit of procrastination. Although I emphasize self-discipline and designed three self-regulated learning activities to address this problem, it helps little, unless the student is determined to change. The online course cannot do as much as face-to-face instructions. Some students wished to have more collaboration for the final project, so I created a forum for them to connect each other for the next semester. I also set a reminder for students to start the final project early. 

KINE 690-600

This was the first time I have taught this stats course. Before teaching it, I redesigned the whole class to cater to the needs of KINE master’s students. Expecting master’s students to be able to understand basic statistics in research reports, I redesigned the course by creating a new syllabus, assessments, learning activities, presentation slides, and a course site. My slides are easy to follow, and I also collected data for students to practice statistical procedures during and after class. To align the course learning outcomes with the catalog information, I designed a research paper critique and a micro-qualitative study. These went well but a few new students felt challenged with the paper critique, and I felt the qualitative study helped little. Therefore, for the next time, I will remove the two. Initially, I thought students would see a lot of t-tests and ANOVAS and they might not use regression in their classes, but later found they do. So, next time I’ll add a class for regression analyses. At the same time, based on student reflections, I’ll add research papers using the techniques taught on class to give students a real-world experience.

Overall, students reflected that they learned much about stats in this course. They were able to distinguish location, dispersion, and shape statistics. They can use ANOVAs, correlations, and t-tests to analyze data. They implemented effective learning strategies such as rehearsal, organization, and peer learning, and felt their self-regulated learning capabilities have tremendously increased. Most students successfully achieved their goals set in the beginning and the middle of the semester. They were appreciative of my course design and step-by-step instructions. 

Although I enjoyed the first-time teaching experience and students were generally satisfied with their learning based on their final reflections, the student evaluation mismatches my expectations. Probably, only two completed evaluations made the results skewed. Still, I was surprised by the lowest scored (30%) item being “The instructor's workload expectations were realistic.” I know that I have this problem with all courses because I believe deliberate practice makes perfect, but this is a graduate course, and I expected them to be knowledgeable about stats through constant engagement with learning materials. Perhaps this is a S/U course, so students do not take it seriously. I may need to reinforce the importance of learning in the future. There is another item scored low (40%), “The instructor taught the course effectively.” For the whole course and every class, I have specified learning outcomes. I guess students did not make a correct reference when evaluating their learning. Next time, in addition to the course evaluation, I’ll ask students to do a pre- and post-course survey. 

2024 SUMMER

This summer I did the same as I did previously. The majority students liked the course design and learning activities. I noticed most students actually did not have any teaching experience. Some even had never thought about teaching health and physical education contents in the classroom. I may need to add more example of how they can teach integrated activities to the learning materials later. This year both the health education and physical education national standards were updated. I would assume a new version of the textbook would be soon on the market. Then, there will be some adjustments done to the course again. Looking back, I realized one student used AI to generate his lesson plans. Next time, I need to change the lesson plan writing requirements and use Turnitin to check on the originality of lesson plans. All in all, the course went well, and I will continue to do what worked well.

2024 SPRING

This semester I only taught 3 credit hours due to an overload in the last fall semester. Compared to the previous semesters, I made a few minor changes in a number of learning activities. First, for the self-regulated learning activities, I asked students to set goals for the first half of semester instead of for the whole semester. This way, they can be more focused on what to learn in the next 7 weeks. To help students focused on the course contents, I emphasized this expectation in the directions and added a few examples of what goals are not relevant. When it comes to the midterm reflection, I asked students to reflect on how they have met their goals in the first half and also set new goals for the second half of semester. By doing this change, I intended to focus student more on the short periods of two halves rather than not knowing where they are (for whole semester goals) at the midterm in the past.  

A second change was made to the writing projects. For anyone who chooses to write either a literature review or a strategies paper, they should talk to me first for approval. Thus, students would not fail the writing project miserably by only submitting at the final stage. I also edited the rubric for the writing projects, making them more specific to each section of the paper. During the class, I talked to each of the students who were doing a writing project and asked what progress they made each time. With my constant reminders and monitoring, their chance of success was lifted. In fact, the quality of writing products was visibly better in the semester than previous semesters. So, there is no reason I will not do the same in the next semester. 

Another big change was that I used Plickers instead of Booklets for students to take pop-up quizzes. Whenever there was quiz, students put up their answer cards for me to scan. Everyone can see the results and correct answer immediately after. In addition to assess student learning, Plickers works as an attendance checker. If a student is absent, there will be no record of the student’s responses to the quiz questions. A few students did not like it, though. They felt this formative assessment did not allow them sufficient time to respond. As I explained over and again, they were supposed to preview the contents before the class, concentrate on the lecture and engage in active learning during the class. Also, the quiz questions are just fact recalling. If they are familiar with the contents, they can answer everything correctly and promptly. I hope this little tool challenge some of them to put more effort in their learning. 

Overall, the teaching went well. Student learning outcomes were aligned with my expectations. A 4.56/5.00 overall course evaluation was also acceptable. I will do the same in the next semester and be more interactive in the classroom.

2023 FALL

This semester I taught 12 credit hours, including three required teaching loads and one extra. These include a senior teaching methods and three motor development courses. I also volunteered for a zero-credit first-year experience course and supervised student teaching. Based on AEFIS preliminary results, I have an average of 4.57/5.00 student evaluation for the four courses. This score is consistent with that of the past four fall semesters.

KNFB 416

Sadly, this semester marks the termination of KNFB courses in the Department of Kinesiology and Sport Management. It also means Texas A&M will not educate prospective physical educators anymore. Gladly, my students all achieved their learning goals, and their appreciation of this course made me feel my effort rewarding. Just as former students, this group have become more competent and confident in designing standards-based lesson plans and implementing effective instructional strategies in their teaching. Most students agreed that may learning strategies, rehearsal in particular, are important to increase their knowledge and skills. Benefited from this hands-on experience in CSMS, students became understanding the uniqueness of teaching middles school-aged children: They need more motivation and encouragement than elementary students. I am also pleased that my students became aware of and developed reflective teaching practices. Just as one student reported, before planning/teaching a lesson, s/he first reflected on how the last lesson went, make necessary adjustments in the next lesson plan, and executed it. S/he found this self-regulated learning process especially helpful to every lesson taught. Because this was the last time that KNFB 416 was taught, there will be no changes unless our administrators decide to reinstate the program. 

KINE 307-502

Besides following the same sequence of delivering the chapters as I did in the spring semester, I added more options for the final project. Specifically, three options were provided for students to choose: Assessment & Recommendations, Literature Synthesis, and Strategies paper. I also spent a whole class to explain what they are, how to complete each, and the criteria of success for each. Because this addition took some time away from content delivery, I sped up a little bit explaining a few chapters. Initially I worried about how this might affect students learning, but it turned out they were fine with my teaching. Overall, students rated this course slightly higher than the previous four semester, with a score of 4.7/5.0. 

Reading students’ final reflections, I was pleased that most of them successfully accomplished their learning goals. They believed that the course learning had impacted them in multiple ways. The course content was not only helpful to what they were learning in other courses but also could help them prepare their future careers, especially for those who aimed to be a PT or OT in the future. Some learning activities they identified beneficial include the poster walks, Blooket quizzes, and the final project. These activities are not only based on memorization but also analysis and application of knowledge. Regarding learning strategies, students reported that they tended to use rehearsal, active recalling, organization, elaboration, peer learning, help seeking, time management, and finding a proper study environment. Theses effective learning strategies have contributed to their success in this class.  

At the same time, I received a variety of suggestions about changes in future teaching. One prominent suggestion is about test reviews. This was the second time my class did this format, groups created quiz questions and the rest of the class took it in a row for a class time. Obviously, students felt the same as me: Completing quizzes for a whole class is like running a marathon. Some of them believed the questions were not focused and purposefully designed for their real test. Therefore, they recommended I lead the review in the future, and I cannot agree with them more.

KINE 307-598/599

Compared to the face-to-face session, the two online sessions showed interesting results. Even though I had identical course design, instruction, and assessments, course evaluations for the two varied quite dramatically, with one being 4.52 vs. the other 4.04. Because they were both online, I had a hard time figuring out what exactly caused this baffling discrepancy. Reading the comments in the student course evaluation files did not help, and their final reflections in Canvas primarily told their positive experience. Since both sessions had similar lower success rates in terms of percentages of grade A/B/C/D/F, the only reason I could assume was that the group of students in 599 had different traits of accepting grades compared to those in 598. 

Anyway, based on their final reflections, online students achieved success in their learning. They reported similar results as the face-to-face session: Increased knowledge in motor development, preparation for future careers, and enhanced self-regulated learning. At the same time, a couple of students complained about the quiz setting. They wished they could have more time to take the quiz and see what questions they missed for the first time and come back to correct the missed next time. This is reasonable but because I would like them to be familiar with the content first before taking any quiz and do not want the quiz taking become a word searching activity, I’d keep what it is set up for now. 

Thoughts

Looking back at what happened across the three motor development courses, I noticed one common area that I’d like to make changes. I gave students choices on the final project and two times to submit their work. Even though the first submission is not required, I clearly stated that I encourage them to submit a draft for feedback so that might result in a better learning experience and performance. Unfortunately, not all students took it seriously. A couple of them only submitted their work at the second time when it was not possible to correct any mistakes. I felt frustrated as much as students. Therefore, for the next run I will require students to submit their draft and talk to everyone who chooses to do either of the two writing projects.

In addition, I plan to refine my self-regulated learning activities in all sessions. The rationale is that keeping three goals for a semester, especially with a break in between, seemed not quite practical or effective. I plan two stages of self-regulated learning for the next time. At the first stage, I have students set their goals for the first half of semester focusing on the content delivered at this specific time span. The second stage, I first ask them to reflect on the achievement of goals and then set new goals for the rest of the semester. Through this change and allowing more exposure, I hope students have a better understanding and experience of self-regulated learning. 

2023 SUMMER

HLTH/KINE 214 is the only course I taught online this summer. In preparing for the teaching, I adopted the latest edition of the textbook. Due to this change, I modified the course map, the syllabus, and the layout of Canvas. I also made changes to a few assessments. The new “Developing Healthy Behavior” was adopted from the course instructional materials to focus students on applying the planned behavior theory. The previous “Having a Brain Break” was changed for students to demonstrate how to lead a brain break in addition to a detailed activity plan. Instead of a single Peerceptiv assignment to address either Health or Physical Education integrated activity plan, I made it separate submission for each without peer evaluation. The purpose is for students to learn more about integrated activity planning by me giving more feedback. This seemed working well. One student who does not usually comment in course evaluation commended my prompt and constructive feedback. In addition, I added video presentation as an option for students to self-introduce, self-monitor and self-reflect their learning processes. Through these activities, students developed a sense and a map of self-regulated learning. 

Overall, my class learned the importance of health and physical education, what classroom teacher can do to promote students’ health and active learning, how to create health and physical education integrated activity plans, and advocate health education and physical education. All these are aligned with the course learning objectives. Due to its effectiveness, I will keep the same course activities for the next time. 

2023 SPRING

Due to my new administrative role as the chair of graduate programs, I taught three courses this semester. I initially planned two hours a day for the new role, but it surely exceeded the allotted time. Although I hate to sacrifice my other time, I had to compromise for being a leader of the graduate office. Fortunately, my mature teaching styles and momentum helped me accommodate challenges at the new position and ensured my students have a worthy learning experience.

KNFB 324

This was the very last time this class was offered due to the termination of our program. I was glad for what I did this semester. As in the past, I focused students on the team-based learning and flipped-classroom approaches whereby students form teams to teach the rest of the class while I provide learning materials and guides. To ensure the accuracy of information, quality of slide design, and professional delivery of presentation, I required each team to meet me, going over their slides and procedure before their presentation. At first, one typical missing piece from their plans was to explain the learning materials and explain how to use a technology. Because this class focuses on using educational technology, my students are expected to explain the technology and how to use it in detail first. However, they would assume their audience would automatically use the technology right after their presentation. This may cause confusion and waste valuable instruction time. Therefore, I emphasized the importance of modeling, e.g., after presenting an app, they will operate it together with the audience. This made their instructions clearer and easier to follow. Another area of improvement is writing measurable learning objectives. Although we have emphasized this repeatedly throughout our program, our students were still not able to make all objectives specific and measurable. After my constant checking and reminding, they improved, and I will reinforce it in the next semester when they are in KNFB 416.

It seems odd that the whole education society is talking about how adaptive gen z is to technology. In my class, however, it shows how practitioners may not be enthusiastic about technology use. To develop their knowledge, skills, and confidence, I specifically asked my students to focus on one particular app/website for their presentation. This way, they really learned how to use one technology rather than superficially describe the importance of using general technologies. Also, through repeating the same procedure for four presentations, they are quite clear about how to instruct their students in the future.

Field-based experience for this class were dreadful in the past few semesters. This semester, fortunately, the two schools we went to were quite responsive. My students were able to receive their assignments early. Still, one unsolved problem is that not all mentor teachers know how to use our students as their student tutors. My best suggestion would be through SEHD that we can put all principals or teachers together for a quick walk through. I did see my students benefited from this experience, especially for those who were able to interact with kids. They observed and learned how their mentor teachers dealt with typical behavioral problems. Some even used the apps they learned during presentations to tutor kids. 

Being able to communicate with student parents in a professional matter is one focus of this class. Besides preparing students what they need to do before meeting with a parent, I also asked students in groups of three for a rehearsal. I initially worried about if we could find a few parents, but thankfully a student found her parent and colleagues could help. Finally, we did the conference over Zoo. Even though it may not be as impactful as in person, I was still satisfied with those who meticulously prepared materials and conversation with the parent. 

Reading my students’ final reflection, I felt more about the effectiveness of peer learning and experiential learning under the guidance of the instructor. After teaching something, allow students to practice it in the classroom and better to use it in their teaching practices, that is, learning by doing, that impact will be tremendous. 

KNFB 416

This semester went well. The four students in my class all demonstrated their professionalism and commitment to effective teaching. Again, unfortunately we were not able to do a microteaching due to a small class size. I initially planned to observe all students in the field, but because of scheduled meetings, I only made to two. Based on what I observed, they had good ideas about using what activities to engage students, but there were some details to attend. I wish I could assist their lesson planning one-on-one and debrief their teaching every class. This way, they can grow faster to be a quality physical educator.

Overall, students gained valuable knowledge and skills out of this class. Writing a lesson plan every week definitely increased their ability of lesson planning. Teaching a lesson every week allowed them to use various teaching styles and skills, which made them more competent in leading a class independent. I enjoyed one student’s reflection that by the end of the semester, “I became much more confident in myself as a teacher, and more effective as each lesson went by. I discovered that when I learned my students and how they learned best, I found that I could adjust my lessons to their needs and increase motivation.”

This semester we talked a lot about teaching styles. Happily, one student wrote a paper about using multiple styles in one lesson. I edited it and sent the paper to Strategies, and it was accepted. Actually, based on my experience last semester, I did a change in when to present their ideas about the Strategy topic. This time, I asked them to present their ideas right after my introduction to the paper writing. However, two topics were too general for further refinement. Next time, I’m going to let them give the class an outline and provide pictures to illustrate their ideas. In addition, to better accommodate students’ needs, I will also (1) designate one class to introduce the content exam practice test and one for the PPR practice test and (2) spending more time with students on their lesson planning, especially about how to write measurable objectives, how align the objectives to national/state standards, how to infuse the concept of progression into activity planning, and align assessment with learning activities and objectives. 

KINE 307-501

This semester I did a few changes. First, I reduced the number of tests from four to three. Second, added three test reviews where students presented their review questions. Third, changed the final project with three options: (1) assessment instrument presentation, (2) Strategies paper, and (3) literature synthesis writing project. I believe, together with tests and self-regulated learning activities, these assessments, representing both individual and team work, can accommodate various student needs. With growing experience, I gave more instructions to every learning activity. Overall, my students were satisfied with the class and their learning. 

In addition to the course content, one important learning outcome of this class is self-regulated learning. With my constant reminding of strategies use on class, it seemed that most students really became conscious of what they best do for their learning. Many students reported that they were able to use effective strategies such as rehearsal, peer learning, time management, and help seeking. Some students really liked teamwork involved in the poster walks and presentations. Presenting their work proudly to the class made them feel confident and empowered. For the final project, I was glad that students had various choices. The majority of the class chose to collaborate on the assessment instrument. With a sample given, they did it beautifully. A few wrote the Strategies paper. To my surprise, four papers are too good to be hidden. I invited the authors and finally three agreed to send their paper out for publication. Happily, all three edited papers were accepted by the journal and will be published by next spring. One literature synthesis grabbed my attention, because it is 100% generated by AI. I was caught off guard. After consulting with the honor office, I decided to keep it within my class, and make it explicit in the writing guide that any AI-generated text will result in a grade of zero.

I also found a lot of good recommendations in students’ reflections. Based on their comments, I will make ensure the following changes: (1) match the slide page number provided on Canvas with what I present to class, (2) change the sequence of poster walks, (3) add more interactive activities to engage the whole class, and (4) add questions at the end of each presentation, e.g., “How can this group/individual improve?” for the class to receive constructive feedback.

Summary

As usual, this semester was quite fruitful and a rewarding experience. Bringing what I did well to the next semester, I am certain that it will be at least as good as this one.

2022 Fall

This semester I taught 15 credit hours, including four required teaching loads and one extra. Among the five courses, one was a senior teaching methods, one junior teaching methods, and three motor development courses. I also volunteered to lead a zero-credit first-year experience course and supervised student teaching. At the end of the semester, I began to think more about how student learning styles had been affected by the pandemic and how I would do to accommodate this change. As for student evaluations, unfortunately, the evaluation system had a glitch, and many data were not recorded. Based on my preliminary computations, my evaluations are equivalent to previous semesters, with exception of KNFB 416 where only two students completed their task.

KNFB 416

This semester I only had three girls in the class, one from our PEK program and the other two from the Dance program. The three girls represented three distinct learning styles, which challenged my engagement more than ever. I always tell my students that to be a quality educator, we need three things: content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and disposition. Content wise, I had no worries about them. Pedagogical knowledge can be acquired through systematic training and constant practicing. However, disposition may not be intuitive to harness. My understanding of “disposition” is a true love of education. As a teacher, I care about student learning, and as a student, I am attentive to what the teacher says for a better understand of what I do. One girl, however, seemed to be distant from the scene, and I failed to intervene at the earliest time. When I finally tried to talk, it’s a bit late. The bitter conversation was not effective, and it was a dark hour in my teaching career. What I learned from this experience was to try to understand students more by exchanging different perspectives. Unfortunately, the program is coming to an end, and I am afraid that I would never have a chance to do so. Anyway, running an educator’s program is way more challenging than doing any other programs, because it entails so much subjective judgment. Especially when students have disparate opinions, it’s difficult to direct them come around. What I do in this course is intended to prepare them for possible challenges in their student teaching, but they tend to think farther ahead and forget the context in which they reside; that is, compliance with the requirements of the program. It sounds not productive when students claim that what they do for the class does not directly help what they do for their future job. It’s even contradictory when pursuing a final outcome (i.e., grade) without fulfilling prerequisites (i.e., assigned learning tasks). One challenge for every educator, I believe, is that weak endorsement for what many passionate educators do. An analogy, many students like fast food, but educators are chefs who want to make every step of cooking an artful maneuver. Without accepting teaching is an art, needs patience, needs detail-oriented, our students may not be as successful as they want to be. At least, they will spend more time and energy in the future when problems emerge. How to communicate with students on the same wavelength may be most effective for class engagement. Among various types of students, correcting the outliers is the most daunting work, especially in a small group.

KNFB 325

I taught KNFB 325 five years ago, and this semester was the last time the course was offered. This semester it went well again, due possibly to a good learning environment in which most showed their willingness to learn and share. This class features peer teaching, by which students form a team to teach the rest of the class. This has been effective for so many years that it’s not unexpected that students enjoyed the class. Next semester, this method will be used in another methods course, KNFB 324.

KINE 307-501

Compared to the last semester, I did little change in this face-to-face session, except adding one more visual poster presentation. Students seemed enjoying the varied assessments. Still, a few did not like writing the literature synthesis. Because I wanted to fully prepare students for a quality writing product, I provided all possibly needed materials. However, the amount of materials seemed to be a burden to some. It’s time consuming to go through all the materials. Again, like I said, the conflict between fast-food consumers and a chef-in-chief became evident. Kids like sweets, but parents know it’s unhealthy. The puzzle of how to educate little kids has never completed been solved. 

KINE 307-598/599

For the online sessions, I removed the writing project. One of the reasons was that writing, although important to education, seems negligible to kinesiology students. I still lament the termination of KINE 481, the only course that focuses on proper writing. I thought I would keep doing the writing project for a longer time, but three sessions of the same assignment do drain a lot of energy for grading, especially when I tend to give specific feedback on all aspects. A few students wanted more examples; therefore, another conflict came up. How can specific parameters of an assignment promote students’ learning and creativity? I dislike the way of teaching that makes critical thinking into a fill-in-the-blank task. Even though I gave directions for how to compose an introduction, only a few could catch all points. Compared to what I expected from students, my effort seems futile. The majority of my students plan to go to professional schools; so, more hands-on experience may benefit them more. For those who choose other directions, I might need to have alternative ways of assessment. 

Summary

This semester fleeted. I felt still so many problems unsolved, as usual. 

2022 Spring

This semester went as expected. At the last semester of my fifth year of teaching at this position, I felt a steady increase in controlling the learning environment. Overall, it was a fruitful semester; yet challenges still presented in different classes. The total evaluation scores for this semester kept the same level as the previous one, with an average of 4.58.

KNFB 416

This course has been my top priority since I began my job here at A&M. My input into this course has transformed student learning so much that I was not surprised all my students gained useful knowledge and skills of teaching secondary physical education. Due to my consistent prioritizing self-regulated learning, this class of students were able to exercise skills such as goal setting, self-monitoring, time management, and self-reflection. In addition to completing course assignments, my students also successfully completed two observations and eight independent teaching sessions at local middle schools. Through my observations and reading student reflections, I can definitely find a tremendous increase in their confidence and competence in teaching. Students also found the filed based experience really prepared them for their future practices. Another success was that all students passed their content and PPR practice tests, so that they were eligible to register for the real exams. The icing on the cake came later when five out of six papers were accepted by the professional journal Strategies. This reflects my instructions were right on the track in leading students toward a successful path of becoming a professional. I was so glad that my students could share their insights and best practices with all professionals in the field of physical education, health, and dance. 

Although it was a successful semester, I still found a few things needed to pay attention to. As students reported, some of them were not clear about what and when to complete their portfolio. There was a big gap between them being introduced first in KNFB 222 and then in KNFB 416. We should fill in the gap by constantly reminding and assigning a few assignments in KNFB 324 and KNFB 325 as well. As far as I know, we already did this; probably we need to explain to students about it in a clearer way. Another concern students had was the completion of independent hours. Currently according to TEA, they need to complete at least 45 hours in order to graduate. However due to the pandemic, they were deprived of opportunities going into schools and communities. Fortunately, we made adjustments that allowed them to successfully complete the hours. For the future, we need to remind and assign them to record their progress in the completion of the hours. 

HEFB/KNFB 324

Leading KNFB 324 this semester is easily the worst experience I had so far. Out of four students, one missed a couple of assignments and skipped two weekly classes. I deemed it unprofessional and discussed the consequences with the student. Finally, the student transferred to another program due to desiring to graduate early. For the rest, I constantly talked about the importance of work ethic and self-regulated learning because they would become an educator later and they need to be an example for students. Unfortunately, my talks sounded cliché to one or two of them. It seemed to me this group lacked passion toward learning and their future profession. What they wanted was getting it done and having a good grade. This passive and “whatever” attitude saddened me a lot, and I began to contemplate what was behind their points of view. After talking my concerns with a few colleagues, I realized that the pandemic really hit the students hard. They were not able to immediately set everything correctly from the status of being passively learning at home to actively exploring what is needed for their academic success. To prevent this ethos happening and prepare students for challenges of reality, I plan to discuss their goals and approaches to reach the goals first, review our program expectations, and share strategies for self-regulation in my future class.

Although sounds doomy, we did have bright lights, when it comes to the progression of assignment quality. The first presentation was poor. Only one chose the correct topic and sent me the draft the day before the presentation, although I required it three days before. The other two all chose wrong topics and lacked specifics in the slides. The last two presentations went better and better. I doubted if we really needed to learn through trial and error. For the VIPs, in spite of my constant urges, they had a slow start. Only one week before did they begin the process. I offered my ideas of how to complete it. Although there was some resistance, saying no extra work would be done for example, but finally I did see quality VIPs that met or exceeded my expectations. 

One unexpected obstacle that really challenged the class was the delayed admission of school observers. Although I prepared and contacted the district weeks before the semester, it took eight weeks for the students finally enter the schools. I constantly urged the district, but it was extremely difficult when the business was not efficient delt. It is unfortunate that we have to go through this process, according to the district’s policies. Another common request emerged from student final reflections was about sending out reminders for due quizzes and assignments. I am not sure this request is legitimate, because I have specified every due date in the syllabus and on Canvas. Rather than me sending out reminders, should students proactively remind themselves of what to be done every week? I would better understand and accept if this were a kinesiology foundation class. But it is a junior teaching methods class, and students are supposed to know what they do and why. Again, maybe the pandemic has impaired their independent working ability and critical thinking.

Overall, I felt a bit of burnt out this semester, constantly asking myself what made teacher education so difficulty when the country and the world need educators. I always do my best to uphold the quality and integrity of our program but do feel helpless when nobody around cares. I try not to extinguish my fire, wishing the education profession could be more respected.

KINE 307 (503, 598, 599)

This semester I changed the sequence of lectures for the face-to-face session (503) of KINE 307. My rationale is that chapter 1 serves as an overview of the book, the chapters that focus on motor skills come as the main point, chapters 5 and 14 as the introduction of factors that affect motor development, and the rest talk about specific factors and their changes across the life span. This change was approved by students at the last meeting. In addition, I incorporated a few alternative assessments including one individual poster, one group presentation, and one group visualization. These assessments added to the variety of assessment and earned students’ acknowledgement. Based on students’ course evaluations, I found that critical thinking might be promoted to a higher extent. Therefore, in the next semester, I will lead more discussions about research findings and facilitate exchange of different ideas and perspectives among students.  

As reflected by students’ final reflections across the three sessions, this course helped them recognize the patterns of changes in motor development across the life span. The information prepares them for their future pursuits such as in PT/OT schools. Beyond the content, they had a significant increase in developing a conducive study habit of using self-regulated learning strategies. Many students said they were able to use active recalling, organization, elaboration, peer learning, help seeking, and choosing a productive study environment. Being able to take ownership and responsibility of their own learning will be vital for their continued education. 

Compared to the face-to-face session, the two online sessions generated a result that is similar to previous semesters. Specifically, I did exactly the same instruction to the two sessions, but it seemed students reacted differently in comment sections. In 598, the comments are all positive, while in 599 the comments just point to the opposite. I guess it’s just because one particular student was not especially satisfied with the way of my grading and providing feedback. My emphasis on self-regulated learning may have challenged their learning habits and made them feel uncomfortable. After all, not all students are proactive in their own learning. As such, it’s paramount to reinforce self-regulated learning in online classes if we are to develop Aggies with academic excellence. 

Summary

Reflecting on my teaching and course evaluations through the past five years, I felt fulfilled. I always tell my students “You get what you paid for,” and now I got what I paid for. Stumbling in the first few semesters, I proactively reached out to sources and help. I constantly reflect on what went right and wrong, make changes to improve the quality of my instruction, and communicate with students about what they expect from my class. I attended numerous workshops and seminars to learn various strategies for engaging students in active learning. Gradually, I found myself being more reflective and gaining more control over what I preach. At this point, I believe I am no longer green as I used to be but a fledged educator on the stage.

2021 Fall

It was good to come back to normal. This semester no more remote learning. Being in the classroom and talking to students in person was really nice. In addition to five courses, I also volunteered to teach a class for first year undergraduates. Overall, it was intensive but enjoyable. Although the total evaluation scores for this semester regressed a bit, 4.59 compared to 4.74 for the spring semester, I can understand the anxiety that students had in a come-back-to-normal mode.

KNFB 416

This was a really special semester. All five girls worked diligently for their learning. I totally enjoyed their insightful discussions and sometimes heated debates during class. I was able to observe them at least one time for each in the middle school and was impressed by their teaching performance. One girl seemed to be intimated at first, but with my tutoring and encouragement, she finally walked out of her comfort zone and challenged herself to be a more grow-up educator. Another accomplishment I was proud of them was all of them passed their real content exam! This would allow them to fully prepare for their PPR exam. Yet, there was one more more exciting accomplishment: two manuscripts I selected and submitted to Strategies were accepted. One will be published in this May and the other September. This publication, I believe, will motivate the students to dedicate to our education more. Overall, I believe KNFB 416 has been mature. The current set up optimizes student learning. I have become more competent in guiding students explore the field of teaching. 

HEFB/KNFB 324

Because this semester I did not collaborate with my colleague on the teaching experiment, HEFB/KNFB 324 was back on a regular schedule. The whole semester went as planned. Based on the self-assessment at the beginning and the end of semester, students’ knowledge and skills of technology and related topics improved. Sign tests showed all scales, except Communication and Collaboration, had a significant increase. The Communication and Collaboration scale might be due to the miscommunication with the district and schools at the early few weeks; however, I may need to ask students to elaborate on why they scored such.

  According to student feedback of last spring, I reduced presentations to two times. At the end of the semester, however, I felt that two times of presentation might be too little to push students to explore technology in depth. Because last year I was not able to talk much about ELPS, this time I used more time explaining the standards and performance indicators. I also intentionally asked students about their tutees’ language competence and how they could work with them for improvement. Talking about field-based observations, this semester was a narrow escape. Initially the school, which I used to send students to, did not respond, so I managed to connect with the CS district. Fortunately, they helped, and my students were able to make it to schools after a few weeks’ coordination. To facilitate the students’ field experience, I already talked to the district for the spring’s arrangement. Hope they can get me back soon.

One change of this semester was that we did mock parent-teaching conference with real parents! Last time we did it online by grouping students, and I felt it was not as exciting as this time when students talked to strangers. Still, I wish we could do it in person. Another change was that I replaced the Mini Movie project with a Technology paper project. I hoped students would write something worth sharing with professional. Although I did not find any paper achieved the goal, students got to read professional papers and made an attempt to write as a professional. Regarding the course evaluation, I was not satisfied with myself being not reiterating the importance of course evaluation to students. Only one student completed it, in fact, and the same happened to KNFB 416. As both classes prepared future professionally in health, physical, and dance education, they must clearly understand the importance of their feedback to my teaching practice. Next semester, I will emphasize it and see if anything changes.

For the spring, our teaching experiment will resume. I need to adjust my teaching schedule again after meeting with my colleague. Because this time we are going to go to schools, hope the experiment would not take as much time from my class. 

KINE 307-501

This semester the face-to-face session went well. Even though I changed the sequence of chapter teaching, students did not feel difficulty to follow along. To give students a more variety of assessment, this semester I had two new categories: Peerceptiv and presentations. The Peerceptiv assignments seemed not achieved its purposes, in that students felt they had to learn how to use the new system and peer feedback and evaluation might not be as effective as the instructor’s. The two presentations went well. The first poster presentation made the class look like a mini conference. Students enjoyed walking around the posters and interacting with peers. The assessment presentation gave the class a more thorough understanding of what each instrument looks like and how to use them. 

One challenge was that the classroom could not have all students to take the test separately; so, I converted all tests to online and asked students to choose whether they wanted to take it in the classroom or online. This did not seem to affect students’ performance. If we still cannot accommodate all students in one classroom, I will be using this same technique. 

Overall, the class was enjoyable, and students liked it. I am ready for the spring and share knowledge with new faces.

KINE 307-599

This online session has been mature. This semester I only added one new assignment for students to develop their self-regulated learning ability: one-month self-check. This is because in online courses, the first few weeks is especially important. If no one reminds students of all expectations, they might gradually lose their memory. Besides, I also added more materials in the first week, such as learning tips for online courses. I particularly emphasized time management based on my previous experience. It became evident that my emphasis was effective because most students expressed their improvement in time management and self-regulation in their final reflection. One part I need to change is the time and the way of reviewing quiz answers. This semester students were allowed 2 minutes per question, and they could review which question was answered wrong after each attempt. I found this might be too easy based on 80% of students got an A. This does not match the success rate of the face-to-face class, which is 40%. Therefore, I will change the time per question to 1.5 minute and not allow students to view wrong questions after the first attempt. Hope this change will give them more challenge. 

HLTH/KINE 214

It had been quite a while until I was able to teach this course again this semester. Because of the work I previously did, such as getting the course certified by Quality Matters and infused peer learning experience, in this course. Overall, it was an enjoyable experience. Students were able to identify the clear structure and instructions embedded in the course. They were also satisfied with my time feedback and encouragement. I hope to have this class in the near future again. 

FYEX 101-532

This was the first time I volunteered to teach a first-year class. Facing to dozens of brand-new aggies, I was excited to talk to them and offer them pointers on how can achieve academic success and a healthy life at A&M. The coordinating office provides syllabi and lesson plans already, so it’s easy to follow along. However, because I emphasize self-regulated learning, I modified some assignments to align with my teaching philosophy. Although overall the class went well, I was able to find my teaching weak spots. That is, I did not emphasize class management, so a few students would talk to each other during the class. Again, this does happen in all other classes I teach. Probably it is a time for me to strengthen discipline, especially for new students. Learning about how new generations think, learn, and live their lives is eye-opening. I am definitely waiting for another opportunity to serve the university.

Summary

My first semester of the fifth year being on this position has passed. Through the course, I can definitely see my own growth., especially during the process of preparing my promotion. Gradually I changed my mind of “teaching students” to “learning with students.” My endorsement and constant practice of self-regulated learning has made myself a lifelong learner. I am proud of this and will transform my students as such.

2021 Spring

This was the toughest semester I have had ever at A&M! This is because I taught seven different sessions of five courses. Among them two are online sessions and five face-to-face. Three are writing intensive sessions. Two are field-based teaching methods courses. Overall, I was pleased with the average of course evaluations, 4.74. This score matches my effort put into this difficulty semester. 

KNFB 416

The big change we had this semester was on the lab part. Due to the small number of students last semester, we were only able to present lesson plans. This semester, we had seven in total, but one took it remotely. Because this number is adequate to do class activities, I demonstrated the teaching spectrum in the classroom. When doing the activity, I reminded students that how to design their activities so that we would not make noises and affect our neighboring classrooms. Then, each student designed and led a microteaching lab, including the remote students. Later when we found we could use the PEAP building, we went there and had two practices. Although limited in scale, our students still gained hands-on experience through these activities. Before each lesson, I emphasized the details of a lesson plan and required students to supply at least one visual for every activity. This made their lesson plan easy to follow. For the student who was remotely participating, I challenged her to record herself for skill modeling. 

Another aspect I emphasized was writing the Strategies paper. It has been three semesters since I changed from the research-oriented paper to the practice-oriented paper. This time I really wanted them to write a quality paper and submit it to the Strategies journal. So, I provided my perspectives and allowed them to think critically about what topic to write. One idea I shared with them was to add content about remote teaching with technologies and also consider the teaching styles we practiced. I was so excited that one manuscript was immediately accepted by the journal. 

When reading students’ feedback, I was filled with joy and pride. They not only learned much about how to write detailed lesson plans, how to approach students, how to use various teaching styles and skills, but also became aware of the importance of professional development in their future careers. Through the semester, they felt a belongingness to the group, they built bonds with each other, they were willing to take personal and team responsibilities! These students were ready for their student teaching!

HEFB/KNFB 324

Among all the courses I taught this semester, HEFB/KNFB 324 was the hardest one. This is a field-based teaching methods course, but because student could choose to attend the class in person or remotely, there were only a dozen in the classroom for the first meeting and gradually only three or so students consistently presented. Talking to students around and online while teaching classroom management and technology is not so enjoyable. The biggest challenge was not the teaching, actually. Prior to the semester, a colleague and I received a teaching grant to do an action research in this class. Even though we discussed multiple times before the semester, I was not very confident about how students would like it. The teaching schedule was already tight, and I had to make room for several meetings between the two classes. One mistake I made was overlooked the Texas Independence Day. I never had it as a holiday until this time. It just pushed one class away. Another unfortunate event was we had a heavy snow, and we had to sacrifice one more class. Therefore, I had to change the syllabus and update the course schedule twice. 

Because this was the first time we collaborated, we were not sure where we would end up with. Therefore, we adopted an exploratory path and made it an inquiry-based project. It was either us being non-experts in this approach or students not accustomed to it, students kept asking for clearly guidelines and rubrics. We did manage to give a checklist and a rubric a few weeks away from the last class. But this had confused many students, and hurt our course evaluations. Reading students’ feedback, the two areas they complained most were ineffective communication with the other class of students and unclearly instructions for the collaborative project. I totally understood doing all these through Zoom and emails definitely posed a big challenge. But, this is the price of doing experiment. Sometimes an experiment succeeds, sometimes it fails. No pain, no gain. Next time, I will give more step-by-step instructions. 

To provide statistical evidence of the action research, I administered a self-assessment in the beginning and the end of the semester. This semester the assessment includes 10 questions that focus on technology and ESL teaching. Two questions were added at the post assessment to learn about their capabilities of teaching through the collaboration. A comparison between the two self-assessments showed that except item 4, which is about using social media, all other items had a significant increase, meaning their competency of using technology and interacting with ESL learners greatly improved.

An interesting observation from their course evaluations was that the two sessions of my class responded to my instructions differently. The PEK students showed more understanding of the challenges and were more generous on scoring the course (4.78), while the school health students were more critical about instructions and disapproving (3.65). I do not think I learned enough about these students. Next semester, I will try to find out more about their characteristics and see how I can engage them and help them learn more from my class. 

KINE 307-598/599

Teaching online courses have been a rewarding experience every semester, as my constant updates being made according to students’ recommendations. However, I cannot accommodate all types of requests. For example, some students prefer Sunday as due date while others may recommend Wednesday. Some like 5:00 pm, while other like 11:59 pm. Some want more assignments, while other want less. A few students still wanted to see the correct answer right after the first attempt, but the purpose of taking the quizzes is to assess their learning, not to hand out a full score. They can wait to see correct answers right after the due day. But I guess they did not realize they can do so; therefore, I can put it in the Q&A section. Some students recommended requiring weekly online meetings. While this idea sounds good, it’s not practical. My time is limited, and I would rather them to be more proactive in learning. 

The two sessions are still different in terms of course evaluation scores. The lower number session gave 4.57, while the higher number session gave 4.81. I discussed it with the Teaching for Excellence office, but we did not find a definitive answer. 

KNFB 222

One change to the course this semester was giving student more time working by themselves on Friday. Typically, we held classes on Monday and Wednesday. After explaining all necessary information, students are free to do their assignments. I did not completely leave them alone; still, logged on Zoom in case anyone has any questions. My emphasis on self-regulated learning successfully developed students’ self-independent and sustainable learning habit. At the end of the semester, they were satisfied with their learning process and final performance. When talking about possible changes, they would prefer the course kept the same. 

This might be the last semester this course is offered. Sorry for our students that they will lose an opportunity to learn about essentials for teaching school physical education.  

 KINE 482-905/906

Because the online session has been established, and all materials uploaded on the course site. I believed that it might be better for students to take control of their own learning. So, this semester I did it differently by having the class together on first day. From then on, students could choose to come online or stay by themselves. I still logged on during class time; but if no one shows up, I’d drop the line. This worked well for the two sessions. At the end of the semester, students acknowledged that their writing skills had been honed, together with self-regulated learning strategies. Apply APA style also could contribute to their further professional school studies. 

Unfortunately, this semester might be the last semester this course is offered. I feel sorry for our students that there will be no designated courses for them to work on their professional writing skills. 

Summary

An extremely challenging semester but I made it through! The quality of my teaching has reached a top place. I will continue to carry out my best practices. 

The university decided to abandon eCampus and completely adopt Canvas from the fall semester. This summer will be a busy time to do the transition.

2020 Fall

This semester was the first semester that I taught 6 hours of overload. Considering teaching one face-to-face teaching methods course, two hybrid courses, and three purely online courses, the challenge was evident. To lessen students’ anxiety during the pandemic while most were learning remotely, I made myself available all time. Besides general emails, I let students post in a Muddiest Point forum anonymously in case they have a question. I also created a GroupMe for every class I teach so that they may get immediate response. Plus, they can request a Zoom meeting if they prefer talking to me. Anyway, I worked around the clock and put up my best performance ever. 

The average course evaluation for this semester is 4.7, only one online course scored lightly below 4.5. I believe this time students totally liked what they experienced in my classes. It has to be noted that from this semester, the university decided to do course evaluations on AEFIS instead of PICA. There are 26 items, including university mandated and department required ones. Different from PICA items that all range from 1 to 5, AEFIS items have a variable range and not easy to calculate. Rating an item usually requires students to think a bit and consume some time. This could be the reason that students were reluctant to take the evaluation. PICA, on the other hand, has 10 items in total. It is easy to average the items to get a straight score. Using the same formula for PICA to calculate AEFIS scores, however, does not work; the maximum average score can only be 4.25. I caught this error, communicated with the department, and recalculated my evaluation scores. To make the scores comparable to the previous semesters, I only included the 10 university mandated items. 

KNFB 416

Due to the COVID-19, our students were not allowed to do their field practices this semester. For students to grow their teaching skills, I created five times of talk-take presentations. That is, they need to create a lesson plan, put every detail and use images to illustrate each step on PowerPoint slides, present to the class, and discuss what improvement could be made. Overall, the class went well. We followed our plan and gradually my students were able to pick all information. Their lesson planning skills significantly improved. They learned how to use different curriculum models to create their unit plan. Both passed their content exam. Now they are ready for student teaching. I was glad together we made it. 

KNFB 222

This course is specifically opened for EST students. I never taught it before, but I did not want to use the current syllabus that is for school health and physical education majors. What I wanted was to introduce physical education to this group of students. To meet this goal, I decided a new textbook, collected the information I felt useful from three methods courses, and built the course site from scratch on eCampus. Because the students do not need to go through teacher certification process, field practices are not necessary for them. Although I did plan to let them have a few school visits, the pandemic forbade it happening. I also planned a few in-class activities, but because only a few students showed up at the first class and then gradually only two or three came, doing activities with the whole class was not possible. Under these constraints, I did my best to engage students by giving Zoom polls, asking questions, and facilitate discussions. 

Only four out of 20 students completed the AEFIS course evaluation, and they did not comment much. Based on their final reflections, students barely felt they could offer any suggestions to improve the course. What they said was that they learned a lot of useful information, such as lesson planning skills, teaching styles and skills, curriculum models, multiple intelligences, etc. They were happy that they met their goals. More importantly, they became to know self-regulated learning and recognized its importance and specific strategies. This is what I really wanted these students to take away with them. Hopefully, they will find it helpful in their future studies and pursuits. 

 KINE 404

The first time I taught this course was in 2017. At that time, the textbook was very thick, and students needed to read three chapters a week. The content was heavy in theories. I did not like it. So, this time I searched and finally found a really easy to understand book. This book was written specifically for connecting education psychology theories in coaching athletes. Because our kinesiology all had a university core course on psychology and most of them are interested in coaching, this book is a perfect fit to bridge their prior knowledge to practice.  The only problem with the book is that it is only a book, with no accessory learning materials such as quiz banks or study guide. So, I created my own quiz banks, learning activities and assessments, gathered supplementary materials, built the course site from scratch, and got it QM certified in 2018. I was excited to try the brand-new course out for this semester. 

At the end of the semester, many students felt stunned by the information provided in the book. Quoted one student, “The book is an invaluable resource that I will keep in my coaching toolbox probably for the rest of my life.” Because the information is closely related to coaching, most students did not have any changes to the course. Students thought all activities helped understanding and implementing the theories, and one felt “genuinely that the coursework has made a difference in how I coach currently and how I wish to coach in the future.” One student believed this course “has been my favorite course at TAMU thus far.”

There were some points worth considering. A few students mentioned maybe adding one more writing assignment focusing on developing a coaching philosophy. I like this idea and will do so. Recommendations like adding more discussion posts can be done in the future. One student gave a specific change, i.e., giving more scenarios of situations and asking students to write out important factors, timelines for decisions, sources of reference, and possible courses of action. This idea is similar to a few assignments in the course and can be done more later.

KINE 307-501

This semester all KINE 307 face-to-face sessions were transitioned to remote teaching. It is not fun to talk to a computer as an instructor and learn without classmates around as a student. To engage students, I allowed students to create Kahoot quizzes for the class to take in the beginning of every class. At the end of the class, I had a Zoom poll to assess students’ learning. During the class, ask students questions, let them discuss in Breakout rooms, and do hands-on activities. Before each test, I gave them a review. To prepare them for the literature synthesis writing project, I explained how to use the literature matrix and reference checklist as well as the university writing center resources. I believe these methods contributed to student academic success in this course. 

Reading students’ reflections is like listening to different stories. But all stores shared some similarities, such as they had learned a great deal of motor development, the APA Style would help them with their future research, and their use of self-regulated learning strategies. I am really happy that they have become to value self-regulated learning, because it is what I always try to promote. Especially during the pandemic when no one is around, it is challenging for oneself to be self-responsible. I am glad this course has been an enjoyable journal for students and their recognition of my hard work. 

KINE 307-598/599

Online courses are not significantly affected by the pandemic; but students’ physical and mental health might suffer. Some students may have difficulty managing their time. What I did was to emphasize self-regulation for one’s own success. In addition to self-regulated learning materials, I had three surveys based on my research for students to self-examine their use of self-regulated learning strategies. A variety of technologies including Peerceptiv and Turnitin were also used to ensure the quality of student learning experience. 

When I read students’ reflections, I was impressed by the length and depth of their thoughts. I was like reading essays that describe what they have learned, what they feel important, how they met their goals, what learning strategies they used, and how they grew as a self-regulated learner. I was especially happy that many students learned to manage their own learning process and they deeply believe self-regulation would constantly benefit their learning and professional careers. 

Some students still requested video lectures for a better learning experience. I believe I can do this next semester. Previously I saw the requests and hesitated to do so because I could not afford so much time on video editing. This semester I taught remotely and recorded all lectures, so next semester I can upload the videos to the course site. 

  An interesting finding is that session 598 students always gave a lower course evaluation then session 599, about .2. I did exactly the same for the two sessions, but they just responded differently. I observed session 599 was more proactive than session 598. I have not figured out what is behind the difference since both groups are from the same department. 

Summary

It was a challenging semester with six hours of overload on the shoulder, but I did it! I received a historically highest evaluation score this semester, which is very encouraging. I will work as I always do to continuously bring students an enjoyable and rewarding learning experience.

2020 Spring

The 2020 Fall semester was the “darkest” semester since I have been at A&M. I said so is because in the beginning of the semester, the NBA retried superstar Kobe Bryant and his talented daughter passed away in a helicopter accident. It saddened the world. During the spring break, COVID-19 hit the States hard, and all teachings therefore went online. This change left many people unsettled. 

I took a 3-hour overload this semester; but because it could not fit my schedule, it was converted from face-to-face teaching to online learning. So, I taught 15 hours in total, including two field-based methods classes and three sessions of motor development. 

Overall, my course evaluation ended up well at an average of 4.5. The senior methods class scored highest at 4.98, and the newly converted online class scored 4.21.

KNFB 416

With a small group of four, I was able to share more time with each individual. Before they began their field practices, I asked each to send and discuss their lesson plan with me to ensure their quality of lesson design. Right after the spring break, we started online classes. I encouraged the class that as professionals we must be prepared all the time, and exercising self-regulated learning strategies will do them good. They listened and behaved as expected. Even though under the restricted circumstance, students grew professionally by the end of semester. They deeply believed this course was very effective for student to prepare their portfolio and student teaching. One student stated that he “honestly” thought he had “learned more through this course than any other course throughout college.” This student went on saying that he had “utilized the practice of self-reflection not only in my teachings but in my life.” Best luck to the genuine guy! 

I was really pleased to read students’ reflections and comments in the course evaluation. Among all comments, one touched me most was, “Dr. Liu is one of the reasons I am even considering staying in public education… Dr. Liu has inspired me to at least keep giving it a try.” This comment will always motivate me to do better education for all my students! Besides, I need to move the writing worship a bit earlier to help students use the skills in writing their reflections and other assignments.

HEFB/KNFB 324

Following the same formula from last semester, this time, even impacted by the pandemic,  my class demonstrated perseverance and dedication to learning. Because of the pandemic, we were not able to do the Parent-Teacher Conference in person. But I managed to invite an experience teacher from A&M Consolidated High School to do the interview and debrief for each student. This gave my students real experience of interacting with someone outside of classroom. With my emphasis on self-regulated learning, students realized how important it was. They deemed time management as the most important skills of self-regulation. Overall, students became technological savvy, more confident in public presenting, able to design concise and precise slides, and effectively communicate with parents and students. An analysis of their pre- and post- self-assessment revealed they improved on 7 out of 9 items on the survey.

 KINE 307-503

Except the change from face-to-face teaching to online self-regulated learning, this class was fun to teach. Every class we reviewed the previous class, let students present their Kahoot quiz questions, and started new content. During lectures, I would add some discussions or hands-on activities to keep students engaged. At the end of the semester, I felt rewarded by reading students thoughtful reflections. In both their feedback and course evaluation, I can find their love toward the class and my teaching. I was humbled by reading compliments like, “one of the kindest most passionate professors I have ever had.”

Retrospectively, it might be better to keep lecturing on Zoom. Switching online totally and relying on students themselves to promote self-regulated learning might be too abrupt. For future semesters, spending more time on APA and the research project may help students better understand what is expected. 

KINE 307-598/599

The two online courses went well. Students learned valuable information about motor development at the end of the semester. As previous semesters, students had a variety of recommendations, including less assignments, more writing activities, etc. I found some were reasonable so I may consider these: revisiting instructions for all assignments, adding examples, creating collaborative opportunities, and having alternative assessments.

Summary

In the face of the sudden change to teaching remotely, my technology knowledge and skills helped. I felt I had a seamless transition. Fortunately, my students did not get affected much. Hope we will do better next semester.

2019 Fall

This semester was the first semester that I took overloads. Initially, I had one extra credit hour to cover. At the sixth week, I took KINE 307-501 over due to the sudden departure of a colleague. The overall course evaluation is satisfactory. The average of the initial five courses scored 4.67. It becomes 4.59 with KINE 307-501 included. I had a significant improvement on KNFB 416 (4.97) and HEFB/KNFB 324 (4.68), scored 4.65 with the face-to-face class KINE 307-502, received 4.49 on two online classes. I guess this semester paid me off due to my diligence and dedication to education. 

KNFB 416

I was so grateful that this group of students have been the best group I have ever taught! Everyone is well-rounded. Not only can they teach and coach, but they can also articulate their thoughts and analyze teaching from a critical perspective!

  Prior to the semester, I searched and found a new textbook that talks about essentials of teaching physical education. This book is concise and precise on curriculum development, instruction, and assessment. It is more comprehensive than the book used last semester that focuses on curriculum development only. Based on this book, I replaced all quizzes, created several PowerPoint slides, redesigned a few learning activities and assessments. Adopting this book, I guess, made my instruction more relevant. Concerning the consistent decline of enrollment, I reoriented the advocacy project to promote our PEK program. Regarding the lab, I let students observe a lesson first, assist teaching for the second time, and start independent teaching from then on. To help students better prepare their job seeking, I invited a Career Center staff member to give us a presentation. 

During class, we spent more time on discussing what happened in school and what teaching styles and skills were used. As before, I observed them each twice and gave them specific feedback on instructions. One girl had a problem with her mentor teacher about her evaluation scores. I talked to both and solved the problem. This semester, I felt I built a better relationship with students. We celebrated a few students’ birthdays during class. That definitely added positive atmosphere to our class. Again, this talented group made my teaching much easier; their eagerness to learn and my passion toward teaching jus hit it off! 

Reading their final reflections, I was so satisfied that all of them reached their goals by learning a plethora of effective teaching styles and skills. They recognized a few components as most useful, including resume building, interviewing skills, and writing skills. They were not only able to be more capable of managing big classes, but also able to design their own thorough lesson plans and “promote differential styles of teaching to meet the needs of diverse learners.” More importantly, they found they learned important self-regulated learning strategies such as time management that can help them succeed in the future professional careers. Overall, after this class, they were confident and ready for their student teaching. I was so glad that two students acknowledged that this course was “by far the most enjoyable 8 am course I have had in the history of my time here at Texas A&M.”

In addition to their appreciation of the class, they also offered practical recommendations. I liked the idea of moving the writing workshop forward because this is a writing intensive course. I also appreciate their concerns about informing the content exam requirements earlier.

HEFB/KNFB 324

Based on the feedback received from last semester, I changed the textbook from the one that focuses on classroom management skills to the one that introduces ISTE standards and educational technologies. Accordingly, I rebuilt all modules, with each focusing on a specific topic such as multimedia apps, assessment apps, and social media. I kept a few components that are always important such as visual instructional plans and SmartBoard Notes. Again, considering the large amount of technology, I emphasized peer-learning and flipped classroom approach. This semester, students teamed up for six presentations. Whenever there was a time, I would share some tricks and tips of using Microsoft Office, Google Suite, and other useful apps. 

At the end of the semester, students reflected that they learned useful technologies, were able to conduct a parent-teacher conference, and practiced self-regulated learning strategies. Based on the survey I administered in the beginning and in the end of the semester, students scored significantly higher on all nine items at the post test. This means their overall teaching skills and pedagogical technological content knowledge improved, they understood educational technology issues and trends, and their capabilities of using internet, information management, problem solving, communication and collaboration, creativity, differentiating instruction, and using assessments all increased. One student acknowledged that because this course requires time management, “this has been my best semester with managing and balancing my time between school and work/social life.” I also noticed a universal recommendation was to reduce the mount of team presentations. I agree. Based on my observations, students’ skills of creating well designed presentation slides become mature at the third time. So, next semester, I will reduce the presentation frequency. 

 KINE 307-502

The face-to-face instruction for KINE 307 has been established from the first time I taught it. The structure is quite clear, and dates for each assessment specified. In addition to three exams, students have written assignments as well. Considering students’ use of APA style, I walked them through the slides this semester and gave them a quiz to practice it. At the end of semester, almost all students met their goals and learned important information about lifespan motor development. 

Reading their comments in the course evaluation was such an enjoyable time. Students obviously enjoyed this class because it was fun, engaging, and challenging. I did appreciate that students felt my enthusiasm on teaching and care about their learning. I felt honored when one student said that I “always did an excellent job at explaining definitions and providing different wordings/examples of these” and I was “the best professor” at doing this that s/he has ever had. 

There are also a few doable changes, such as adding a few interactive in-class activities, provide a PDF version of the APA Guide, and spending more time on explain the writing project. 

KINE 307-501

I adopted the course from the sixth week. I wish I could step into the class immediately on the fourth week; however, maybe our department head had other thoughts. Anyway, when I was asked to take it over, I immediately agreed. But because there was a conflict on a few Fridays, another colleague helped with two classes. One time I had to ask a TA to take care of a test. A big change to students was that my teaching style and schedule are different from the previous instructor. As they had completed a few activities, I gave them a few extra points for them to start the new journey. I totally understand emotional changes in some students. However, I did my best to accommodate this unfortunate situation. 

At the end of the semester, I was glad that students understood the situation and acknowledged the changes I made. Similar to session 502, these students also wanted more interactive activities and group work. 

KINE 307-599

Right after the spring semester, I followed the QM standards and did a thorough examination of the course design. I submitted this course for a review and it was certified by QM. This semester ran smoothly. Besides emails, I also created a Muddies Point forum for students to ask questions anonymously. I wanted my students to know that they could communicate me in multiple ways even though this is an online class. 

Overall, most students met their goals at the end of the semester. They learned a lot about lifespan motor development, APA Style, and self-regulated learning. Students came up with various recommendations, such as clearer instructions and more examples for assignments, more lecture videos, reduction of work load, more tries on quizzes, etc. Many students did not have any recommendations at all because they believed that the course was well organized and everything was clearly explained, responses were quick, and all learning materials helpful. 

KINE 482

After the summer session, the online session was certified by QM. Probably due to the rigorous course design and effective delivery, many students did not have recommendations for this course to improve. Overall, they felt the course was great with all materials provided, all due dates specified, reasonable amount of assignments, and useful feedback. There are certain recommendations worth considering, such as extending assignments to across the whole semester instead of within ten weeks and meeting up outside of office time. 

Summary

This semester presents a stable increase in my course evaluation. I believe it indicates the quality of my course design and instruction is steadily improving. I’d say a good job to myself and continue to offer best learning experiences to students!

2019 Spring

The fourth semester at this position becomes encouraging. Through constant changes and persistent improvements, my overall course evaluation has exceeded the minimum departmental expectation. From this semester, I began to intentionally and explicitly instill my self-regulated learning belief into all classes. Accordingly, I created a course learning objective and thee activities: goal setting in the beginning of the semester, midterm reflection, and final reflection in the end of the semester. I also took my QM experience with HLTH/KINE 214 to improve all other course designs. Specifically, for all written assignments, I clearly outlined three parts of instruction: purposes, directions and notes. In addition, I provided rubrics and reminded students to have a self-check after completing an assignment. I was happy to see that the two online courses scored about 4.5 and KNFB 416 scored 4.3. The only one below 4.0 is HEFB/KNFB 324 that I taught for the second time and experimented flipped classroom approach. 

KNFB 416

Learned from the painful lesson last semester, I modified my syllabus and categorized five units of learning tasks. The first unit focuses on effective teaching, in which we learn teaching styles and skills, gym management and liability, motivational strategies, assessment and grading, and lesson plan writing. The second unit is curriculum planning, including introduction to curriculum planning, creating a yearly plan and unit plan, and national and state standards. The third unit is advocacy project, focusing on promoting physical education and physical activity. Students can also choose to advocate our PEK program. The fourth unit is a professional paper. This is different from what was done in previous semesters. Previously, we wrote a research paper that examines what is behind a certain trend in physical education. This time, I want my students to focus on planning specific strategies to teach. So, the paper will be more practical, more about step-by-step instructions, and more toward professionals rather than researchers. The fifth unit is about portfolio building, including components such as writing an effective resume, goals paper, portfolio self-assessment, and finalizing portfolio. Each unit will not exceed four weeks. In addition, I made it possible to use a few classes to talk about content exam preparation, invited previous students talk about their student teaching experience, and invited a librarian for professional writing. Regarding field practices, I increased the number of teaching from eight to ten. Students observe one lesson and they will begin independent teaching from then on. During their teaching, I observed them twice and gave specific feedback. 

I enjoyed reading students’ reflective comments in the end of the semester. All students acknowledged that they had met all their goals. They believed teaching styles and skills were most helpful content, along with writing lesson plans. I was also excited that a few students realized the importance of self-regulated learning and were able to improve themselves on this regard. As students discussed, this course was the “most hands-on teaching experience.” One student “confidently” said that this was “the one that provided me with the most development as both an educator and a professional.” The whole class exclaimed that they had a great experience. Positive comments like this make me feel really proud of my students’ achievement in this short period of time. They are the positive reinforcer I needed to do a better job on preparing our future physical educators. 

A few points I should address are (1) spending more time to talk about feedback and suggestions students received from their mentor teachers; (2) discussing each teaching styles in detail and providing more examples; (3) giving more time on content exam and PPR preparation; and (4) adding one more observation for students familiarize themselves with the teaching process and their kids before officially teach independently. 

HEFB/KNFB 324

Based on last semester’s experience, I kept all content but changed the way I taught the class. Instead of me lecturing all the time, I implemented the team-based learning approach whereby students form teams to teach the rest of the class while I provide learning materials and guides. Because this class meets once a week for two hours, I specifically required students to do a brain break before their presentation and demonstration. 

Overall, this semester run smoothly. A good thing was that the class met on Tuesday instead of Friday afternoon, which lifted students’ nervousness. A bad thing was that the class met in a small classroom without university computers. Bringing own devices and connecting to the overhead projector created some difficulties. When we used TeamViewer, the images on the project in low resolution gave us yet another challenge.

Reading students’ feedback, I was glad that they all met their personal learning goals and learned useful technologies. The biggest concern was that the book does not match what they do in the classroom. I totally understand it because what they did in the elementary school was to tutor a few students, helping ESL learners with their, mostly, English and match, while the textbook is about general classroom management. What the students suggested was to change a textbook that focuses on educational technology use. I agree and will see what to use. 

Another recommendation students gave was to spend more time discuss what technologies are appropriate for use during their tutoring. This is about how to apply we covered in our classroom to their practice. I can definitely make a list of common apps. One student shared that the presentations should go beyond basics. Some presentations were too basic so that the class lost their interest. These recommendations are reasonable and insightful. I for sure will consider each for the next semester.

 KINE 307-599

Following the QM standards, I did my best to make all instructions clear, provide example whenever possible, and give prompt feedback. For this semester, I added a peer review process for written assignments. Students used Peerceptiv to do the reviews. I tried to make the assignments relevant to application of knowledge; that is, use what is learned to give the public recommendations such as what exercise and how to do for senior citizens. Another big change I made was for the research synthesis paper. Instead of writing the paper in one step, I allowed students to submit a draft first, complete peer reviews, and finally submit a revision. Considering students’ multiple intelligences, I had an assignment for them create a visual to illustrate lifespan changes in perceptual components. To help students read the book, I also uploaded PowerPoint slides to guide their learning.

Overall, it was exciting to read all comments. Students expressed their gain of knowledge in a very elaborative way. Compared to previous semester, more students did not have any recommendations for this course to improve because it was already well organized and everything explained clearly. If they had, recommendations were reasonable and applicable. I liked how some student would like to have more assignments like the visual. This is what I can do more on; try more alternative assessments. It was such a satisfaction to read comments like, “The requirements were specific and explained well; there were no gray areas of confusion,” and “I loved the course and learned a lot!”

HLTH/KINE 214

A big change to this course prior to the semester was that I changed the textbook and got it recertified by QM. The new textbook includes both school health and physical education contents and focusing on how these two can be integrated in classroom teaching. It contains concise descriptions of both contents and provides simple instructions on how to apply the standards and skills. To give students more information about each learning module, I also designed four parts of information, including overview, objectives, materials, and assessments. To accompany the textbook, whenever I want students to have a reinforced learning, I add additional readings and videos in the material section. Similar to KINE 307, I implemented Peerceptiv assignments and focused on how to apply the knowledge learned such as creating a brain break activity or a physical education integrated plan.  

The outcomes are rewarding. Most students elaborated what they had learned in this course and how the information might be helpful to their future endeavor. When it comes to recommendations for the course to improve, several students would like to have more examples for the written assignments, especially for the integrated plan. Many students also were interested in collaborating on a big project. These ideas are doable. Reading their comments in the course evaluation also makes me feel happy. There is no negative comment. Almost all “enjoyed the course and the professor.” 

Summary

I believe my constant pursuit of quality education finally paid off. Although there were ups and downs, all challenges have become my motivation. I will continue to refine the courses that are established and keep experimenting best practices in the coming semester.  

2018 Fall

The second year of this position began. This semester I had mixed feelings; I did as much as I could, but look at the course evaluation, although the scores slightly increased, it is still below my expectation. The average score I received for the four courses was 3.97, with the lowest 3.81 for HLTH/KINE 214 and the highest 4.123 for HEFB/KNFB 324.

KNFB 416

Based on previous students’ feedback, prior to this semester I added an information section specifically for preparing students for the PE content exam. Because the textbook we used is a bit out-of-date, and its large amount of content is not easy to cover, I adopted another one. This one focuses on curriculum models. I believe this book can help students better understand the background, unique features, and operations of a spectrum of curriculum models and later develop their yearly curriculum plan. Because field practices are essential for them to learn how to teach, I emphasized this part, observed each individual at least twice in middle schools and debriefed their performances. 

This group of students obviously have a characteristic different from all previous groups. They tend to keep things to themselves. Multiple times I felt they were reluctant to talk to me. There were occasions one student would talk to his classmates when I was talking. I was a bit shocked, because they are seniors in this teacher education program, they are supposed to behave professionally at this stage. Unfortunately, I was not effective in dealing with this problem. I just let it go without further emphasizing discipline because I thought as adults they should be aware of their responsibilities. I was wrong, and I should be more assertive. The biggest lesson I learned from this semester was that never assume students already know it. 

Reading their comments, I was much more frustrated than on class. The blatant statement, “I did not learn anything from this course,” just broke my heart. I almost cannot continue my reflection. But anyway, problem needs to be solved. Another mistake I made, and I believe I have made it in previous semesters, was that I put too high expectations on students. I wanted to educate students from my perspective and my experience, but students had their own thoughts and perspectives. What I wanted them to be was critical thinkers and problem solvers, so I preached a lot more theories during lectures. I believed theories came from practices; without a firm understanding of theories it is ineffective to do things properly. After reading their comments, I realized that students wanted to do more hands-on activities; they would rather learn from experiences. Because I approached students from an academic rather than a practical perspective, students felt my teaching was ineffective. Besides lecture content, the research article is another testimony of this failure. The research article is supposed to develop students’ awareness and insights of current issues in PE. However due to my heavy research background, I almost demanded students to do it as a graduate. My emphasis on writing and APA drove student crazy. This, again, reinforced students’ belief that I did not teach them how to teach.

There are other problems, too. Students believed a few projects congested in the end of the semester were too challenging for them to complete. They also needed reminders of due dates for other written assignments. They wanted more information about student teaching. They would like to begin building portfolios in the beginning of the semester. Although I prefer them to hold themselves accountable for keeping up with due dates, I do have my share to fulfill. All in all, I believe one student got it correct: I needed a better communication with them. 

At the end of the semester, I made changes to the syllabus for the next semester and presented it to the class. Gladly, they recognized the changes. 

HEFB/KNFB 324

This semester was the first time that I taught HEFB/KNFB 324. It is a cross-listed course that both school health and physical education students take. This is a field-based teaching methods course with emphasis on technology and pedagogy. The course was previously taught by an adjunct faculty. When she was teaching, I observed a few classes. She was very experienced in education; but when it comes to technology, students needed better instruction. Technology is my forte. I used to help my fellows build their own computers and were skillful in operating all types of software and applications. I believed my expertise in technologies would help students gain knowledge and skills they needed to succeed in their studies and future careers. It was not until when I finally took this course over did I realize how much work I needed to do. 

I began with course redesign by rewriting course objectives and then aligning modules objectives, learning activities, and assessments. Considering Microsoft Office Suite and Google G Suite, Camtasia, and SmartBoard are most useful in students’ studies, I removed the previous technology textbook from the list. To teach the technologies, I collected open sources instead. I also spend hundreds hours on Lynda.com to train myself to be more knowledgeable and skillful in using the technologies.  In addition, I added activities for students to present and demonstrate how to use mobile apps in school teaching. For the field practice part, I connected with the principle and arranged the pair up between students and their mentor teachers.

Although the course evaluation scored above 4.00 and students generally believed that they learned important technologies from this class, there are a few areas that I need to improve on. First, the due dates need to be separated far away from the class time. This important methods class was assigned to the afternoon of Friday, so this is not favorable to many students. I expected students would read the chapters and quickly take quizzes prior to the class and  complete assignments right after the class; but in fact few students did so. In this case, I had to constantly move the due date back a bit to ensure everyone have enough time to come up with quality work. This change irritated some students. Retrospectively, I should have specified all due dates on the course calendar too. As for many students requested reminders of due dates, I believe their requests can be satisfied by their more proactive learning approaches and my clarity on due dates as well as more explanations of every assignment. Over the past semesters, I was aware of the importance of clear instructions; therefore, revisiting all instructions and make them easy to follow will be my next step. Also, as students reported, I may need to provide more notes or PowerPoint slides to prepare students learn. After all, not all students are capable of receiving my information. Some students are already a guru, while others can barely find tabs in Word. 

KINE 307-599

I have constantly invested effort into improving my online teaching. To address previous students’ concerns, this semester I created two orientation videos to explain the syllabus and how to navigate the course site on eCampus. To provide clear instructions, I specified two parts for every assignment, including a purpose and directions. For students to better excel in the research article writing, I created a series of guides, including an overall guide, rubric, reference checklist, example article, and how to organize a paper. Considering frequent errors in reference selection, I created a folder that contains multiple ineligible articles, and also made a video explaining why the articles are ineligible and how to use the checklist. To motivate students become more self-regulatory, I created two surveys based on my self-regulated learning research and awarded each an extra point for their participation. 

Although there are still some complaints about quiz questions, instructions, examples, and due dates, it has been much less compared to last semester. Students’ recommendations have become more specific and reasonable. For example, two students recommended providing more information on atypical behaviors and how disabilities affect lifespan motor development. Another student suggested making an assignment on using an assessment instrument. Students’ course evaluation almost reached 4.00, and their comments generally show that this course is worth taking, well organized, and challenging. However, I still need to revisit some quiz questions to make sure no typos. A side point I noticed is that the course evaluation questions may not suit the online course teaching. Students usually gave low scores on a few items that check how the course is prepared and taught. One item is, “The instructor was well prepared for class meetings,” and students would think there was not physical meeting. 

HLTH/KINE 214

Similar to KINE 307, I made orientation videos, created a course map, rewrote a few course objectives and module objectives, rearranged learning activities and assessments for HLTH/KINE 214. One big event for this course is that it was certified by Quality Matters! After a comprehensive examination, the course design was recognized by the national organization for assessing quality of online instructions. 

The course evaluation is still low, below 4.00. I guess 30% of the class getting an A was not quite satisfactory? Just like previous semesters, there are still complaints about instructions and examples. The amount has decreased. The student feedback shows they were more thoughtful and elaborative in summarizing their learning progress and giving suggestions to the course. According to the course evaluation, although one or two students obviously disliked the course, most of the class enjoyed it and believed the course was helpful and worth recommending. For the ones who still do not fully understand the nature of online learning, that is, holding selves accountable, more explanations and instructions are on the way.

Summary

Overall, I learned a lot this semester, especially from my KNFB 416. I believe this experience really helps with my teaching capability. HEFB/KNFB 324 did ok, but letting students share what they learned and can teach may be an alternative to what I did this semester. The two online courses have been improved, but more can be done. 

2018 Spring

This was the second semester at this position. I felt much better than the first semester. After reading students’ feedback from the last semester, I made a few changes to my courses. However, the course evaluation did not accurately reflect my teaching performance. I said so was because from this semester the university arbitrarily only took online course evaluation on PICA instead of traditional paper evaluation, and the first time ever online course evaluations were included in our evaluation. Students were not interested in online course evaluation at all. So, my overall courses evaluation based on the four courses was 3.73; much lower than my expectations. For KNFB 416, only one out of eight students did the evaluation without leaving any comments, and the scores was 3.27, so it was not quite useful for reference. The other face-to-face course, KINE 307-504, reflected my effort indeed; the course evaluation ended up with 4.74. The two online courses averaged at 3.7; not satisfactory. 

KNFB 416

Based on students’ feedback last semester, I separated the due dates for the major projects; specifically, moved the curriculum plan to the first half semester. This made students feel much easier, and I did not find any complaints any more. To prepare students for their portfolio defense, I added a portfolio construction component in the course. Specifically, we spent two classes focusing on building and finalizing the portfolio. I still kept the flipped classroom approach, but I did not allow students to work completely on themselves. Rather, I actively attended each individual and facilitated group discussions. For every learning task, I gave clear explanations on why and how we were supposed to do it. Although the course evaluation score by one individual only was disappointing, I was happy to read students’ feedback at the end of semester. They believed they had gained useful information about field teaching, using different teaching styles and skills, creating curriculum plans, writing an effective resume, and learning about liability. These points are in line with my action research findings in an article that focuses on physical education preservice teachers’ critical thinking. One student mentioned having clear guidelines on writing a resume was really helpful. A common recommendation was to spend more time on field teaching and/or discuss it on class, because this part is the most relevant to their future career. They also suggested more preparation on their content exam and portfolio building. One student thought the research article was not quite relevant to their teaching; this might need some consideration. Finally, I was glad that they enjoyed the class and acknowledged my dedication to teaching!

KINE 307-504

This was the first time I taught a KINE 307 face-to-face session. This is a fundamental course for Kinesiology majors and very important for all students. With my teaching assistant experience with online sessions, it was not too challenging for me to prepare for this course. In addition to Dr. Gabbard’s strong support, I observed his and Dr. Kennedy’s teaching every week. I also updated all PowerPoint slides with new notes, images, and videos, as well as provided extra learning materials on eCampus. Every class I not only lectured but also engaged students in discussions and interactive activities. To reinforce students’ learning, I gave extra credit for them to create Kahoot quizzes as a refresher in the beginning of each class. These things greatly motivated students to learn, and I was really happy that all students recognized the course very helpful for them to pursue their professional careers. Overall, they enjoyed this class, learned a lot, and appreciated my passion and caring for them. In their appraisals on PICA, all comments recommended this course, and I was humbled to hear students calling out me as a “best professor.” 

One thing I can work on later is to change the way they review the research article. This semester we did it on Peerceptiv. I did not specifically explain the steps to do it, so they felt confused at times. Next time, I can either use another system or provided clearer instructions on it. All in all, this successful experience is rewarding and definitely will motivate me to do better for my students!

KINE 307-599

KINE 307-599 is the online session of the motor development course. The online format provides more flexible time on learning but also challenges students to be self-responsible. The course is also intensive in terms of working loads. Students have to read at least one chapter, complete one quiz and one writing assignment every week. I did some changes prior to this semester. Specifically, I made four assignments optional to either individual or group work, created 127 new chapter quiz questions, and added one module for students to reflect on their learning progress. Also, I used Peerceptiv as a peer review tool to enhance peer learning experience. Besides, a research paper project is required to completed across a few weeks. This is different from what I did as a TA when a complete paper was due at the end of the semester. This time I let students choose their topic and references first. Once they are in the right direction, I let them continue to write the whole paper. I had never collected students’ feedback to this course until this time. 

Reading students’ feedback, a few things came to my mind. First, they learned a lot of information in this course, as every one valued what they learned. Second, I was responsive to their questions and also prompt on giving feedback to their assignments. Third, a unanimous request was to change the due dates; instead of the current 5:00 PM, 11:59 PM could be the best choice. Fourth, many students would like to have recorded lectures instead of reading the book only. Fifth, some people did not like group work because it’s hard for all members to meet at one time, but others liked it. Sixth, there are some questions needed double check or revision. I found similar comments in their course evaluation comment section. Besides, most students expressed that they could not asses if I was knowledgeable or good at teaching at all because the class was online. Another point that students complained about was that my grading was too harsh. 

To address all these areas seems to be a challenge, but for students’ success, I will be taking it one by one. Above all, I believe, similar to the feedback I received in other courses, clarity in explanations and instructions should be the key for students understand what, why, and how they need to do. 

HLTH/KINE 214

Similar to KINE 307 online session, I taught HLTH/KINE 214 before. This course is a stacked course for students across the university to take. It is intensive in terms of reading two textbooks and completing weekly quizzes and written assignments. To increase student interaction and collaboration, I converted a few assignments from individual to group. Concerning many students do not have a solid grasp of APA style use, I created one module to teach this format. Because creating lesson plans is an important outcome of this course, I added two modules to prepare students, from a broad view of yearly plan to unit plan and then lesson plan. Similar to KINE 307, I created a final reflection for students to review how they progressed over the semester. Based on students’ feedback and their course evolution comments, my responsiveness to their questions and grading time on their assignments were acknowledged. However, there are still a few areas needed attention. 

One area that most students concerned was the time allowed to complete the quizzes. They said the questions were extremely specific, which took a lot time to search in the book. Regarding this concern, I can either allow more time, or, give them directions on how to read the book and then take the quiz. Another area was to provide more examples for the assignments. I always feel by giving examples, students may not use their creativity anymore, so I will find a way to give more instructions rather than directly give an example. A third one was that they would like to see correct answers after they missed some questions. I set it up as so but did not have a question during the semester. I would have investigated this problem if someone asked. Although the due dates for this course were the same as those for KINE 307-599 on Thursday, 5:00 PM, I received less complaints. Some students even asked for more group work because they were able to communicate and collaborate. 

Reading through the course evaluation, I found many students were discouraged by the grades they received. This item on the evaluation form only scored 2.5 out of 5. Obviously, students believed their grades should be much higher based on their effort. I wish everyone could earn an A; but compare their work to the rubric, there was still a way to go. What I can do is to give more clear instructions and possible examples. Overall, their appraisals were half-half. I will look into my notes to do whatever I can in order to bring students a better learning experience.

Summary

This semester was different from the previous one because of low participation in the PICA online evaluation and inclusion of online course evaluation. Although the evaluation scores may not testify much, there are still room to make improvement, especially on the online course. A few things to consider:

• For KNFB 416: Keep doing what is planned, add more emphasis on field teaching, portfolio building, and more information about content exam.

• For online courses: Revisit instructions and quiz questions, give more elaborated instructions, provide examples if applicable, and consider changing due dates. 

2017 Fall 

This was my very first semester at the new Clinical Assistant Professor position. Although I had been at A&M for six years as a teaching assistant and later an instructor of record, plus one semester Instructional Assistant Professor, teaching comparatively more courses still posed challenges. Last semester as an Instructional Assistant Professor, I received 4.35 based on two courses, KNFB 416 and KINE 307-504. This was a fair score to me as it was the first time I ever served as a full-time faculty member in this department. This semester, I received 4.16 based on KNFB 416 and HEFB/KNFB 325. Although I also taught two online courses, they were not included in course evaluation according to the university policies. Compared to the Spring, the score became lower. This decrease could be primarily attributed to my noviceship; specifically, how to articulate my thoughts to the class and explicitly communicate with students.

KNFB 416

KNFB 416 is the capstone course of our PEK program, both field-based and writing intensive. It has both lecture and lab sessions. Although it was not my responsibility to mentor each student during their teaching in public schools. I was still able to observe and debrief every student during their field-based practice. It seemed my effort was helpful to improving the students’ teaching capabilities. For the lectures, this semester I experimented a flipped classroom approach. By using this approach, students spend more time on reading the materials and instructions outside the classroom. While in the classroom, they discuss questions, share points of view, and work on their learning tasks. I found the majority of the class did not favor this approach. What they wanted was more traditional lectures, as reflected form their comments in the course evaluation. Although I did not have a problem with the previous class for doing a few group projects, this group did not like the idea of doing the projects on class and having them due on a few close dates. Another problem was the miscommunication between me, the TA, and the students. This semester I had a TA. Although we talked about each other’s responsibilities before the semester, he did not provide timely feedback to the students on their work. Students complained, and I intervened; unfortunately, this did not change much. Consequently, this item on the evaluation form was scored one of the lowest. Reading students’ comments, I was not satisfied with my teaching. I should have explained everything clearly, especially gave rationale for what they were expected to do. I guess this is because I wanted to develop critical thinking in students by giving ill-defined tasks. Unfortunately, it did not work well. For the next semester, I will make sure I give clearer explanations and instructions on every single task they need to do and adjust the lab portion (sequence of teaching styles).

HEFB/KNFB 325

HEFB/KNFB 325 is another field-based and writing intensive course of the PEK program. It aims to equip students with knowledge and skills of teaching secondary schools. I took this course because my colleague who previously taught it was assigned extra teaching loads, so I had to back her up for this semester. I had never observed or taught this class before, so this semester was for sure a hard learning experience. To make the teaching more challenging, before the semester, two sperate sections were combined into one and put into one small classroom. 

Anyway, in addition to the textbook, I also read extra books and spent extra time on educational media platforms to prepare myself. For example, I found “Classroom Management: Sound Theory and Effective Practice” by Robert Tauber is extremely helpful to understanding the spectrum of discipline models. Thomas Armstrong’s “Multiple Intelligence in the Classroom” and Thomas Hoerr’s “Becoming a Multiple Intelligences School” are informative about multiple intelligence. “How to Create and Use Rubrics for Formative Assessment and Grading” by Susan Brookhart is definitely a must read to teach students develop useful rubrics. To prepare for the lectures, I updated the PowerPoint Slides with new information, images, and videos. I also integrated polling technology (Poll Everywhere) into the slides so students were able to see the results immediately after their responses. In addition, I incorporated brain-break activities during the long lectures, so that students were able to have a fun learning experience. These efforts were acknowledged by many students. 

I was glad that the School Health students enjoyed their learning, rewarding the course 4.42 out of 5, while the PEK students did not as much by giving 3.91. The lower score from PEK could be due to a few students from my KNFB 416 mixed the two courses. Clearly, one student’s feedback was specifically about KNFB 416 instead of KNFB 325. I liked that many students said that they learned useful information about Bloom’s Taxonomy, different discipline models, multiple intelligences, and how to construct a test and develop rubrics. I did invest a lot of effort in developing these components. Students also reflected that there were somethings that I needed to do better: Specifically, more explanations and instructions on the assignments and projects; remind them of due dates; make lectures shorter, add more brain breaks, and create quizzes for content reinforcement. If I have another chance to teach the course, I will definitely work on these areas.

Summary

Although the first semester’s course evaluation met my minimum expectations, there are certainly many aspects of my teaching that need improvement. I need to prioritize my work on clearer explanations and instructions for sure. Besides, I will also make adjustments to course design and delivery based on students’ feedback. 

A few things to consider:

• Spread out the due dates of the few major projects for KNFB 416.

• Explain course and task objectives more clearly.

• Provide rationale for every learning tasks.

• Give clearer instructions.

• Ask students if they have questions more often.