Astr 5

This was the first lecture to be observed this semester. The constructive feedback I received about this lecture was that there was a lack of student participation and many missed opportunities for critical thinking. There was a lot of information presented and the pacing of the lecture sped up a lot toward the end, making the activity at the end feel rushed. Some advice I received on how to improve included:

• pausing to include multiple choice questions

• reducing the amount of material presented in a single class period to make time for more critical thinking

• diversifying teaching methods by utilizing think-pair-share, clicker questions, etc.

• providing more time to answer questions

In this lecture, I implemented some of the advice I received following my first round of observations. During this lecture, I paused more frequently to check understanding. I inserted comments throughout the slides below, giving some examples of questions I asked during lecture.

In the second midterm, students struggled to recall some of the material covered during the lectures before the first round of evaluations, but their performance on the exoplanet-related questions was noticibly improved.

During this lecture, I asked the whole class to share their thoughts and participate in the lecture. Responses were dominated by a few students, while the rest remained attentive yet quiet. I think my attempts to improve student engagement could be expanded by utilizing clickers and more group work.

Here's a lecture where I took the advice to put multiple choice questions throughout. I used clickers to record responses to multiple choice questions, which made it easier to get responses from the whole class. Clicker response was nearly 100% for most questions, showing that more of the class is participating. The clicker questions sparked lively and productive conversations, where I was able to ask the class to share their reasoning behind their choices and see how the class responses change in real time when I explain how to eliminate one of the multiple choice answers. I also received verbal feedback from some students that the multiple choice questions in the lecture slides were helpful.

To celebrate my favorite holiday, we took a trip to the planetarium and enjoyed the Halloween Happenings show, developed by Jessica and Heather. I used this opportunity to advertise the planetarium shows and encourage students to sign up for the Astr99 Special Topics course on Planetarium Programming. The timing of this show/lecture was fortunate because it also allowed me to advertise the Astr99 student production planetarium show, happening that Thursday.

I learned that it's hard to have whole-class discussions in the planetarium because it's difficult to see the whole class at once and hear the students speak. It would be best to have a worksheet that allows students to work in small groups, while I circulate around the room.