Christina Manzano

Portfolio Description

This is my first year portfolio, showcasing materials from three preps (Astr 5, Astr 5 Online, and Astr 5L) as well as non-teaching activities. At the top of this website, you will find tabs that navigate to each of the 3 preps. Each course section includes:

• A syllabus

• A selection of 3-5 lectures or labs

• Sample tests, quizzes, and activities

• Examples of student work and feedback.

The remaining tabs at the top of the page include a summary of field trips, extra credit assignments, and non-teaching activities. As you navigate my portfolio, you will find that I have organized the narrative to describe each section of the course alongside the examples I provide.

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Reflection, Goals, and Development

I would like to take this opportunity to broadly reflect on my first semester teaching full time at Mt. SAC. I am starting this position with six years of experience teaching a similar course at UCR as a teaching assistant, and two years as an adjunct and instructor of record. My teaching style is largely influenced by the professors I've worked with as a TA at UCR, where introductory astronomy classes are taught in a large lecture hall. As an adjunct, I further developed my materials and added my own voice to my lectures. This first semester teaching full time at Mt. SAC has taught me a lot about how to design a lecture, personalize assessment strategies, and integrate classroom activities to make the course a better fit for this campus.

Below, I will provide a broad description of my teaching strategies this semester, reflect on what I have learned, and summarize new approaches I would like to try in the future. My hope is that you will find these thoughts worth discussing, and as always, I welcome all thoughts, criticism, and feedback!

Lecture Development

My strategy at the beginning of the semester was to present lectures that incorporate multimedia, animated demos, and lots of information not presented in the book. I have received positive feedback about the appearance and content of my lectures both from peer evaluators and students. Based on my evaluations this semester, I have turned my attention toward improving student engagement. I have received many excellent suggestions on how to encourage student participation and improve active learning in the classroom. I began implementing some of these suggestions soon after the first round of evaluations by introducing clicker questions to the lecture slides, pausing more frequently to verbally check understanding, and leaving more class time for student-student discussion.

Classroom Environment

I like to cultivate a relaxed and somewhat informal environment in the classroom. I strive to make myself approachable so students feel comfortable speaking up. I invite students to call me Christina or Professor Manzano, allowing them to choose the level of formality they would like to use when addressing me. I like to start the semester by having students speak most of the time in the first class meeting. I ask them to introduce themselves to each other by sharing their name, major, why they chose to take this class, and what they hope to learn this semester. I then invite students to share what they talked about, and turn this into a class-wide discussion of what topics we should cover this semester. I then do my best to work special topics into the planned curriculum. This opportunity was missed this semester, and I felt like it took more time than usual to get students to open up.

I would like to ask students to recommend and mutually agree on in-class policies. This should give students a sense of ownership of he classroom, as well as solidify the code of conduct.

Scientific Thinking

For some students, Astr 5 may be the only science class they take in college. This gives me the important job of helping them develop a strong foundation in scientific thinking. I introduce this theme by devoting lot of lecture time to science philosophy and the scientific method early in the semester. I introduce the Scientific Method as one mode of thinking and understanding the universe and cover some questions that science is best at answering, and some questions that science is useless at answering. I return to this theme later, when we talk about the possibility of multiverses and how we can't experimentally verify them.

I would like to expand the focus on scientific literacy and practice practical skills when it comes to interpreting and communicating science results. One skill I would like to develop is the ability to read an article on a scientific topic, analyze the information, and communicate the information to a friend who is not taking this class.

Exams

All exams this semester were multiple choice, except for some computational questions on the lab exam. I chose this mode of evaluation to make it easier to quantify correct answers, in hopes that changes to my teaching approaches would be easier to track. For instance, I found that students struggled to recall facts presented in lectures where there was little to no student-professor and student-student interaction, but scores improved when I paused more frequently to check understanding.

I am happy with this approach for my in-person classes. It is difficult to proctor exams in the online course, so I would like to incorporate more essay type questions or eliminate exams entirely in the online prep. Changing this method of evaluation would give me valuable practice writing thoughtful essay prompts and grading essay responses. One challenge I anticipate is that students have a wide range in writing ability. In preparation for this change, I plan to familiarize myself with the writing center so I know how best to help students express themselves in writing.

Office Hours

I hold office hours in the afternoon on Mondays and in the morning, before class, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I have had some very productive visits, including a student who is interested in majoring in astronomy (whom I successfully recruited into Astronomy Club), and a few who utilized extended office hour time to review their test results in detail. To improve office hour attendance, I am considering rebranding office hours as "tutoring sessions" and encouraging students to sign up in groups, in case they are intimidated to come in on their own.

Outside the Classroom

I offer three options for the required field trip. Students may choose to go to Griffith Observatory, California Science Center, or Mt. Wilson. Students are asked to complete a short write-up or submit a short (3-5 minute) video summarizing their experience. My goal is to provide transportation and accompany students on at least one field trip each semester. This semester, I unfortunately had some difficulty finding an appropriate time in my schedule and reserving a bus, but Julie was kind enough to take some of my students with her class to Griffith Observatory. In Winter 2023, I would like to organize a tour of Mt. Wilson Observatory.

My goal is to schedule at least one planetarium visit per in-person class, per semester. This semester, my lab class enjoyed the Binocular Stargazing show as a fun way to unwind after their midterm. My in-person lecture students joined me in celebrating Halloween with the Halloween Happenings show, developed by our own Jessica Draper and Heather Rookhuyzen. I used this opportunity to promote our public planetarium shows and the special topics Astr99 class, focusing on planetarium programming.

My lab class will also utilize the observatory on November 16. If weather permits, we will look at some globular and open star clusters, Mars, the Orion Nebula, and Andromeda.