Teaching

When you are a professional student for most of your life, it is easy to recognize attributes of good and bad teaching. Over the past 10+ years, my formal and informal educational experiences have run concurrently and consecutively, providing me with a diverse and non-tradition set of skills – much like my teaching experiences themselves.

My pedagogical practice started in informal education, as my interest in studying animals drew me to work in zoological parks. When I obtained an internship within the education department at the Binghamton/Ross Park Zoo (Binghamton, NY), I thrived when encountering opportunities to connect information about animals with diverse audiences; I frequently gave tours and presentations to school-aged children, seniors, people with special needs, college students, community members, and donors. I became skilled in adapting material for respective listeners, which aided in my ability to design and direct education programs when I was promoted to an education assistant and then special projects coordinator for the zoo. I planned and assembled themed “education kits” for volunteers to use for visitor engagement throughout the zoo. One education kit I created focused on snow leopards (a species we exhibited) and their conservation status. We partnered with the non-profit Snow Leopard Trust so visitors could see what grassroots organizations were doing on the ground to combat the loss of this species. A snow leopard coat – previously confiscated by authorities – was displayed for visitors to touch, when talking about morphological adaptations for cold winters and high altitudes. Visitors were challenged to try to identify snow leopard tracks in snow, something conservationists and scientists often need to do because cats are so elusive! In these roles I also created specialized tours for guardians with non-mobile children (“stroller safaris”) and collaborated with zookeepers to safely and effectively design and implement up-close “wild encounter” experiences with specific animals (which the zoo still offers, twelve years later). Informal teaching was an invaluable experience, which has since benefitted me immeasurably in my personal and professional life. I learned that I work well with other people when we can identify a common goal, and that I can teach most effectively by providing connections to multiple disciplines.

Looking back, I wish that I had known more about evaluating visitor learning, education outcomes, and/or behavior change. Whether it was a result of my inexperience and/or the limited time and resources afforded by a very small zoological park, I never even considered assessing learning outcome or the effectiveness of my own teaching - via distribution of surveys or recording visitor conversations (Allen, 2002) - until I accepted a competitive research internship at Lincoln Park Zoo’s Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of African Apes. Fisher Center Director (late) Steve Ross was seasoned in collecting data on visitor behavior (Ross & Lukas, 2005), visitor knowledge and attittudes (Lukas & Ross, 2005, 2014), and informal teaching effectiveness (Price, Boeving, Shender, & Ross, 2015). Subsequently, Zoo Atlanta’s former Vice President of Education Michelle Kolar (now at the Indianapolis Zoo) stressed to me the importance of evaluation in education programming while I was designing my dissertation work. Part of my prospectus did detail a plan for evaluating the effect that observing gorillas using the new termite mound had on the behavior change and conservation attitudes of zoo visitors. Though I did design a sound survey, approved by the Zoo Atlanta Scientific Committee, the zoo shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic before I could collect the visitor data.

My formal teaching experience started through a teaching assistantship as a senior biology major in college, for which I was hand-picked by my professor. At a small liberal-arts college, teaching assistantship are exceedingly rare, though I was the youngest student to have taken the upper-level comparative vertebrate biology course. This teaching assistantship required me to prep laboratory set-ups and assist students in biological dissection and analysis of vertebrate anatomy. I became very close to my students, as the class was relatively small, and work was very collaborative.

Throughout my time in graduate school, now at an enormous R1 institution, I served as a teaching assistant for psychology major and non-major students in a wide range of courses including introductory psychology, research methods, behavioral health psychology, sensation and perception, physiological and comparative psychology, social psychology, abnormal psychology, and statistics. Most of these classes were comprised of between 30 and 300 students. The majority of my responsibilities were to provide in-class assistance during lectures and activities, administrative assistance during test days (copies, student identification checks, test distribution and collection, answering questions, watching for cheating, disability resource center accommodations, etc.), grade and provide feedback on exams and assignments, and to manage grades in our online system. The undergraduate statistics course included several laboratory sections taught by teaching assistants; I assembled weekly lab lectures and assignments in coordination with the other teaching assistants and taught one lab section of 15 students per week, during which I would help them navigate the respective week’s statistical tests in SPSS™ software, and report their findings. Occasionally, I would help instructors of record for my other respective teaching assistantships prep course lectures and materials, and I was asked to guest lecture frequently, especially for courses and course units which overlapped with my areas of research. During my TA-ship in physiological and comparative psychology, I gave a lecture (among a few) on comparative learning and memory; I covered mechanisms of synaptic plasticity, the role of the limbic system (specifically the hippocampus), and structural/morphological differences in the brains of different species. I also led activities designed to help students identify stimuli/responses in classical and operant conditioning, and “test” their own working memory to that of chimpanzees. Unfortunately, the University of Georgia does not require students to complete TA evaluations (as they do for instructors of record), so feedback was limited. Select course evaluations and comments did demonstrate, however, that students appreciated my teaching abilities, suggestions to improve their work, and my initiative to make sure they understood course material (see below).

As I grow my formal teaching experience, guest lectures continue to play a role in my professional development, and luckily, research shows that guest lectures help students improve their learning too (Rowland & Algie, 2007)! I have guest lectured for numerous courses at the University of Georgia, Georgia State University, Alfred University (my alma mater), and SUNY Binghamton. I was also granted the opportunity to visit third-grade classrooms in Athens-Clarke County as part of a project-based learning (PBL) STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) initiative developed by Northeast Georgia Regional Educational Services Agency’s Carrie Siegmund. This initiative expanded upon themes in The One and Only Ivan, a book by Kristina Applegate which is part of the third-grade curriculum. Though the book is fiction (as it’s written from gorilla Ivan’s perspective), Ivan was a real gorilla whose life in a mall transitioned to a state-of-the-art gorilla habitat at Zoo Atlanta. As a primatologist with a gorilla-centric dissertation, I was invited to speak at multiple elementary schools. I used this opportunity to exercise my skills in curriculum development and effective “course” design. In applying for different teaching positions in higher education, I have designed quite a few courses (see sample syllabi for comparative psychology, cognitive psychology, introduction to psychology, animal behavior, and conservation biology). During my presentations to classrooms, not only did I talk about my own research, but I organized activities for students to practice their gorilla researcher skills in collecting behavioral data using an ethogram. I played different gorilla vocalizations, and had students attempt to decipher gorilla “language”. We discussed the plight of gorillas in the wild, and how zoo-housed species help people care about gorillas as a species. Students designed gorilla habitats based on the information I provided about gorilla lives, and created zines to advocate for sustainable conservation practices, such as cell phone recycling. This project, which was repeated over three years, was an amazing opportunity for me to bridge the gap between my formal and informal teaching practices.

Another opportunity which allowed me to practice my formal teaching was during my time substituting for Duke University Talent Identification Program’s (TIP) summer course for gifted high schoolers at the University of Georgia. I spent a few short days as an instructor for a course entitled, “The Brain, Intelligence, and Creativity”. Though brief, my lesson plans were full of activities – from using swim-caps to map out the lobes of the brain, to writing raps about how different senses are perceived, to touching and measuring real brains (human and non-human) which I borrowed from the Emory University medical school.

The flipped classroom model is an extremely effective education tool, which dramatically benefits student’s learning (Cabi, 2018; Akcayir & Akcayir, 2018; Bishop & Verleger, 2013), and having helped execute it during the project-based learning initiative and during my time at Duke TIP was an extreme privilege. I was able to apply my informal teaching capabilities in a more structured environment and tie my subject expertise into existing concepts and theories already in the curriculum. Anecdotally, I found that students were extremely engaged with material, and with my enthusiastic teaching style.

Pedagogical Philosophy

Education makes for powerful, well-informed decision-makers who have what it takes to make changes in the world. Providing students with insight as to why learning is so important evokes a chain-reaction of engaged, confident learners, and productive, empathetic future citizens. To invoke students’ motivation to invest in their own education – both inside and outside the classroom, I rely on scientifically-based methods to complement traditional teaching practices. I design courses using concepts such as the “flipped” classroom model (Walvoord & Anderson, 1998; Borchardt & Bozer, 2017), the “inverted” classroom model (Lage, Platt, & Treglia, 2000), and the peer instruction method (Mazur & Crouch, 2001), to engage students during in-class time, in lieu of traditional lectures. Having a background in zoo education and public outreach before starting any formal, collegiate-level teaching, I find that my informal education experiences made me practiced in adapting to my audience. I am fully prepared to teach any size group, any age, any intellectual ability, and at any location. My informal teaching experience was entirely hands-on, keeping zoo visitors engaged as active participants with experiences and artifacts to enhance their learning.

In addition to effective course design, I also take a personal stake in my students’ success. A 2016 study conducted by the National Institute of Health showed that teacher emotional and autonomous support, measured both by student self-reports and objective classroom assessments, plays a significant role in students’ desire to learn (Ruzek, Hafen, Allen, Gregory, Mikami, & Pianta, 2016). From the first day of a semester and throughout the duration, I make it clear to students that I am invested in their education. I do this verbally (repetitiously) but also devote the time and energy to connect with students on a more personal level; students are people and the more they connect with me as a person (not just an educator), the more effective my teaching is (Furrer & Skinner, 2003; Kaufman & Dodge, 2009). This was especially evident in those students whom I mentored as research assistants within my laboratory. I aspired to make mentees feel appreciated and understood, but to challenge them to take control of their own learning by asking questions and taking initiative. Some of these students have even gone on to pursue graduate careers of their own. My commitment to student mentorship is also evidenced by the two departmental mentoring awards granted to me in 2020. More information about my mentoring philosophy can be found in my separate mentoring statement.

Assessment of learning and assessment of my teaching is also a key part of my teaching philosophy. Students learn best through frequent, low-stakes testing (Sotola & Crede, 2021), which is why I feel that weekly quizzes and correction of exams for partial credit are important facets of my course design. This system also removes some anxiety around high stakes testing but motivates students to study for exams so they can avoid lengthy corrections.

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Algie, J., & Rowland, J. K. (2007). A guest lecturing program to improve students' applied learning. In Proceedings of the Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy Conference (pp. 1-6).

Allen, S. (2003). Looking for learning in visitor talk: A methodological exploration. In Learning conversations in museums (pp. 265-309). Routledge.

Bishop, J., & Verleger, M. (2013, October). Testing the flipped classroom with model-eliciting activities and video lectures in a mid-level undergraduate engineering course. In 2013 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) (pp. 161-163). IEEE.

Borchardt, J., & Bozer, A. H. (2017). Psychology course redesign: an interactive approach to learning in a micro-flipped classroom. Smart Learning Environments, 4(1), 1-9.

Cabı, E. (2018). The impact of the flipped classroom model on students' academic achievement. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 19(3).

Crouch, C. H., & Mazur, E. (2001). Peer instruction: Ten years of experience and results. American journal of physics, 69(9), 970-977.

Furrer, C., & Skinner, E. (2003). Sense of relatedness as a factor in children's academic engagement and performance. Journal of educational psychology, 95(1), 148.

Gochman, S. R., Morano Lord, M., Goyal, N., Chow, K., Cooper, B. K., Gray, L. K., ... & Dominy, N. J. (2019). Tarsier Goggles: a virtual reality tool for experiencing the optics of a dark-adapted primate visual system. Evolution: Education and Outreach, 12(1), 1-8.

Kaufman, A., & Dodge, T. (2009). Student perceptions and motivation in the classroom: Exploring relatedness and value. Social Psychology of Education, 12(1), 101-112.

Lage, M. J., Platt, G. J., & Treglia, M. (2000). Inverting the classroom: A gateway to creating an inclusive learning environment. The journal of economic education, 31(1), 30-43.

Lukas, K. E., & Ross, S. R. (2005). Zoo visitor knowledge and attitudes toward gorillas and chimpanzees. The Journal of environmental education, 36(4), 33.

Lukas, K. E., & Ross, S. R. (2014). Naturalistic exhibits may be more effective than traditional exhibits at improving zoo-visitor attitudes toward African apes. Anthrozoös, 27(3), 435-455.

Price, A., Boeving, E. R., Shender, M. A., & Ross, S. R. (2015). Understanding the effectiveness of demonstration programs. Journal of Museum Education, 40(1), 46-54.

Ruzek, E. A., Hafen, C. A., Allen, J. P., Gregory, A., Mikami, A. Y., & Pianta, R. C. (2016). How teacher emotional support motivates students: The mediating roles of perceived peer relatedness, autonomy support, and competence. Learning and instruction, 42, 95-103.

Sotola, L. K., & Crede, M. (2021). Regarding class quizzes: A meta-analytic synthesis of studies on the relationship between frequent low-stakes testing and class performance. Educational Psychology Review, 33(2), 407-426.

Walvoord BE, and Anderson VJ (1998). Effective grading: A tool for learning and assessment. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.