Reflection

I started my journey into the CIRTL co-teaching program for PostDocs with very little experience in teaching to undergraduate students. My own experience as a student consisted almost exclusively of traditional lectures without active learning or other modern teaching elements. My participation in the program occurred at a time of writing teaching statements for job applications. It was already a first eye-opening experience when I received feedback on my statements (I gratefully acknowledge Erin Galyen`s help) showing me how much the teaching community had already thought about teaching elements I was proposing and that many of them had technical terms associated with them (e.g. ‘spaced repetition’, ‘peer instruction’, etc.). This served as a motivation for joining the CIRTL program to learn more about teaching in the 21st century and gather more teaching experience. My PI, Andrew Capaldi, was teaching a Systems Biology class, a subject I have been in love with since my undergraduate days, and kindly offered me to co-teach the course (MCB 480/580, Introduction to Systems Biology) with him. The course in the fall of 2021, aimed at upper division undergraduate and graduate students, fortunately could be held as an in-person class.

For my section of the course on “-omics technologies in Systems Biology”, I retained the main elements of Prof. Capaldi`s teaching, in that students would be given 1-2 research papers to read in preparation for the class, which would then be worked through first via questions discussed in groups of 4-5 students and then with the whole class on the board and with projected figures from the paper. As additional elements, I introduced the use of Powerpoint slides and clicker questions (using the Socrative app; thank you to Stephanie Capaldi for the suggestion).

One of the suggestions given in the “Introduction to evidence-based STEM teaching” MOOC was not to completely reinvent the wheel and look for teaching resources others had used for similar courses. I tried to adhere to this advice for elements I wanted to add to the course, however this was easier said than done for a Systems Biology course, as, unlike for courses in the standard curriculum, not many resources exist. My first two classes on transcriptomics and proteomics were not too heavily laden with hard-to-understand concepts and I had enough experience with the subjects that relying on the research papers selected for the classes, my experience and advice from Prof. Capaldi was sufficient for preparing the classes. The situation was different for the third class on functional genomics, for which I had little previous expertise and which was centered around the relatively difficult concept of epistasis. Here, the paper Knight, et al. 2013 was immensely helpful in breaking down the concept and building a foundation for the paper discussion.

Photo by Fabio Bracht on Unsplash

Overall, I believe that I reached my goals and expectations for the program in attending the MOOC, teaching these three classes and participating in the students` final presentations. I gathered experience in teaching and, maybe even more importantly, in class preparation and in employment of active learning strategies. The preparations were far more time consuming than I had anticipated and adding this to my other PostDoc duties left me relatively exhausted at the end of the teaching period. Compared to a class simply taught from slides, the preparation of teaching with active learning clearly requires much more reflection on how to guide the students` thinking process, which questions are most appropriate for which activity (e.g. group discussions vs. clicker questions) and how to assess learning success. I learned about myself, that I do enjoy teaching and that it is especially the teaching of materials I feel uniquely qualified for and the (albeit time-consuming) expansion upon already existing material, that I feel most excited about. This serves as a motivation for preparing my own course in advanced Systems Biology.

I received encouraging and helpful mentor feedback from Prof. Capaldi, which I then tried to act upon in subsequent classes: Time management was arguably the most difficult aspect of teaching this class due to its interactive nature and the dependence of progress on contributions by students. Based on the first two classes, I received the advice of placing mental milestones in the lecture content that demarcate how much time is allowed to have passed at that point. Secondly, it should be well defined which parts of the content are critical and which are considered as optional and can therefore be cut when running behind schedule. Although my plan for lecture 3 was still somewhat too optimistic, these tips were very helpful in time management of this final class.

We also discussed how to make the student-teacher interaction in class more efficient. Already on the initial classes in which I had served as a teaching assistant, I received the feedback of answering students’ questions with a counter question that leads them towards solving their problem. I am trying (time permitting) to also apply this strategy to my teaching. We further talked about how to proceed from answers given by students in class. Prof. Capaldi advised me to summarize or repeat students` answers to questions in my own words to get the important points across to the rest of the class more clearly and add corrections where necessary. He also encouraged me to continue along my strategy for dealing with lack of responses to a question by breaking the question down into simpler parts and adding concrete examples to abstract questions.

A main takeaway from my reflection on the global view of the class was my dissatisfaction with the level to which students prepared for the classes. Apparently, the majority of students had read the assigned papers superficially at best and the pool of students volunteering contributions to the class was limited. Admittedly, as a new teacher, I largely resorted to calling on these students. From my experience in the lab, I am aware that early graduate students have a heavy course load at a time when they need to develop their research programs for the coming years. When teaching my own course, I would therefore make an effort to determine how much time students are required to put into other classes. Once determined that the workload of my class is adequate, I would aim to implement measures that reward more clearly based on effort.

Leading a course on my own, I would be more formal than I have been during the co-teaching about keeping track of the contribution from each group of students and to call on groups randomly for contributions. I would likely also assign group compositions myself and alter them from time to time. This would be beneficial from an inclusion perspective and may enhance the feeling of obligation towards the other group members. Based on my MOOC lecture plan, I received the suggestion of assigning a speaker for each group. I may try to implement this by calling on a specific student in a group, instead of the group as an entity, so that group discussions aim at preparing every member in the best possible way.

I am also considering introducing pre- and post-class assessments. The former may consist of questions to simply check if the paper has been ready and may be implemented as clicker questions at the start of each class to ensure every student answers the questions himself. Post-class assessments would instead serve the purpose of evaluating if I got the important messages across.

I am aware that overemphasizing the assessment aspect of a class may come at the price of enjoyment and a relaxed atmosphere. On the other hand, the assessments laid out to cost little distress to students prepared for a class, will help with making use of class time more efficiently and probably even motivate students when adequate preparation allows them to explore the class paper more deeply and in light of their own interest.

Two more final reflections:

Teaching does help with a teacher`s own learning and the generation of ideas. Based on my third lecture, I proposed a research project, which, unfortunately though, I did not have the time to put into practice. However, it was interesting to see how the preparation for class made me think about the class papers more deeply, triggering the generation of ideas that would not have occurred by just reading the papers.
Always make sure there are board pens in the classroom that actually work!

Last but not least: I would like to warmly thank Prof. Andrew Capaldi to allow me to co-teach with him and Kristin Winet and the University of Arizona CIRTL team for organizing the program.

Photo by Omar Flores on Unsplash

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