1. University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire

Class Level: K12

Summer 2019: Introduction to Nanotechnology (UNH Summer Boot Camp - Project coordinator)

Overview: This is a one-week intensive course designed to introduce middle school students to the exciting world of nanotechnology and how it has been shaping, and continues to shape our lives and future (without many us knowing it) It was previously taught in-person and involved a lot of hands-on activity, but with the current pandemic, the challenge was how to adapt such a course for online remote learning. The plans to carry out the course remotely were eventually cancelled, but I had adapted the lesson plan to suit remote instruction and below is a copy of the plan.

This is the first course that I have had full control of in deciding the direction that I wanted the course to take, and that I had the opportunity to apply most of what I had learnt from the scholarship of teaching and learning. My only regret with teaching this course is its short tenure (one week)

My main objectives for this course were to introduce nanotechnology in a way that K12 students would appreciate the relevance of the field, and to create an awareness of the significance of nanotechnology to people who would end up being scientists and policy makers for the technology of the future. The course had multimedia components as well as an extensive use of the whiteboard for thought experiments, collation of responses to given prompts, further exploration of concepts and illustrations. At least one laboratory experience was embedded in the daily lesson plan, and we had other activities that introduced the students to the scientific process such as the formation of committees that were required to attend a "conference" on behalf of their groups.

I started the course by issuing my students a background knowledge probe to find out how much they knew about nanotechnology, and besides the mentions in pop culture, they knew nothing and this was an excellent starting point for me because then I knew that I had to take the entire class at the same pace. Armed with the feedback that I had gotten from the knowledge probe, I began the class by informing them of the utility of the probe, my expectations from them, the nature of activities that we will perform, and my stance towards diversity and inclusivity. A daily breakdown of the activities for the in-person version of the course can be found in the spreadsheet above.

For assessment, I employed four major strategies: a daily morning quiz that cuts across the topics that we had dealt with so far, occasionally stopping the class when we had achieved a milestone (or were about to establish a new one) to seek responses to prompts which were either written on the whiteboard or projected in front of the class, creating a thought experiment and asking them to work on those experiments with their partners before giving a response in class, and finally, asking them to read various state-of-the-art articles on nanotechnology, and asking them to summarize the articles making sure to include the salient points. These are middle school students aged between 9 and 15 and by the time the week had passed, they knew more about nanotechnology than most people (graduates, undergraduates and professors) on the campus. On the final day, the were re-issued the same knowledge probe that I had given to them on the first day, and I remember them laughing at how ridiculous the questions had become (the same questions that they could not fully answer just five days before)

On the third day of classes they had been informed of culminating projects that they had to work on, topics were assigned and groups were created. The project was to be a part of a show-and -tell that we had organized for them to explain to their parents what they had learnt during the week. The students followed their projects diligently (I have never seen students with such enthusiasm to actually do extra work!) and were just having a lot of fun with the entire process

What I learnt from this experience:

• Things will not always go as planned, but be ready and willing to adapt as the need arises. I set time limits for each of my activities but when we started, it became immediately apparent that those times were impractical. I adapted to this by quickly prioritizing the learning materials and deciding which to keep, discard, or merge into another activity for a different day.

• Know your audience. The way I taught this class would definitely be different from the way I would teach college students who are more comfortable with some of the calculations and abstractions that were involved in the class. I would have arrived at the same outcome, but would have chosen a different path to do so, and might have ben able to cover more ground than I did with the current audience.

• More is always better. I was able to make on-the-spot decisions about the priority of my learning materials because I had prepared and organized a lot of learning materials. I never came up short of activities, assessments or instructional units and was still able to cover most of what I had planned to do simply by prioritizing the materials that I had. Contrast this to not being prepared, or not having sufficient learning material.

• Anyone can be taught anything; the students are not the problem, the instructors are! During the show-and-tell, I had parents who were scientists themselves, drill their children on the topics they had learnt during the week while I just stood by and listened in. These parents later walked up to me to express their gratitude and amazement at the depth of understanding that their children now had of the subject.

• You will never know how much your students have learnt if you do not have a means of assessing their knowledge. I could have chosen not to issue a background knowledge probe to my students (after all , it was just a one-week course), but issuing that probe helped me and them see the level of growth that was achieved in just one week (five days actually) At this point, and if I had more time with them, my next strategy would be to make sure that this knowledge is consolidated by creating opportunities for them to scaffold it into what they might already know from basic science.

This course was an absolute delight to teach, and one that I look forward to teaching again once this pandemic passes.

2. University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire

Class Level: Undergraduates

Fall 2020: CHEM 403.01 (General Chemistry I - Lab Teaching Assistant)

Spring 2019: CHEM 405.01 (Chemical Principles for Engineers - Lab Teaching Assistant)

Fall 2018: CHEM 405.01 (Chemical Principles for Engineers - Lab Teaching Assistant)

Spring 2018: CHEM 405.01 (Chemical Principles for Engineers - Lab Teaching Assistant)

Fall 2017: CHEM 405.04 (Chemical Principles for Engineers - Lab Teaching Assistant)

Summer 2017: CHEM 403 L02 (General Chemistry - Lab Teaching Assistant)

Spring 2017: CHEM 404.18 (General Chemistry II - Lab Teaching Assistant)

Spring 2017: CHEM 404.04 (General Chemistry II - Lab Teaching Assistant)

Fall 2016: CHEM 403.17 (General Chemistry I - Lab Teaching Assistant)

Fall 2016: CHEM 403.10 (General Chemistry I - Lab Teaching Assistant)

Overview: CHEM 403 and 404 are undergraduate freshmen Introductory Chemistry courses. I taught the laboratory component of these courses which were meant to give the students an opportunity to further explore and consolidate through experimentation, the theoretical concepts that they had been exposed to during the regular lecture sessions. Chemical Principles for Engineers (CHEM 405) is a one-semester accelerated general chemistry course also meant for freshmen who are mostly in the fields of Engineering, Mathematics and Physics. It is a fast-paced version of the traditional general chemistry courses (CHEM 403 and 404) and strives to cover all the fundamentals of chemistry that are required for integration into engineering schemas. I also taught the laboratory component of the course which fosters critical thinking and group work, in addition to evoking and integrating concepts taught during the normal lecture.

I had no influence on how the syllabus or instruction of these courses were structured; although, the course instructors and lab coordinators did welcome inputs and suggestions from the TAs on peripheral issues, the course structure and design was always the responsibility of the instructors and lab coordinator.

For the lab component of the course, we the TAs were responsible for guiding the students during their discovery labs, identifying and correcting misconceptions, and grading their lab work. The areas where we had the greatest influence was in the 15 to 20 minutes pre-lab lecture that we delivered before each lab, the way we choose to address our students' inquiries during the lab, and the nature of feedback we give to our students on their graded lab work. For the pre-lab lectures, I utilized mostly the principles of memory recall as a way of getting my students to revisit ideas that they had been taught during the regular lecture sessions. During the lab, groupwork was highly encouraged and I would walk around the lab listening-in on group conversations to ensure that they were indeed, establishing connections to their previous knowledge. I would occasionally intervene when I noticed that they had encountered a roadblock or were beginning to consolidate a misconception.

I ensured that during grading, I gave them detailed feedback that was sufficient to get them to rethink about incorrect responses that they had initially supplied in their reports and lab notes. This feedback had to be placed directly beside the response that had an issue, and had to be returned to the students in a timely manner so that they had the time to read and reflect on it before the next lab session (as the labs are usually related and the subsequent one could be a further development on the recently concluded lab) I always asked them to reach out for help whenever they needed it, but that they should be ready to supply me with the details of what they had done up till the point when they got stuck. This is to ensure that they at least give a reasonable attempt to the prompts and not just rely entirely on assistance from the teaching assistants.

3. Community Secondary School Kpean, Rivers, Nigeria

Class Level: Junior Secondary 1 - 3

September 2004 - September 2005 (Visual Arts and Mathematics - Teacher)

Overview: As part of a one-year compulsory national service scheme, graduates in my home country are deployed to rural areas to engage in community service in the form of teaching. For me, this teaching commitment was for Visual Arts and Mathematics for Junior Secondary School students in southern Nigeria. I was responsible for preparing lesson plans and the academic scheme of work for both courses, taught regular sessions as well as held extramural classes in both subjects.

These subjects, and the ones after (#4 Finpat Intenational Schools) are a good example of a traditionally taught passive course. I taught in the same way that other teachers at these schools taught, and this was the same way that we were taught as students; stand in front of the class and dictates long notes or write out boards of notes for the students to copy without any significant effort to try and explain most of those notes. In retrospect, I still do not understand how I was able to teach subjects like Mathematics, Physics and the Visual Arts this way. I believe I did my very best at the time, and with very good intentions, but those subjects require a lot of hands-on practice and guidance. It did have the advantage of the students being able to recall facts at a moment's notice, but some of those facts could have been seriously flawed because they were facts supplied by me, the instructor, based on the limited instructional materials that I had to work with. The students did not have the skills to think about and challenge those "facts", and even if they did, that invisible barrier that exists between instructors and students made it impossible for them to do so.

Grading was an "all or none" affair which is ridiculous when I think about it now, but I practiced it because that was the only way that I knew how to grade then (I was basically doing to them, what had been done to me). A lot of the mathematical focus was on the proving of equations (a totally meaningless and time-wasting venture) and when they were given actual problems to solve, I and other instructors would simply locate the problem number, scan down to the final solution to see if it matches what we have on our grading key, and either issue full points if it matches, or no points if it doesn't. The students' thought processes were not considered and even if the student propagated a simple numerical error all through a two-page proof, that student will be scored a zero for all the work they did on that proof. Again, this had the advantage of ensuring that the students always strived for accuracy in all their work.

But how important is memory recall and accuracy when the students cannot identify or challenge falsities and/or misconceptions in their learning? How important is memory recall and accuracy when the students cannot use that stored information and diligence to identify and make connections between new knowledge and existing schemas? Thinking back to those years is painful to me both as a student and as an instructor, and I wish that I knew then, what I know now about teaching and how learning occurs.

4. Finpat International Schools, Kaduna, Nigeria

Class Level: Senior Secondary 1 - 3

November 2002 - July 2004 (High School Physics and Further Mathematics - Teacher)

Overview: My first real stint in instruction came during my final years as an undergraduate student in my home country. I taught Physics and Further Mathematics at the Senior Secondary School level, and part of my responsibilities included the organization of inter-school science debates, preparation of lesson plans and and the academic scheme of work for my subjects.