Teaching

In my experience, setting clear expectations builds students’ confidence. My dedication to providing my students with clear instructions can be observed through the guidelines I provided for slide descriptions, a recurring homework assignment throughout the semester in which students describe the pathological findings in a piece of tissue featured on their assigned microscope slides. Students were given these instructions prior to the first assignment deadline, along with several examples of excellent work by previous students. The benefit of these detailed instructions and example assignments was made evident by my students' work, in which they emulated these examples to produce high-quality work of their own.

Presenting course content clearly is also extremely important. One way in which course material can be demystified is by presenting the content in a clear, engaging manner. As a TA, I was the primary teacher for our Immunopathology Unit. Because the immune system is so complex, this unit contains a large amount of complicated content. I know it is easy for students' minds to wander when they are inundated with a lot of information without clear direction indicating where they should focus their attention. In preparing slides for this lesson, I made thoughtful choices regarding my use of graphics; I wanted to effectively draw students' attention to the most important information on the slide. I found that by intentionally including duplicate slides with different parts of the image grayed out, it helped students stay engaged as I presented the information. By highlighting "bite-sized" bits of information at a time, students seemed to retain the key concepts I wanted them to remember. Furthermore, repeating the same graphic throughout a lengthy lecture can help to orient the students and clearly put each piece of information into its broader context.

I have also found that holding exam review sessions is very beneficial — even though these sessions were optional, attendance was always high. Students seemed to appreciate one final opportunity to seek clarification regarding both my expectations and content, as it provided a forum for them to ask about the information they were expected to know for the exams and to discuss course material that remained confusing or unclear to them.

One key practice which contributed to the development of a growth mindset for my PATHOL 750 students was the regular discussion of mock scientific questions. Students were prompted with a situation based on a principle of pathogenesis previously discussed in class, which provided them with the tools to develop a rationale for possible explanations for the phenomenon described in the scenario. This encouraged them to think critically and comprehensively about feasible ways to both explain and test their ideas. While these types of questions are challenging, they mirror the types of problems we face in biomedical research. In composing a satisfactory response to these types of questions, it requires the student to connect their existing knowledge about principles in pathophysiology with scenario-specific details, identify the gap in knowledge, form a hypothesis to explain the phenomenon, and propose ways to test their ideas. In my experience, taking an iterative approach to these types of questions based on class discussion effectively emphasizes the importance of continued growth and development, which is an important aspect of scientific research in both academic and industry settings. Encouraging students to shift their mindset toward valuing improvement over perfection helps to build their confidence over time. As students develop this key skill, they provide responses which are more structured, methodical, comprehensive, and deeply based in valid scientific rationale. 

Another strategy I used to encourage my students to develop a growth mindset was the manner in which I provided feedback on assignments. For example, when grading weekly slide descriptions, I intentionally did not penalize students heavily for mistakes; instead, I provided detailed feedback with specific, constructive pieces of criticism. In my experience, providing this type of detailed, non-punitive feedback motivates students to improve the quality of their work without excessive focus on the numerical grade. Students were generally very responsive to this type of feedback, as evidenced by the corresponding adjustments they made in subsequent assignments.

Finally, another critical aspect of promoting a growth mindset involves cultivating a classroom environment in which students feel sufficiently comfortable to make mistakes. To this end, I prioritize establishing a collaborative atmosphere which rewards effort and improvement. One method which I have used to cultivate a collaborative atmosphere is to establish early in the semester that cold-calling will be used regularly throughout the course. While students often feel uncomfortable with this at first, the expectation that all students contribute to the collective learning experience quickly makes it easier for students to contribute to class discussions. In addition to cold-calling, using small-group discussion strategies increases students’ comfort with speaking in class, as sharing a small-group discussion with the class is generally less intimidating than taking sole ownership of a response. These strategies foster an environment focused on growth and skill development, which I believe significantly enhances learning at the graduate level.