Directed Teaching Experience

My Roles and Responsibilities

In my directed teaching experience in SPLH 571 during the spring 2021 semester, my primary role was to support student learning through the provision of lectures. At the beginning of the semester, Dr. Gatts, the GTA for the course, and I met to discuss the semester. At that time, Dr. Gatts and I divided the lectures so we would each know who was doing which lecture. Over the course of the semester, I prepared and gave 13 lectures in the class.

Service Delivery Model

Spring 2021: This course was a semester long undergraduate course. It was delivered primarily via in-person lecture, but an online format was offered for students to attend lecture if they were unable to attend in person. Lectures occurred 2x a week for 45 minutes. Lectures were held in a large lecture hall to accommodate social distancing standards. Students met on Friday's virtually for lab, which was led by the GTA.

Lectures

My primary responsibility for SPLH 571 during my directed teaching experience was to provide lectures. While I decided to create my own PowerPoint presentations for lectures I delivered, the content within the PowerPoints and lectures was based heavily on previous presentations from the course. Dr. Gatts designed this course to be front-loaded with general relevant information relevant to future SLPs (i.e. assessment, intervention, documentation, working in teams), and in the later part of the semester discussing specific diagnosis (i.e. child language disorder or adult language disorder). Each lecture topic was designed to build off of one another. I felt that primary use of the lectures already developed as a source for my lectures ensured that I covered all the necessary content when it needed to be covered. Students in the course were expected to complete readings related to the lectures prior to class. While some content from the readings appeared in the lectures, Dr. Gatts also liked to provide additional information. I did make some specific and thoughtful additions to the lectures. I provided through specific content and through examples from personal experience. Additionally, as much as I could, I attempted to involve students in discussion by asking more closed-ended questions (these could be answered by raising hands).

Over the course of the semester I delivered the lecture on the following topics:

• Teaming: Working with Professionals and Families

• Assessment

• Multicultural issues

• Intervention

• Intervention: Goal Development

• Childhood Speech Sound Disorders: Concepts

• Childhood Speech Sound Disorder: Goal Writing

• Childhood Speech Sound Disorder: Teaching Strategies

• Child Language Disorders: Concepts

• Child Language Disorders: Goal Writing

• Child Language Disorders: Teaching Strategies

• Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) Overview

The above lectures in blue text were delivered as traditional style lectures with me sharing information and asking questions to the group. Lectures in purple indicate a three lecture series where lecture time was spent applying information from reading into a worksheet that was developed in previous iterations of the course.

For example, during the childhood speech sound disorders (SSDs) lectures, time was spent collaboratively completing a basic assessment of a child (estimating intelligibility and speech sound sample based on Youtube video provided), categorizing and describing speech sound errors from the sample, identifying area of need for intervention, developing goals based on the information gathered, identifying appropriate teaching strategies to use, and developing activities that would fit the goal. Sections of the worksheet were assigned for students to attempt to complete independently between classes, then in class students would compare results, discuss options/differences, ask questions, and preview the next section. The use of these worksheets benefited students as it demonstrated how what they were reading and learning is applied in the clinical world. It also met a more immediate need for the students. The format of the worksheets was similar to group assignments due during the semester, giving the students practice and instructors natural opportunities to provide feedback.

Examples:

Addition to a Lecture: Specific Content

Due to the large lecture hall setting and student seated socially distant, discussion was difficult. Below I provide an example of an addition I made to the lecture on teaming. I developed this graphic that demonstrates the continuum of practice from professional-centered to family-centered based on an article by Dunst et al., 1991. I added this information to the lecture as I felt the definitions provided add a level of specificity for students so they could clearly categorize observations they were completing for the lab. This addition also highlighted research behind the lecture, and helped to foster classroom-clinical connections.

Addition to Lecture: Anecdotes from Clinical Experiences

I chose to lecture on topics that I had the most clinical experiences in. This allowed me to share examples of situations from my clinical work with students as an example, as a question or in answer to a question. For example, during the lecture on AAC, there was question regarding "How young can you begin AAC?" In response to this question, I talked about how there is no person "too young" to benefit from AAC modalities (for example baby sign). I talked about pre-linguisitic skills that need to be a focus of intervention first or in tandem with linguistic forms of communication. And I was able to provide examples from my practice of children who benefitted from AAC systems at a young age.

Classroom Activity

While the environment of the class did not lend itself to my preferred style of discussion based lectures, I did welcome participation from students through asking questions and through lecture activities. A primary example of this was during the goal development lecture. This lecture included definitions of different kinds of goals and definitions of the SMART goal components with examples throughout. At the end of the class time, I provided examples of good goals and goals that needed improvement. Then I provided a goal, and asked the students to think about which of the SMART components was missing. Students were able to participate by raising their hand to give an answer, sending a message (students on zoom), or I would ask for visual sign "raise your hand if you agree." In this way, I provided multiple avenues for students to participate.

Feedback

Student Feedback

At the end of the semester, students in the course had the opportunity to give anonymous feedback of my instruction. This was done through a form that first asked students to rate 11 areas of instruction on a five point scale (1 being strongly disagree, 3 being neither agree or disagree, and 5 being strongly agree). A total of fifteen students responded to the survey. Below is a chart that outlines the areas that students rated as well as a summary of their feedback. Feedback summary provided as percent of students who provided the answer strongly agree or agree when asked about my skills in each content area.

Additionally, students had the opportunity to provide additional comments. Below are the comments students gave:

"I liked how you structured your presentations. Thank you!"

"I really appreciated how you stuck through with us during the semester. I understand it was probably hard most days with how quiet we were. Everything you did was great!"

"I thought that listening to you teach was very fun! You always came extremely prepared and I am surprised that it is even your first year teaching. You know your stuff! I would love to take another SLP class with you."

"I really enjoyed learning from you and hearing some of your personal experience stories. Especially since I want to go and work with kids, I thought it was super interesting to hear both yours and Julie's perspectives on things. I feel that I learned a lot from you and really appreciate how you went out of your way to help us students in the class and that you were always available for questions when needed."

"It was very interesting and refreshing when Susan was lecturing about things that she really cared about and it made the class entertaining and you could tell she was happy to be there. This cannot be said about all lecturers in college so I appreciate it a lot."

"Susan is wonderful. I appreciated her perspectives on topics (like children, AAC) as well as her welcoming attitude that wanted her students to be successful."

"Susan's passion for this profession is what made her teaching the most effective."

"I really enjoyed Susan's lectures and her perspectives on different areas within therapy sessions with children."