Yingying Xie - Teaching philosophy

Guide to Explore -- Teaching Philosophy

I have been an instructor and mentor in multiple institutions. During my 12-years interdisciplinary training and experiences in Ecology, Biology, Geography and Statistics, I realized my passion of teaching and mentoring that transfer my research, skills and experiences in a meaningful and encouraging way. To me, teaching and mentoring is an interactive process between instructor and students. I enjoy communicating with students because I always get inspired and encouraged from them. As Thomas Paine said, “The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.” I would like to be the enlightener to my students and the mind enlightened by my students too.

I have multi-years college teaching experience in Ecology, Biology, and Environmental Sciences. So far, I have co-developed a new upper-level course, Global Change Ecology, for both undergrad and graduate students. I have taught Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Systems, R Data Science, and Meteorology lectures and labs, and introductory biology laboratories (Foundations of Biology, Principles of Biology) for major and non-major undergrad students. My experience in teaching scholarship through the Center of Integrative Research Teaching and Learning (CIRTL) network, strengthens my teaching skills and pedagogy design to improve students’ learning and practice. Other than applying evidence-based instructional practices (EBIPs) in classes, I also developed a Teaching-As-Research project to examine how different group learning strategies affect students’ learning effectiveness.

I see my role in the class as a guide, who provides the learning environment and leads the exploration/journey to the new world for students. To broadly link research and teaching, based on my learning and teaching experience, I set my four teaching goals as: 1) to stimulate students’ interests in the exploration trip, 2) to foster systematic and critical thinking for gaining new knowledge; 3) to develop problem-solving skills through active learning, and 4) to encourage scientific communication and applications. I utilize multiple methods and EBIPs to achieve the four fundamental goals.

I believe students’ interests magnify their learning effectiveness. I share my interesting field observations experiences and stories with my students, such as how I encountered a natural fire, snakes, turtles, and frogs in my forest plots. This transmits the energy from my enthusiasm for the wonderful natural world to students. Students are always inspired by the brilliant and elegant nature from exciting stories, videos, and natural specimens. I use multiple types of learning materials (e.g. slides, specimens, models, graphs, videos and hands-on work) to accommodate variety of students’ learning styles to stimulate their curiosity to what they learn. I always use concept maps to organize course outlines in every lecture (i.e. graphical information). I also use ‘clicker’ questions to increase students’ engagement in class and to collect formative feedback to measure their understanding (i.e. interactive engagement). Field trips (e.g. phenology observation, plant and animal identifications, and water sample collections and tests) are provided to connect with the nature, which also strengthen their knowledge learned from class right away.

I also think it is important for students to develop lifelong learning skills and critical thinking in college studies, because they bring benefits leading to career success and personal growth. I believe hypothesis-driven scientific methods are extremely useful to students in any major since it describes key procedures in any exploration process. Thus, I introduce scientific methods at the beginning of the course and apply the procedures in the learning process. For example, in case studies and course projects, students ask scientific questions, then design experiments or analysis to test their hypothesis. This provides opportunities to students to use qualitative and quantitative skills to critically evaluate their exploration process, not just follow the given information. I also lead discussion by asking questions on controversial issues to encourage debates. To accommodate the discussion, students must prepare their own research materials from multiple sources of evidence. Thus, they need to critically assess the evidence source to support their argument, not just transfer the information. In large classes, students have discussion within each group and conduct peer evaluations (i.e. effective in-class discussion).

I believe that knowledge is better gained from practice than just being given information. Thus, I provide hands-on work employed by simplified methods, and use case studies (e.g. ecosystem carbon dynamics and climate change) that require students to apply new concepts and technique procedures to solve problems. I encourage students to design their own experiments or individualized course projects that incorporate students’ personal background, interests, and problem-solving skills (i.e. inquiry-based learning). In my lab sections, I found that group work (e.g. measuring leaf evapotranspiration with multiple tasks) provides opportunities for students to learn how to cooperate with each other to achieve their common goals, appreciate differences of background and working styles among team members, and better communicate within the group (i.e. cooperative learning, peer-to-peer learning).

Beyond guiding students to explore new knowledge, I believe instructor from natural sciences also have the responsibility to encourage student to communicate to the public and apply new knowledge from the nature to our society. I realize how important the scientific communication to the media and the public is, when my research on fall phenology obtains great attentions from the media and the public. Thus, in my teaching I not only emphasize the link between global change driven by human activities and ecological and economic consequences, but also encourage students to share their ideas on this topic with their friends and families, and utilize social media to share and communicate to others. In discussions on environmental issues (e.g. air and water pollution, biodiversity loss, and climate change) in class, I encourage students to brainstorm the application of ecological knowledge in the real issues, since the final goal is using new knowledge to change the world.

From my experience, I found that the diversity of students affected their learning process and sometimes brought challenges in learning. Thus, I would like to build an energetic and inclusionary environment for students with diversity of backgrounds, including race, culture, ability, gender, etc. For example, I encourage students from a variety of cultures and regions to talk about their own experience and culture when discussing environmental issues globally, which is effective for students to understand and value the differences and commonality from a variety of cultures using a global perspective.

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