Excellence in Teaching
Presented by Douglas Duncan, Univ. of Colorado (2002-2020), US Astronomy Teacher of the Year 2011. You are welcome to the Excellence in Teaching Workshop Power Point.
Expectations for the Workshop
- Learn what students value in teachers
- Learn how to “Avoid Doing Harm” when teaching.
- Realize the importance of formalizing teaching goals
- Be introduced to the science and scholarship related to teaching and learning. Base your own teaching approach on experience, data, and research – not just what the person down the hall does. Be a scientist when teaching!
- Learn some practical ideas and activities to use immediately
- Be exposed to the challenge of great teaching.
Bad Teaching and Good – Anyone can become a much better teacher
- Indications of the problem: Newsweek guest essay, Why My KIds Hate Science. Survey of majors and non-majors’ attitudes: the very extensive Talking About Leaving and Talking About Leaving Revisited studies. Half of all college science majors quit or transfer. Poor teaching and mentoring are major causes.
- Activity: Think of your best teacher – what made them so good? I will read your minds…! (The Components of Good Teaching are always at the heart of what students say…)
- The Components of Good Teaching– What do students care about in a teacher?
- Six Ways to Discourage Learning — the most common mistakes made in classrooms. [The “Components” and “Six Ways…” are examples of scholarship related to teaching]
- Bloom’s Taxonomy (Illustration, examples, everyday life examples)
- Setting clear goals and always discussing them with students (e.g. If you think you’re teaching what science is, explicitly discuss it!)
- What the Professor and TAs (and LAs) should discuss.
- The importance of the first day of class: set the mood, including your expectation of participation, and why it is OK to be wrong. Here is my First Day PowerPoint, and a student handout.
- Teach meta-cognition – thinking about your own learning. Use the excellent series of videos designed to help college students study and learn more effectively: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5].
Good Teaching and Great – What Is Better than a “Good, Clear Lecture?
Great Teaching is based on knowledge of your subject, your students, and how they learn.
- Teaching by telling is surprisingly ineffective if you want students to master concepts. [See the Excellence in Teaching Power Point]
- A Private Universe Video of student ideas about the seasons and lunar phases – the importance of paying attention to students’ prior conceptions. (9 min. condensed version.) Here’s the full 19 min. video.
- What physics education research tells us:
- learning takes place in the mind of the learner, not the teacher
- student minds must be active to learn
- new concepts must be integrated with previous knowledge before being useful
- Motivating students; strategies that improve learning
- It’s interesting
- It’s part of my life outside of science class
- It’s useful to me
- My friends are all doing it
- It’s my project
- Peer Instruction and clickers (with good, conceptual, questions) are an easy way to get student minds active!
- Tips for Successful Clicker Use
- The first published data on how texting during class reduces learning. How to deal with texting.
- Lecture Tutorials (Try The Big Bang or the more challenging Hubble’s Law.)
Resources: A Very Select List
Online – warning – this list is being updated!
- AAS Astronomy Education Review – https://aas.org/comms/astronomy-education-review This journal published useful research on astro teaching; the AAS stopped publishing it.
- Astrolrner – astrolrner@googlegroups.com (note the spelling!) Hundreds of people who teach astronomy belong to this moderated listserv. Post almost any question and get an answer!
- Good short videos how to use clickers: http://www.cwsei.ubc.ca/resources/clickers.htm
- Essential clicker use tips: http://www.colorado.edu/its/cuclickers/instructors/Tips.pdf
- GREAT applets (free) http://phet.colorado.edu ; http://astro.unl.edu/naap/splash
- NISE’s College Level-One Instructional Guides (wcer.wisc.edu/nise/cl1)
- collaborative learning guide (http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/archive/cl1/CL)
- field-tested learning assessment guide (http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/archive/cl1/flag)
- Andy Fraknoi’s Selected List of Web Sites for Instructors of Introductory Astronomy Courses (http://www.astrosociety.org/education/resources/educsites.html)
- Course syllabi and Introductory textbook sites
- Suggestions for better teaching approaches
- Demonstrations, laboratory and observing exercises
- Appets
- Interdisciplinary teaching tools
- “Miscellaneous resources that defy easy categorization”
- AAS main website, education link (http://www.aas.org/education)
- The (textbook) website: http://www.masteringastronomy.com
- Associations
- American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT)
- Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP)
- National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST)
- Society for College Science Teachers (SCST, a division of the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA))
- Other Journals
- American Journal of Physics (published by AAPT)
- Journal of College Science Teaching (published by NSTA)
- Journal of Research in Science Teaching (published by NARST)
- Mercury (published by ASP)
- The Physics Teacher (published by AAPT)
- AAS Women in Astronomy Listserve http://lists.aas.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/aaswlist Valuable to men as well as women.
- Phys. Education http://prst-per.aps.org
IV Books
- Peer Teaching in Physics, Eric Mazur.
- Improving Your Classroom Teaching. Maryellen Weimer, Survival Skills for Scholars Series, V. 1. SAGE Publications: Newbury Park, CA, 1993.
- Learner-Centered Teaching, Maryellen Weimer, Jossey-Bass (Wiley), 2002.
- Talking About Leaving: Why Undergraduates Leave the Sciences, Seymour and Hewitt ( of Colorado), Westview, 1997.
Also Google, “Stanford Multitasking Study” or “The myth of multi-tasking”