Teaching Statement

My greatest joys of teaching stem from igniting that same curiosity and wonder in students that I felt during biology and animal behavior courses as an undergraduate. As a student, it’s easy to feel through the weight of a textbook that every worthwhile question has already been asked. A professor transformed this for me when he ended each marine mammal biology lecture by highlighting unanswered research questions. His discussion of needing new tools to estimate energy budgets led me to pursue a doctorate in that field. I love sharing that sense of discovery with students. I want them to know the excitement and difficulties that come with developing novel research questions, to better prepare them for post-graduation.

I teach primarily conservation biology and data analysis courses. When I was a Teaching Assistant (TA) for a Sea Turtle Biology course, I had the opportunity to bring students into the field to conduct nighttime nest surveys, visit rehabilitation facilities, and travel offshore. Having the students present research study summaries to other students and then reinforce those findings through field excursions helped the students incorporate the literature. I appreciated the experiential nature of the course that incorporated many active learning principles.

Recently I experienced the other end of the hands-on, experiential spectrum, as a TA for a completely virtual Applied Data Analysis course. I led weekly lab sessions for 33 students, where I taught both software programming in R, and statistical principles. Some students were intermediate R users and some had never used any programming languages. This, combined with the virtual format, presented unique challenges. I worked to provide extensive one-on-one office hours and continuously re-write the weekly lab I presented (example here), in order to accommodate the wide range of expertise. This was my first exposure to a flipped course, with the primary lectures being recorded and the lecture periods devoted to questions and problem sets. I appreciated the benefits of the flipped design and plan to incorporate this style in future courses.

Recent studies have confirmed the theory that interactive activities and other forms of active learning are integral to engaging students and creating deeper learning. In Malaysia, I taught 10 recent college graduates the principles of animal training, ichthyology, aquarium life support, and animal care. In addition to traditional methods including multimedia lectures, demonstrations, tests and quizzes, I learned the importance of using activities to cement abstract principles and teach critical thinking. For example, many students were confused about operant and classical conditioning until I had them take turns training each other to perform tasks using positive reinforcement and a bridge to mark appropriate timing. Only after these exercises did we transition to teaching these principles with sharks, rays, and other fish. Additionally, the students gained a stronger appreciation for nutrient cycling after conducting spectrophotometer tests before and after feeding periods.

In future courses I plan to incorporate more frequent, small assessments with a fast turnaround, to keep a pulse on the pace of the class to make sure students aren’t being left behind. I believe these assessments benefit students and help address the diversity of learning styles and needs in the classroom; weekly quizzes, problem sets, or minute papers would help students gauge their progress and would help me identify students that need support. I also believe in giving different types of assessments (short answer, essays, projects, presentations) so that students who perform better at different tasks have opportunities to excel.

I believe students come to class with very different experiences and beliefs regarding any subject. One of the key goals of the teacher should be to understand these cognitive biases and predispositions to address both trouble areas and ways to present information. Active learning techniques can be a great way to create cognitive dissonance and get students to engage their biases and hopefully overcome them. To this end, I believe clickers are a great tool to gauge real-time understanding of what beliefs students bring to a subject area, and how well they understand a learning objective. In a physiology class, a clicker question revealed that half the students believed a whale lost the majority of its water through the respiratory system, while the other half thought it was through the mouth. The instructor was able to divert the next five minutes to reinforcing the principles of respiratory evaporation we had discussed. This type of flexibility and real time course-correction helps students overcome cognitive dissonance and helps students feel that the instructor is responsive.

Students who are engaged, thinking more critically, and creating original lines of inquiry make teaching exciting. I look forward to helping students feel comfortable tackling primary literature, learn through active learning, keep track of their progress, overcome biases, and grow throughout their academic career.