Publisher: This work is published by the Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in association with Virginia Tech Publishing, a division of Virginia Tech University Libraries. Donna Westfall-Rudd, and two previous teaching assistants for the Graduate Teaching Scholars program within Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS): Dr.
Contributors
As a doctoral student at Virginia Tech University, I was given the opportunity to gain formal training in pedagogy as a Graduate Teaching Fellow in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. I currently work as an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology and Chemistry at Liberty University.
Chapter Proposal Reviewers
Peer Review
Editorial
The primary goal of the Graduate Teaching Scholars Program (GTS) in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Virginia Tech is to prepare interested doctoral students for a rewarding academic career. The personas were created by the scholars enrolled in the GTS courses in spring 2020 and gave the authors clear reminders of the diversity of potential readers of their work.
Reader Personas
The editor-in-chief also provided several virtual office hours for contributors in the early months of the project, to give individuals space to gather their ideas and discuss them with others involved in the project. The dedication and passion of the book editors and contributors is evidenced in the completion of thirteen chapters, despite the frequent obstacles that emerged from the pandemic.
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Additional Resources
What is an Open Textbook?
Relational Learning: Creating a
Introduction
Relationships in the Classroom
A working alliance relies heavily on strong relationships between instructors and students and creates some rapport or connection in the classroom (Roger, 2009). The concept of a working alliance is rooted in psychotherapeutic research and theory, especially in the psychologist/patient aspect.
Teaching Strategies
Authenticity
It is important to determine the type of person you want to adopt as an instructor from the beginning. Figuring out who you are as an instructor is an ongoing process that will take time and self-reflection.
Teaching Authentically
Lessons where students mostly talk can also mask some potentially problematic aspects of your authentic self. This format allows students to interact with the material and gives me a break from speaking.
Benefits of Authenticity
I also used the students as a resource by having them demonstrate how they remembered the characteristics of the different plant species. The nature of this lab gave me the chance to talk more informally with the students.
Challenges of Authenticity
One of the first places students will encounter who you are is the curriculum. Be explicit in explaining your rationale for course policies so that students can better see who you are.
Conclusions
Indigenizing Your Classroom
Culturally responsive teaching can help increase student competence and support diverse students to feel more connected in the classroom environment (Bazron, Osher & Fleischman, 2005). In this chapter, we will discuss culturally responsive teaching practices, focusing specifically on incorporating Indigenous knowledge, techniques, and voices into the classroom and how this will benefit all students, not just Indigenous students.
Being Indigenous in the Academy—My Positionality
I will highlight examples of Indigenous experiences to illustrate the importance of culturally responsive teaching practices, explain culturally responsive practices used in my teaching practice, and demonstrate how these practices can be included in your classroom in a culturally responsive and respectful manner. I share all of this as a framework for understanding why culturally responsive teaching and inclusive pedagogical practices are important to include in our classrooms.
Culturally Responsive Teaching: What Is It?
This historical context for the American education system can provide greater insight into how different activities and resources will affect other students in the classroom. Recognizing and holding space for these students and backgrounds helps students feel more included in the academic environment.
Implementation
In culturally responsive teaching, you want to make sure that the value of culture in the classroom is accurately reflected in your syllabus. In culturally responsive teaching, you want to make sure that the syllabus accurately reflects the value culture has in the classroom.
Tips for Culturally Responsive Teaching
Conclusion
Teaching Practices for Student-Centered Learning
Student-centered practices that achieve this include, but are not limited to, being a facilitator rather than a lecturer, focusing on what students want to know and encouraging students to bounce ideas off the topic. Online learning environments can be challenging for teachers who want to promote student-centered teaching practices.
Beginning to Go Online: Planning Your Online Course
Use the syllabus to include information about the activities in which students will interact in the online environment. Use the syllabus to encourage students to contact you immediately if they encounter or expect to encounter challenges accessing the course.
How to Speedily Convert a Face-to-Face Course to an Online Format
Increasing Accessibility
Finally, if you want, you can engage students in a virtual classroom discussion using a course management system, where you and your students are all online at once (Johnson, 2020). You can adapt the reading, journaling, discussion format (Johnson, 2020) to teaching without posting any videos of yourself by making the class discussion online only, such as in a discussion board of your course management system.
Student-Centered Practices for Engaging Students from the Start
Tips for Student-Centered Beginnings
Adapting Your Teaching to Work Well Online
If it's your first time teaching an online course, you might make some mistakes, but remember, students are surprisingly forgiving when they know you're trying. Staying positive will also help your students focus less on content transfer and more on learning (Salmon, 2000, as cited in Bennett & Lockyer, 2004).
Who Takes Online Courses?
You do not need to try to get a tuition award on your first attempt at online teaching. If you have a good positive attitude, students will feel it and they will appreciate that you are yourself, even if everything doesn't go perfectly the first time.
Teaching Labs Online
I can say this from my experience teaching online, but regarding my reminder, some students in my online courses would not remember to start their online assignments until it was too late. The lab will not only become more real for students; it will be more fun that way.
Student-Centered Learning Online: Building Community
Provide a detailed description of any missing elements or those that are less accessible to their senses due to the virtual format of the lab.
Encourage Interaction
Many students can relate to the experience of being the only one in the group willing to do the work for the group project. One way that I and other colleagues do this is to ask students to write their first response to the discussion prompt early in the week's lesson.
Tips for Student-Centered Teaching Online
Responses to others are due later in the week, and students are encouraged to discuss more than is "required." Setting up online discussions in this way helps students present their ideas, and then respond to the points of others, using the online discussion board, while avoiding the back-and-forth dynamic of a face-to-face -simulate conversation. Use activities such as case studies, scenarios and role play that enable students to explore options, create solutions and solve problems.
Preventing Cheating
Tips for Avoiding Cheating in Your Online Class
General Tips for Online Teaching
Leaving student feedback online is only effective if they visit the page to read it.
Conclusion and Summary
Technology Makes It Easier
You want them all to be engaged in class and participate in class activities. You may find it a tedious task to answer student emails about this week's reading list, midterm date, due dates, and how they are doing so far in the semester.
The Motive behind Technology Integration
By incorporating technology into the classroom, students' experience in continuous use of technology can be used to save time and build a more appropriate framework for materials and teaching style. For example, students from different cultural backgrounds (e.g. international students) may find it difficult to participate in class activities for various reasons, such as fear of not being understood due to speaking with an accent or lack of confidence.
Technology Integration and Challenges
Design
Instead, the instructor can design a new (inside or outside the classroom) activity or assignment by focusing on higher levels of critical thinking. Especially if the instructor is using a Windows (Mac) device, it is essential to make sure she knows how to implement the same process on a Mac (Windows) device.
Evaluation
Types of Technology
Although technically web-based technologies include app-based technologies, we define the latter as a technology in which instructors and students only need a smartphone to use the technology to its full potential. Finally, instrument-based technology requires instructors and students to use an external device to use the technology.
Web-Based Technology
Learning Management System
Although it is constantly being improved, you can catch new changes through the official website or ask questions in the Canvas Community. It is only free for schools that already use Google Apps, but because of the cost, it is not difficult for an individual instructor to purchase it.
Google Components
Tools for Assessment and Engagement
Video Conferencing Tools
Add-on
Application-Based Technology
Assessment and Engagement
Although the effectiveness of this method depends on the content and student-specific learning characteristics, more and more content is being developed for these types of technology.
Communication
Instrument-Based Technology
Iclicker
Summary
Fun Fridays: Incorporating Hands-on Learning into Lecture
Hands-on learning was used in an advanced soil fertility class every Friday, during. Potential challenges of using hands-on learning in the classroom and how to overcome those challenges.
Preparing for Hands-On Teaching
Finding hands-on learning topics
The last three questions can help you develop hands-on learning for topics that don't have immediate applications. Combining the answers to these questions with learning objectives gives you the overall plan for your hands-on learning lesson.
Placing hands-on learning within your course
Practical learning activities can be graded based on participation or correctness or a combination. Practical learning can be more inclusive for different students' learning styles and experience levels.
Writing lesson plans
To create an experiment or simulation, you need to collect or create the materials or data that students will manipulate during the activity. After you create the activity content, you need to create the handouts, questions, or assignments that students will use during the activity.
Before Getting to the Classroom
Researchers and practitioners in the field are an invaluable source of scenarios, data or examples. Use your curriculum to communicate to students the value you place on hands-on learning through course assessment.
In the Classroom
At the beginning of class
During the hands-on activity
One thing you can do is ask if they want you to join their group for a few minutes. The goal is to get the group or individual to a place where they can continue working on their own, and you can check back in after a few minutes to make sure they're making progress.
Closing out the class
How to rescue a disaster
This is one of the hardest things to do and requires developing a comfort level with mistakes and inefficiencies that happen during the learning process.
Hands-on Lessons about Hands-on Learning
New things are uncomfortable for everyone
You can reduce their anxiety and help them appreciate failure as part of their learning process by de-emphasizing correctness in hands-on learning. Be very clear about how practical learning will be assessed and how it contributes to the overall course assessment from the start of the course.
Let the content be the star, not the activity
When Google Sheets were first used in a hands-on activity, students had to spend extra time figuring out how to access the document and how to use it in class before starting the exercise. It will take time for students to become familiar enough with technology to use it to learn the course content you are trying to teach.
Don’t give busywork. Assign work that is challenging
Common Objections to Hands-on Learning (And What to Say to Them)
In the beginning, you can expect a certain level of resistance or lack of engagement from students for hands-on learning. After a few weeks of hands-on learning, most students will be more comfortable with hands-on learning.
Conclusion and Next Steps
What is the biggest obstacle for you to use hands-on learning in your teaching? Have you experienced, seen or heard of other teachers using hands-on learning in their classrooms?
Resources and Tools
Using Grade Appeals as a Learning Tool
A survey sent out at Virginia Tech in the fall of 2017 shows that many students seeking an advanced degree want to improve their knowledge and understanding. The use and encouragement of informal grade appeals as a learning tool for students to re-evaluate their work.
Grade Appeal Background
The Degree Appeals Committee may hold a formal hearing, and ultimately make a recommendation to the Dean of the Graduate School to act upon in consultation with the provost. Corrada explains that grade appeals don't have to take a significant amount of time.
Fall 2017 Survey
For the majority of students surveyed, their experience with a grade appeal "usually" resulted in a discussion rather than an automatic decision (15/26). Some examples of answers to the question “Would you prefer one of the results from the previous question – the instructor making a decision directly after your complaint or a discussion of the assignment/exam and grade.
Implications of the Survey for Teaching
Using a Grade Appeal Procedure
Procedure for a student to appeal a grade (personal discussion during office hours, written explanation/defense of answers by a student, etc.). For example, the number of points a student can receive with a submission (eg, half of all points originally deducted) and how the process may affect the overall course grade; the grade of the second submission of work (eg, the second draft of the essay) may replace the grade of the first submission; and a wrong short-answer exam question can get half the points lost, and so on.
Minimizing Appeals
The teacher can ask students if the written feedback on graded work is useful and what could make it more useful. A Rubric can contain detailed explanations of the Instructor's expectations, including examples of correct and incorrect answers if the Instructor provides an alternative rubric when submitting graded assignments.
Instructor Feedback
How to Oversee a Laboratory Course Taught by Teaching
As former graduate teaching assistants (TAs), we have ample experience preparing for and teaching laboratory-based courses in the natural sciences. How to supervise a laboratory course taught by teaching assistants: experiences in the laboratory and field.
Preparing for Teaching and Co-Teaching Laboratory Courses
Creating Lab Activities
The construction of learning objectives is the responsibility of the registered instructor, not the TAs. Additionally, it is the responsibility of the instructor or an experienced TA to help the TAs understand the learning objectives and use them in a way that reinforces the concepts or skills students need to learn or master.
Meeting Weekly
The lead instructor should practice the mechanics of the lab activities with the TA instead of relying on written instructions. Some professors may expect the TA leader to do most of the lab setup and cleanup during the week, as well as lead the weekly meeting.
Using TA Guides
In particular, the TA guide should have a list of supplies needed for the lab procedure, including a list of supplies that should be on each student's lab desk. Additionally, the TA guide should include examples of problems and solutions for more technical labs (eg, chemistry-based labs).
Lab Assignment Grading
The supply list in the TA Guide ensures that the TA considers all necessary supplies at the beginning of the lab, promoting lab room organization and teaching efficiency. It is very helpful for students to have the TA work through these example problems with the entire lab class.
Learning and Teaching Environment: Laboratory vs. Field
Include several tables of last year's results for a particular lab procedure in your TA evaluation rubric to give TAs an idea. Keeping the results of laboratory sections for a particular laboratory procedure can be useful in the future as these data sets, if the data is reasonable, can be used by students in future semesters.
Safety
Before the start of the semester, the lead instructor writes safety protocols and makes them accessible to the TAs responsible for conducting labs. If your lab includes field trips, provide the TAs with first aid kits to keep in the vehicle.
Supplies
Advise the lead TA to update the spreadsheet weekly and then submit it to you, the instructor, by the end of any given semester. Keeping a record of supplies is an excellent way to help manage your time as a lead TA or instructor, since one of your responsibilities is to make sure labs are "ready to go."
Setting Expectations
The best way to ensure students follow safety procedures is to model good behavior as a TA. Your students will be more likely to participate in good outdoor safety practices if they see their professors and professional colleagues follow suit.
Preparing to Teach Indoors vs. Outdoors
Once in the field, it is helpful to provide students with interesting facts and background information about the location of the site and to reiterate the lab's key objectives. It is always a good idea to have a list of questions ready to ask students to help keep them focused on the purpose of the lab.
Setting Up and Maintaining Productive Lab Room Dynamics
Undergraduate vs. Graduate TAs
On the other hand, your department may need to find more teaching positions for graduate students with an assistant position, and you may only be able to have graduate technical assistants. It would be inaccurate to make broad generalizations about undergraduates versus graduate students.
Hiring an Undergraduate TA
The opportunity to be an undergraduate TA is limited to one student per lab section. If you only want an undergraduate TA to help with grading and you don't expect to guide the student in their teaching, then perhaps having an undergraduate TA is not a good idea.
Establishing an Atmosphere of Respect
As discussed earlier, verbally communicate your expectations to your TAs during the first few in-person meetings at the beginning of the semester to make sure everyone is clear and comfortable with their roles and responsibilities. You may even want to emphasize this to your students at the beginning of the semester.
Attending a Lab Section Respectfully and Productively
When you attend your TA's lab portion as an instructor, you should agree with your TA what you plan to do during the lab. When you attend the lab section, will you arrive at the start of the lab.
Mentoring TAs to Ensure Effective Teaching
I work with the TAs to do teacher evaluations, so I'll sit back and take notes. Once we get to the site, I'll turn the lab over to [TA Name] as usual.”
Utilizing TAs in Various Components of a Course
If you would like the TA to help students work on an exercise in the lecture, demonstrate the task and expected results to the TA before class. Although the instructor may know the course material quite well, it is not a guarantee that they will be able to follow a specific problem if they are put on the spot in the lecture hall without first being adequately prepared.
Fostering a Positive Learning Environment
Thus, you may be stuck with the conventional way a given lab was run while ignoring new and potentially more effective strategies. Making a concerted effort to include TAs in the discussion will only improve everyone's learning and teaching environment.
Co-Teaching
Co-teaching can include many other scenarios, such as co-teaching with two faculty members in a lecture-style classroom. Co-teaching has several advantages over hands-on lab courses, as students benefit from more one-on-one guidance and support.
