It’s 9:32 am. I got a late start on this post because I was working on MailChimp integration on the website. Now I’ve signed up Keira, Audrey, Mom, and Dad to receive my posts by email every day, whether they want it or not. Maybe it will go to the spam folder.
Yesterday I spent most of the day at work planning for my materials chemistry class in the fall. Last fall the reviews of the course were pretty bad, and I haven’t really been enjoying doing the lecture. I feel lecturing is pretty pointless when the students can just read a book. So I started reading more about other teaching strategies. I ended up connecting emotionally with the “constructivist” strategy, which is based on the idea that we assimilate knowledge by connecting new concepts to our existing knowledge.
Apparently, the way to start teaching in a constructivist manner is to first define what you want your students to learn. Then you decide what activities can help the students learn that knowledge, and design assessments to show them where their knowledge is lacking. Seems pretty reasonable to me, it’s surprising to me that it has taken me 10 years to come to such a basic understanding of how to teach a class through a couple of days of internet research.
So specifically, yesterday I tried to define the first learning objectives for my class, such as:
- Define what is a material
- List the six major types of properties a material can have that determines its applicability.
- List the major types of materials and how they differ.
- Define the structure of a material and what can affect the structure
- Be able to identify different types of materials.
As I was thinking about these objectives and how to instill an enthusiasm and love for materials, I got the idea for an activity in which students could feel different types of materials and get a sense for their properties. This evolved into an in-class team activity where I give the students a bunch of “mystery” pieces of materials, a list of names of materials, and they try to match the names to the pieces of materials using measurements of material weight (i.e. density), hardness, other ascetic factors, and information on the internet. I love ordering materials from McMaster and just feeling what they feel like. This is one of the great parts of working on new materials. If you make a new material, you are creating a new ascetic feeling for people to feel with their hands. At the very least, this activity will be a very interesting experiment for me to see how the students respond.
It is 9:42 am.
Good ideas! I am sure there are many teaching methods; it may be a matter of trying to figure out the best one for you, your subject matter, your students and the budget you have to make things happen. My mother was a teacher; so I have the benefit of that particular association. My mother would create lesson plans for teaching her class. I would help her sometimes to set up her classroom in the fall. Teaching was very important to her. I think if you are excited or enthusiastic about your subject, even if others may not be, at first, the excitement can catch on to your class!
Another thought: Since student expectations and student age group populations vary in learning interest and ability, it might be useful to create an “incoming” student survey and short pre-test to help the teacher better assess where their current abilities reside.