Clicker Question

First attempt:

As a soil weathers, the salts move first, and then finally the clays which in turn the horizons start to develop and differentiate. What most likely would this soil order be?

A.      Mollisols

B.      Alfisols

C.      Oxisols

D.      Vertisols

The purpose of this question is to see if the students understand the soil orders.  I will ask the students to answer the question. Than allow the student to get into groups of 2-3 and discuss the question and reanswer the question again. Open class discussion will follow.

Second Attempt:

As a soil weathers through time, precipitation and additions of vegetation aid in that weathering process. Usually first to move within the soil profile are the salts and last to move are the clays creating different horizons. A profile that has extremely developed horizons would be what soil order?   

A.      Mollisols

B.      Alfisols

C.      Oxisols

D.      Vertisols

E.       Mollisols and Oxisols

After reading the handout in class and talking with Margot I realized that I should be more detailed in my clicker question based on the examples in the handout. The students needed more background and information in the question. Also to stimulate more discussion, I added E to get the students to interpret the option of having two soil orders that could fit this situation. By adding the E would require the students to make significant decision making choices in hence active discussion would take place. The correct answer is C.

Take home message

From the class by Dr. Boyer, I learned about the 4 C’s (curate, communicate, collaborate, and create) and how technology was applied to each one of them.  Also, the biggest take home message of all was about social bookmarking sites. I had no idea about this and so I found this extremely useful!

Technology

1)     Should all forms of new technology be incorporated into the classroom right away within the following semester or should there be a gradual incorporation within the classroom?

2)     Is there any sound advice on how to reduce the amount of technology hassle during the class period?

3)     Is using technology in the classroom always beneficial?

Active learning in the classroom

Active learning involves many things. For me it is to engage the student in learning within the classroom. As a teacher, we want to increase the feedback from the student to teacher and vice versa. Active communication is a big part of active learning within the classroom. There cannot be a one sided conversation within the classroom.

For an active learning activity in the classroom, I plan to put into use think-pair share activities for a higher level soils class. I would implement this by having the class partner up with another person. Then, I would pose a challenging thinking question to them. For instance, I would post a picture of a soil profile on the PowerPoint and ask the groups to figure out what types of soil forming processes could be occurring.  This group activity allows for individuals to interact and creates dialogue with each other especially for challenging areas of topics. After 10 minutes have passed, I would open the classroom up for a large group discussion to see what ideas the groups have come up with. This allows me as an instructor to see if the concepts of soil forming processes were understood or not. 

Student assessment

Student assessment is a good thing however it must be clearly defined. Meaning when professor is evaluating a student for a potential grade it needs to be clearly explained either before it is done or in the syllabus not after the grade is give. Often times the assessment is vague and not clear. When probe by the student sometime the faculty member maybe become agitated by the student for the question and say refer to the syllabus.  There is a reason why the student is asking the question because it was not clearly explained in the syllabus.

The role of the assessment is to clearly explain what the student is to gain from the assignment and how the student will be evaluated. The assessment will help the student by providing feedback in how to improve/learn/grow for the next assignment.  If the assessment is provided back before the next assignment is turned in it allows growth for the student to improve how the homework/writing etc. should be completed. 

Formative assessment

Formative assessment is complex and has many variables. Through this activity, it helped to broaden my awareness of how much time it really takes to fully comprehend what formative assessment really entails. Formative assessment has many parts. For me, when I would describe to a colleague what the most salient features of formative assessment would be is to support student learning. In order to support learning, this would require many steps. There would have to be teacher/student interaction which would require various activities such as pre questions to identify preconceptions and then post questions to reflect on what the student has learned.  

Reflections on Interview

        Based on the suggestions posted on my blog, I had altered my interview questions to include a set of four scenarios. By including the scenarios, it allowed me as the interviewer to identify the student’s conceptual understanding instead of the student reciting facts. The mock interview I had with Tara was helpful to fully understand how the interview questions would work. 

Both Tara and I had no knowledge about each other’s subject which gave us as the interviewers a unique opportunity to fine tune our questions.  I found that by having the four scenarios within my interview questions proved helpful and it was useful to have North Dakota geography as the background. This gave Tara something that she could relate to and identify with, which allowed the interview to go smoother. I also found that during the interview giving common examples e.g. a straight road vs. a curvy road allowed for Tara to relate a difference in landscape. For me, the preparation of examples could have made the interview a little smoother so from next time I will have some common examples already prepared.  For the interview, I will keep the 4 scenarios and have examples prepared in case the student needs something to relate to. Even though we had no knowledge in the subject, our interviews overall went very successful. 

Student Interview questions

My overall plan is to interview a junior or senior student who is majoring in Soil Science.  I would like to see the students understanding of how soil forms.

1. How is soil formed? Give me a general description. Think about how soil develop and what is needed for it to form

2. Do soil forming factors come into play?  

3. How many soil forming factors are there?

4. Are there five of them?

5. Can you list them? (Let’s write them down. Put on white board). 

6. Can you describe what each process does?  

7. Is each one of the soil forming processes important or are some of them non-relevant? Explain.

8. Can you have one soil forming factor without the other or are they interconnected?

9. How is soil influenced from these 5 soil forming factors?

What is learning? (revisited)

Based on class discussion, learning is not simply defined it is rather complex. From my previous blog, I would add more to the definition of learning.  Learning builds on prior knowledge and metacognition/reflection which was explained in Chapter 9 “How Students Learn”.

Also, for learning to occur there needs to be motivation behind it; meaning if a person wants to understand a concept in greater detail there needs to be a drive to go out and find more information on their own. When that learning occurs, then a transfer of that knowledge to the next application will potentially occur (How People Learn – Chapter 3). As an example, I use a graduate student. A graduate student reads a lot of literature to understand their project so that when a graduate student looks at their data there is a moment when there is a click in the brain. This is an understanding of why and how certain things are occurring in their data set.  This is because of the background knowledge that was read from the literatures.

For my definition, learning is a multiple process which builds on prior knowledge, is based on the individuals drive for information, incorporates metacognition, and incorporates new information.  

Teaching Philosophy Reflections

Each person’s teaching philosophy is unique to the individual and to the field but an overall a theme occurs. Critical, analytical, and problem solving thinking are in some way part of each person’s teaching philosophy.  It is great to see that all of these types of thinking are very important to the teachers!

A particular insight that I found valuable is to include repetition of important concepts into the lecture, practice examples, etc. This ensures that each type of learning style is addressed for each individual student and hopefully the concept will be understood by the student.  Some concepts are trickery than others so repetition would help to understand the material better.  I would include this in my teaching philosophy.

Another insight that I as a student prefer but never thought to include in my teaching philosophy but will next time put in my teaching philosophy is to provide notes ahead of time before class lecture. This way the student can focus on the teacher instead of just regenerating the notes off of the PowerPoint and not listening to the instructor. Instructors give insight which can include stories or tricks on how to remember the content.

One other insight that I liked and will include in my teaching philosophy is to observe the students.  This is something that I do automatically but I never gave it any thought to putting it into the philosophy.  I believe that observing students is important because you as a professor can gauge if the classroom is understanding the content by the looks on the students faces, the volume in the classroom, and who is just not paying any attention i.e. texting, chatting, surfing web, etc.

Overall, I enjoyed reading the other teaching philosophies.  The philosophies gave valuable insight and good guidance on how to improve my personal teaching philosophy. 

What is learning

What is learning?

            Learning is simply defined as acquiring knowledge or getting informed about things. The whole process of learning is not as simple as it is often defined. Learning comprises of many things for me.  Learning entails learning through examples given in class or lab or an experiment that was conducted through my research which generated data that leads me to produce questions and answers. In the lab setting, I learn often by teaching other students the protocols of an experiment. 

            Learning cannot be answered in a sentence. It is complex and is different for each individual. People learn in different ways and by different avenues.  My experience as well as practicing what I have learned plays a big role in my learning process.  Overall, for me learning is what do I want to achieve and how do I go about it.

Statement of Teaching Philosophy

Statement of Teaching Philosophy

Carrie Werkmeister

Statement of Teaching Philosophy

       Within the discipline of soil science, there are many sub-disciplines such as conservation, nutrient management, chemistry, pedology, salinity, etc. which creates an ever challenging job for an educator to instill overall knowledge needed to fully understand the field for each scholar. Within the last few years there has been a push to revive the younger generation to enter in the soil field. I adopt interactive teaching methods in courses to inspire students to consider soil science as a major field of study. People look at the ground and see dirt but I see an opportunity for classroom learning.

These days, less students have farm backgrounds so at the start of the semester, I will ask the students about their experience in the field of soil science and the reason why they chose soil science. I constantly ask the class for their inputs on course content through electronic service and modify the course depending on the backgrounds of the students.  This allows for clarification incase a key concept in the class was misunderstood. I believe this permits a warm and welcoming environment in and outside the classroom because students communicate through different means i.e. text, blogging, etc.

       I want the students to see how the classes can relate to real life situations and how classes will help them in their future careers. My major outcome of teaching is for each student to leave the classroom with a better understanding and comprehension of the content than when the student first entered the class. In addition, a key component is to develop teamwork skills through interactions during group activities which also help students develop good human relation skills that can aid in future job and/or graduate school. My values in teaching are deep rooted in hard work ethics. Only hard working teachers produce hard working learners.

       Within my classroom setting, I have lectures, classroom discussions, demonstrations of new software, field equipment, and use web soil survey. I typically have a group project because students learn by teaching others and also an individual project. The individual project involves solving a real life problem which includes critical thinking. Small projects make student take ownership in the class. For an example, the group project would be picking a section of land and doing a detailed description of soil analysis by a field trip which would include field sampling and then data compilation and analysis. A presentation by the students would be required. A second part of the project would be to study a ten year cropping system with best management practices to control disease, pests, weeds, and nutrients. For an individual project, I would give them a problem that occurs in real life, for example, iron chlorosis or a disease. The students would be required to make recommendations in a form of a written report on how they would go about managing the problem. I believe that selecting problems and examples with significant relevance will highlight the importance of the concept taught in the class.

By developing critical learning, student interactions, and problem solving skills as part of my teaching practice, I want to foster an interest in soil science to the next generation of soil scientist. In order for there to be success in academia it takes active participation of both student and the teacher.

Teaching College Science

The journal article by Markwell and Courntey on Cognitive Development and the Complexities of the Undergraduate Learner in the Science Classroom gave some insight on the undergraduate learner.   While reading this article, I was thinking back to my days as an undergraduate.  I remember going through the Multiplicity and Pluralism complex encounters.  The descriptions of the cognitive development in the articles are well established and these descriptions will aid teachers in modifying the science classroom to benefit the student and teacher both.

From the reading Science Teaching Reconsidered in Chapter 8, several interesting points were made. For me in specific, learning a student’s name makes the student feels less like a number and more like a human being.  I liked the suggestions about different ways in learning the students’ names.  As mentioned in the paper about science and math anxiety, I have notice that as I have worked with undergraduates through the years this anxiety tends to be true. It is very important to address this anxiety early on and find ways for the student to manage the stress. Overall, I found this article enlightening and useful.  The article gave some great suggestions and I plan on using them within the classroom.