Abigail's Learning/Teaching Philosophy SPRING 2025 by Rachel Watson

2/3 Pre-Party Teaching Philosophy

2025-02-03 16:29:25 UTC

For me, the best form of teaching has been courses where the content and teacher are engaging and interesting. Having an instructor who is obviously very excited and knowledgeable about their subject makes me want to learn about what they know. I also think that ensuring students are comfortable asking questions and particpating in activities is very important.

2/3 Reflection

2025-02-04 00:50:25 UTC

In this class, we looked over a few others teaching philosophy and took a look at some of the Active Learning activities. In the class that I am currently LAing in, when I took it, I often remember doing things like Think-Pair-Shares that helped me feel much more comfortable with the content. Activities like this would be great to implement in a course. Trying to create more discussion between the students that I am currently helping with now may help them feel more confident in their studies.

2/10 Reflection

2025-02-11 01:00:56 UTC

In this class we had a little collaborative communication circle going. One thing that I actually liked more than I thought I would was the beginning of the discussion when we each went around and gave our thoughts on the pre-party. As someone who can have a lot of anxiety about public speaking and speaking in social situations, this felt like a good way to break the ice in a sense. Another thing that stood out to me was some of the comments on the brain, and getting students to offload so they can then actually focus on the class. Ena is one of the students that I LA for, and she mentioned that she feels like it would help her a lot as someone who is quiet, if a professor or someone would personally ask her how she is doing and how things are going. This is something that I want to try to work on, making sure that all of the students feel comfortable and can get anything off their minds with me before class. Even if its something as simple as going in a circle and having everyone tell me something.

Another thought I had was about one of the things Rachel said near the end of the discussion. It was something along lines of you remember better what you uncover than something that is presented to you uncovered. I'm finding myself in the class that I LA for remembering the same activities I did when I took the class in pretty great detail, and sometimes remembering the key points I took from those activities.

2/24 Reflection

2025-02-25 00:48:38 UTC

As I work in a molecular biology lab and spend a lot of time looking at brains, I really liked learning about the neurons and synapses. Synapses are continually being formed, but there also being pruned. Synapses that are not in use, or unnecessary will be removed. Things like active learning and activities will help these synapses be used multiple times, therefore strengthening them.

Another thing that was discussed was the importance of movement and learning. Workouts can help people with mentality, if they can do something tough, they can do anything that they need to. Workouts also have chemical responses in our body that can help with learning. In my class, I might try things like encourging students to stand up and move around if they need to. I might also talk to my professor and see if there are more activities that could be turned into standing up or moving around activities. Working out for every type of learner is not always a viable option, but there are almost always ways that someone can get their body moving, in whatever form that works best for them.

3/3 Reflection

2025-03-04 00:56:16 UTC

One thing that I took from the active learning article I found was the barriers that still stand between a lot of professors and switching to active learning classes. In the survey they did, they found that most professors had seen the improvements student had made with active learning activities, but still didn't use those activities in their class. Some of the barriers that they had were high levels of comfort with traditional lectures and insufficient time to develop materials. This isn't something that I have considered very much in flipping classrooms. Most of the active learning classes I have taken were flipped a while ago, and lot of the kinks have been already worked out. While really don't know anything about creating course content, I feel like while making an entire class active learning based could be very difficult, starting out small with simple things like discussion could be very achievable and not require too much work on the professors end.

During the double journal activity, I was trying to apply and process the statistics and statements I was reading from the article. Writing things down has also helped with my learning, and discussing what I was thinking about with a peer really helped me think deeper about some of the information.

3/31 Reflection

2025-04-01 15:44:17 UTC

3/10 Reflection

2025-04-10 17:17:15 UTC

I was unable to attend this zoom class, but I did have an opportunity to look over the slide show afterwards. I also read over the pre-party material. One of the points that I took from the paper by Ed Nuhfer on "Writing Effective Statements for Assessment of Students" was that assessment should not be based on showing high gains, rather understanding how well students are achieving success. Some of the key points that I took from the presentation was that outcomes are measurable, and can be described by a verb, a set of conditions, and an assessable standard. I also looked over the Blooms Taxonomy, and gained a better understanding of the kinds of questions you could ask to engage students at a higher taxonomy level. This is something that I want to incorporate into my class, and try to ask more thought provoking questions rather than simply just having them recall the answer.

VALUES

2025-04-14 23:22:46 UTC

GOALS

2025-04-14 23:23:15 UTC

Pedagogy

2025-04-14 23:23:51 UTC

Assessment

2025-04-14 23:24:14 UTC

2025-04-14 23:28:41 UTC

-Ensuring students are comfortable and participating

-Students have a deeper understanding of the material and are able to recall the key parts later on

4/7 Reflection

2025-04-14 23:46:16 UTC

I read over the case study and the pre-party material. From the Universal Design for Learning Guides, I found it very interesting how they decided to split up the designs into Engagement, Representation, and Action & Expression. They had all sorts of options within those, and I dug a little into the perception option. I often feel like I struggle with understanding how my students perceive the material, especially when I'm the one presenting it. I worry a lot that there is more ways for me to explain something, but I don't exactly know how. I want to try and start out small with something like different modalities, by explaining something verbally, and then maybe drawing it out if someone learns better visually.

I briefly looked over the lectures slides, and at the principles presented in them. I think the case study showed that the specific activity they were doing did not succeed in some of those principles. The expectations for the students probably could have been laid out better, and it was quite clear that not all students felt like they matter.

2025-04-14 23:51:04 UTC

-Important to be excited and knowledgeable about subject

-Make sure students are comfortable within the classroom, and that anyone has the ability to ask questions

2025-04-14 23:52:46 UTC

-Activities like think-pair-shares

-If the whole class may be difficult to flip to active learning, start out small with simple activities.

-Incorporating movement may help with learning.