» A String of Pearls – What I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I Started Teaching

A String of Pearls – What I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I Started Teaching

Dee U. Silverthorn, Ph.D.
University of Texas at Austin

Dee Silverthorn is a comparative physiologist and Senior Lecturer in Integrative Biology at the University of Texas at Austin. She teaches a large undergraduate physiology lecture course, where she is incorporates active, inquiry-based, and cooperative learning. Her success with nontraditional approaches has been recognized by a number of university and national teaching awards, including the APS Guyton Physiology Educator of the Year (2001). She also develops investigative laboratories for students and teaches a “preparing future faculty” graduate course. Dee recently completed a six-year term as editor of  Advances in Physiology Education and a three-year term on APS Council.

In clinical medicine a pearl is a nugget of wisdom that is passed from generation to generation. In this article, the pearls are the little bits of wisdom that we gather as teachers. Most of them never appear in print, and usually experienced teachers learn them the hard way – by doing the “don’t”s and not doing the “do”s. So in the interest of helping the newest generation of teachers avoid the errors of their elders, I gathered pearls from many colleagues about teaching. What follows are semi-random, mostly pragmatic, bits of advice about teaching. Many are common sense. Not everything will apply to every teaching situation, so take what is helpful and ignore the rest. And be sure to add your own pearls at the Mentoring Forum website!

This article is not a full-fledged “how to teach your first course.” For information on that subject, see the Mentoring Forum column on "Teaching Your First Course" by Jodie Krontiris-Litowitz. One of the most important pieces of advice that Jodie had was about writing the syllabus. Most schools consider the syllabus to be a contract between the instructor and students, and you should consider which of the pearls discussed below are important enough to have a place in the syllabus.

Before the First Class Meets

DO your homework before the first class meeting!

• Find the classroom. Time how long it takes you to get there. Double that if you have to go outside in bad weather to get there.
• Play with the computer console and make sure you know how to hook up your laptop, download your Powerpoint to the console computer, start the web browser. Check for logins and passwords and write them down.
• Time how long it takes to get everything powered up and functioning. Make sure you get to class each day with that time + 5 minutes to spare.
• Find the light controls for the room and test the different settings by putting up a slide and moving around the back of the classroom to make sure it’s visible.
• Find out who to call when you have technology problems during class and keep their phone numbers in your class materials. (See Technology DO #1.)
• Check out the sound system and how to alter the volume. If there is a portable microphone, figure out how to use it. Bring extra batteries for it if not provided. Decide how you will be standing when talking to the class and put the lapel microphone on the side nearest the audience so that you are talking over it as you look at the audience.
• Consider having a dedicated teaching tote bag for each class. Some things to put in it and leave in it: laser pointer, tissues, water, pens, paper, index cards, transparencies and markers in case the computer fails, class roster and photo roster. Include a list of phone numbers for IT, campus police, and other emergencies. 

General Classroom Management

• DO start your course by being strict and adhering to the rules in your syllabus and institution. It’s easy to loosen up later but impossible to get control in the middle of the semester if you relinquished it at the beginning.
• DON’T end class early in the beginning of the course. The students then expect you to do that regularly.
• DO end class on time. Respect the students’ time. Many of them have to go to another class or to work, and running overtime is your problem, not theirs. Know what you can omit if you start to run long.
• Remember that learning doesn’t happen when you are talking.
• Try to remember what it was like to not understand. DON’T ever say “It should be obvious....”
• DON’T let the class make critical decisions. Ask for input, but you are in charge.
• DON’T ever say “This won’t be on the test.”
• When speaking, own every word. This will slow you down and give a different emotional tone to what you are saying.
• DON’T let the students see you flinch.
• If you give a traditional lecture, rehearse! Lecturing is a performance. 
• Humor goes a long way but it should be appropriate and kind. DON’T tell jokes if you’re not good at it.
• If you have an interactive classroom, get students comfortable with talking by having them talk to each other.
• If you want students to behave a certain way in the classroom, such as having them work in small groups, introduce the behavior the first day and make sure you repeat it each session.
• When the class is discussing a question in small groups, use the “triple roar” rule. The first roar is, “What’s the question?” The second roar is students discussing the answer.  The third roar (and time to call everyone back together) is “What are you doing tonight?”
• If possible, get to class early and chat informally with the students.
• If you expect students to turn their cell phones off, make sure you turn yours off too!
• Plan ahead when teaching a class for the first time. Figure out how long you think it will take to put together each lecture. Then double that time or be prepared to stay up all night. Developing a class for the first time always takes longer than you think.

Teaching with Technology

Technology is wonderful until it doesn’t work. DO be prepared for when it fails.

• Have a backup plan in case the computer fails or your file won’t open. Bring a duplicate copy of your presentation file. Have a print copy of your slides so that you can use the chalkboard if all media options fail. (In PowerPoint, select the “handouts” option in the PRINT window to print multiple slides on one page.
• If you’re presenting with a classroom computer console:
  • PowerPoint software versions are not equal. Open your PowerPoint presentation and run through ALL the slides. Look carefully at equations and symbols, and make sure links to websites or video clips work. My embarrassing moment was the lecture where I put up the slide with Poiseuille’s law, only to find a telephone, airplane, and happy face in replace of the delta, eta, and pi symbols in the equation.
  • Test how to switch from your PowerPoint to a web page or to the document camera.
•  If using your personal laptop, check what you have set for your desktop image and screensaver. It can be embarrassing if your screensaver turns on and starts running through images of your last family vacation at the beach.
• Putting together a PowerPoint presentation takes longer than you think it will.
• DO learn simple PowerPoint techniques: how to mask out unwanted sections of images, how to add new labels. Simple animations such as making bullet points appear one by one will help you build your story. Make sure your font size and colors are visible from the back of your room.
• Never save your PowerPoint as a presentation because you will then be unable to edit it.
• Decide whether you are going to post copies of your PowerPoint slides. If students can learn everything by downloading and reading the slides, why are they (and you) bothering to go to class? Consider posting an edited version instead. If you give students a file that has all the images, long definitions, and a skeleton outline, they can print it out and bring it to class to take notes on. This will make class run smoothly but someone who does not come to class will not know everything that was said.
• DO consider your policy on student use of laptops, tape recorders, and cell phones in class and make sure it is clearly spelled out in the syllabus. I ban laptops in the classroom because I want my students interacting with each other and not with a computer screen. I’ve observed too many lectures where students with laptops were surfing, reading email, or otherwise not actively engaged in what was taking place. I also ban cell phones.
• DO consider using a personal response system as part of your teaching. Even if you give a traditional lecture, you will find it enlightening to stop at the end of a 10- to 15- minute section and ask a clicker question or two to test whether the audience understood what you just covered.
• One of the new technology innovations coming soon will be software that allows students to use their cell phones as “clickers.” I have already made the decision that I will hold to my cell phone ban and not use this software.
• I turn down requests from students to videotape my class as I have no desire to appear on YouTube. I do allow students to audiotape. This can be particularly helpful for students whose native language is not English. If they use a tape recorder with a counter or timer, they can note the locations of segments that they need to review, which saves having to listen to the entire recording. 
• For additional pointers on effective presentations, see the Mentoring Forum article by Susan McKarns on “Delivering a Dynamic Job and Chalk Talk.”

Teaching Large Classes

• Large classes are not merely teaching – they are performances. To communicate effectively, you must project and be larger than life. Unless you have a booming voice that you can sustain for the entire period, a microphone is a necessity (portable is preferred, to give you mobility).
• DO try to create a sense of community in the classroom so that the students become less competitive and more willing to help each other learn. This is not as much of an issue at smaller schools or at institutions where students move through the curriculum as a cohort, but it can be a major impediment to creating an interactive classroom at larger universities where a student may not know anyone else in the room.
• DO learn student names. It becomes a form of crowd control. If you call someone by name who has never spoken to you, the students will think you have learned everyone’s name, and they suddenly become more responsible about showing up for class. It also shows the students you care about them as individuals. 
• The best way I’ve found to learn names is from photos of the class. Even if your school provides photo rosters, the photos may be out of date and the students unrecognizable. I like to have students stand in front of the board in groups of 3-4 and write their names over their heads, then take a digital photo. The 4x6" prints then make a good set of flashcards for learning names.
• Distributing handouts in a large class can eat up time. Try the "cell division" method. Split the handouts into two piles and give one pile each to two students in the front row. Those students take one handout, then split their pile in two and pass the two piles on to students who continue taking one handout and splitting the remainder into two piles.

Handling Questions When You Don’t Know the Answer

• DON’T pretend to know the answer. If you do, someone in the class will have worked with the expert in that area and you are sure to be exposed as a fraud.

You can always turn the question back to the class: “Interesting question. What do you think?” or “Can anyone answer this?” Or take advantage of the situation to model for students how you would find the answer. There is nothing wrong with admitting (occasionally) that you don’t know. There is no way we can all know everything.

If you have internet access in the classroom, go through the steps you normally use to find the information, explaining what you are doing as you go. Introduce the class to Google Scholar and to PubMed as you search. Many students have never been formally trained in how to do an efficient search, so you can take advantage of not knowing the answer to create a teachable moment.

Testing and Grading

• DO develop clear guidelines about what constitutes an excused absence for a class or exam and spell it out in the syllabus. DON’T be shy about requiring documentation for a death, illness, or other family crisis. This will help you avoid the “dead grandmother syndrome” that peaks right around exam time. (For a humorous description of this phenomenon, see Mike Adam’s essay at www.math.toronto.edu/mpugh/DeadGrandmother.pdf)

Decide in advance how you will handle makeup tests for excused absences. In my class, I give cumulative tests, so the final exam is optional for students with a B and required for students with a C or less. If someone has an excused absence for a test, they must take the comprehensive final exam, which then counts for 50% of their semester grade. (The final is 40% of the grade for other students.) This policy has almost eliminated the problem of absences for a test.

• DO write your tests sufficiently in advance that you (and ideally someone else) can proof them. Number each page and check the page and question numbers for duplicates and omissions. Write the key before giving the exam; it’s a good way to find your errors. For free-response questions, restrict the amount students can write by giving them an answer box.
• DO be consistent in your grading. The students talk to each other and you’ll have a rebellion on your hands if half the class gets credit for an answer that you counted wrong for the other half.
• DO develop a grading rubric before you start to grade. Then look at 5-10 random student answers to see how well the answers match your rubric. A revision of the rubric may be necessary. As you grade, make notes of which answers you give partial credit for and how much credit each partially correct answer gets. If you are grading a large number of tests, this step is essential to maintain consistency.
• DON’T post a test key until you have finished grading the tests. Early posting means early protests. If you are giving multiple-choice exams that are graded by computer, look at the item analysis to decide if you will throw out a question or allow multiple correct answers.
• DON’T hand tests back until you are ready to dismiss the class. No one will hear a word you say once they have their tests in their hands. If you want to talk about the correct answers, do it before you give the tests back.

Returning tests in large classes can be difficult, especially given guidelines for maintaining student privacy. We put a cover sheet on our tests that has the student name near the top. The test starts on page 2 and grades go on page 2. With this system, we can lay out the tests alphabetically and have students come up in groups to get them while keeping grades confidential.

• DO require written challenges to grading. This makes the students think through why they believe they should get credit. Often you will uncover their misconceptions in their written challenges.

    An efficient and fair process for students to cite or challenge ambiguous or otherwise unanswerable questions (no, or more than one, correct answer) is to add a last page to an exam for this purpose, with instructions to explain the reason for the challenge.  You can tear off the pages and collate them, which is especially helpful if you have a team-taught or large class.

Cheating

It would be nice to pretend that academic dishonesty doesn’t exist, but the sad truth is that it does. Find out if your institution has an honor code and what the policies are for handling suspected cases of academic dishonesty. At my institution you cannot lower a student’s grade for cheating without going through a formal procedure in which the student signs paperwork that either accepts the penalty or requests a formal hearing with the Dean of Students office. It seems rather bureaucratic but you do not want to find yourself in the position of the faculty member who was sued for defamation of character after the president of his institution overturned a cheating penalty that had previously been upheld by the faculty member’s Chair and Dean.

What are some of the ways students cheat? Probably the most prevalent and insidious is plagiarism. Many students honestly do not understand what constitutes plagiarism, and this problem is compounded by the ease with which people can cut and paste blocks of text from the web. Depending on what kinds of writing assignments you have, you will have to devise methods to make plagiarism more difficult.

• One way to prevent plagiarism if you are assigning the equivalent of a term paper is to require the students to do some type of oral presentation (a poster or brief talk) in which they can be questioned. It is also helpful to change the topics for these assignments from semester to semester. In my lab course, that means we rotate experiments from year to year.
• Another strategy is to require students to turn in the title page or first page of each article or book cited. I have students write annotated bibliographies for their projects as a way to force them to start their research early, and I had a serious problem with plagiarism of the article abstracts. Once I required students to turn in the title pages with the abstracts, the plagiarism all but disappeared. 
• How can you find the source if you suspect a paper is plagiarized? Many institutions subscribe to software or web sites that will help with this task. An easier way is to find a sentence or phrase that you suspect has been lifted from another source and copy it into a Google search box with quotes around it. You will then find any online resources that match the quote. I caught one student who made up a citation and “wrote” his bibliography annotation by lifting a paragraph from a professor’s website. Here are some helpful resources for educating students about plagiarism:

          Preventing plagiarism:
www.lib.utexas.edu/services/instruction/faculty/plagiarism/preventing.html

          Interactive tutorial on what constitutes plagiarism:
            www.lib.utexas.edu/services/instruction/learningmodules/plagiarism/about.html

          Guide for students, with examples:
             www.utexas.edu/lbj/students/writing/plagiarism.pdf

• DO establish a set of rules for testing situations, be explicit about them in the syllabus, and enforce them. Cheating on tests may be worse in large classes where students feel some sense of anonymity. Sometimes the cheater is working alone, but all too often there is collusion. This can range from elaborate systems using cell phones and pagers to communicate to "cheating rings," where students pay other students to take their tests for them. Some testing rules to consider include no talking except to the instructor; students with wandering eyes will cause someone to be moved to another seat; no books, backpacks, coats, etc. at the student's seat; no hats except baseball caps turned backwards. No calculators unless specifically permitted; no memory calculators; no cell phones or pagers. Exams cannot be written in red or pink ink; no "white-out"; exams written in pencil will not be re-graded if there is any evidence that the answer has ever been erased. There must be one empty seat between students. If a student leaves the room once the exam has started, s/he may not return.

If you suspect cheating, you should do whatever you can to stop it (take away notes, move someone) but you should always let the suspect(s) finish the exam. If possible, have someone else in the room to help proctor the exam and ask the second person to witness any suspicious activity. You may not search a student’s personal belongings or person without their explicit permission.

DO Know the Rules and Ethics

Some of these will vary by institution but others are universal.

• Know your institution’s policies on handling students with disabilities, particularly those that require special classroom or testing accommodations. Some students are allowed double time for tests (unless speed is one of the skills being tested) or must have a low-distraction environment. You usually receive a written notification from the office for students with disabilities that spells out what special considerations a student needs, and you must meet those accommodations, even if it is inconvenient.
• The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) governs the privacy of student records and academic performance. If a student is over 18, you cannot talk to Mom and Dad about their child unless you have explicit permission from the child. If Mom and Dad get nasty, refer them to the Dean.
• Know your institution’s resources for students with emotional or psychological problems. Where can you send students who are depressed or suicidal? You should also know the institution’s recommendations or rules for handling in-class disturbances. Who do you call when a student who just failed your test puts his fist through the glass door to the classroom?
• Most schools have a sexual harassment policy. In general, you should not socialize with students until they are no longer your students. But sexual harassment works both ways, and students who become obsessed with you can be very creepy. Know who to contact if a student starts stalking you.
• We recommend to new faculty that they keep their home address and phone number unlisted. Many students are night owls and you may not appreciate a 1:00 am call from the study group who can’t agree on the right answer to a question.

Watch What You Say to Students

If you want information to spread, tell a student. Their communication network is amazing. Unfortunately, the network also can work like the whisper game, where the original message is significantly altered after being filtered through many iterations. Use discretion and never talk about one student to another except in the most general, unidentifiable terms.

Working with Teaching Assistants

Many of you reading this are at institutions that do not use graduate teaching assistants (TA). But if you are at a school where graduate students teach the laboratory classes or extra sessions associated with a lecture class (called discussions, tutorials, or recitations, depending on the school), you will find that this adds another dimension to your teaching obligations. All too often faculty members do not think about the mechanics of working with a TA. Table 1 is a set of questions that can serve as a guideline to setting expectations for your TAs.

TABLE 1: GETTING STARTED WITH A TA

The following checklist describes some of the duties that you may expect of your graduate teaching assistant. You should make an appointment to sit down with your TA to discuss which duties you expect of him/her.

TAs often:
__ Attend class. Distribute handouts, take attendance, take notes. Administer quizzes. Operate classroom technology.
__ Run discussion sections (professor not in attendance).
__ Hold weekly office hours or review sessions prior to tests or both.
__ Meet weekly with professor and/or other TAs for the class.
__ Proctor tests, both at scheduled times and for students who need to take them at other times. Help document cheating.
__ Type and/or photocopy quizzes, tests, handouts.
__ Grade homework, quizzes, exams. Maintain course grade records.
__ Proofread and comment on drafts of exams. Write some exam questions.
__ Advise students on the course, on other academic matters, and on non-academic personal problems.
__ Assist with class e-mail and class administration.
__ In lab courses, run a lab section without the instructor present. Participate in setup and cleanup.
__ Accompany field trips.
__ Run library errands and sometimes other errands.

Specific points to think about and discuss with your TA
__ The TA may need a copy or access to the class roster for grading purposes.
__ Do you plan to make old tests available for students to study from?
__ How are tests administered and who will be present? Any special procedures enforced to prevent cheating, such as alternate test forms, showing IDs, etc.?
__ Who will do the grading? Who writes the key to the tests?
__ How are tests handed back? Who handles student questions about grading? What is your policy on regrades and grade changes? How/where are grades posted?
__ How do you plan to tell students what their letter grade is during the semester?

FOR DISCUSSION SECTIONS:
__ Are discussions required or mandatory? Will discussion attendance be counted in the course grade?
__ Who sets the agenda for discussion section meetings?

FOR LABORATORIES:
__ In laboratories, who handles stocking materials if the labs run short in the middle of the week?
__ What special procedures do you need to know, such as safety and checking out equipment?

Improving Your Teaching

• Find an on-campus mentor, ideally one who has taught in the same area.
• Connect with your school’s Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) or equivalent. They can be an invaluable resource. They usually have classes to teach you how to use the campus technology, such as course management software (e.g., Blackboard) and classroom response systems. Many CTEs will video your class, then sit down with you and give constructive feedback on how you might improve your teaching. (Aside: Our CTE professionals were appalled by how much vocabulary/jargon is used in the average biology class – more per session than in the typical foreign language class.)
• Consider giving your class an anonymous, informal mid-semester evaluation of the class and your teaching. It can be as simple as “What do you like best about the class? What do you like least? What can I do to improve the class this semester?” And if the students make constructive suggestions, try to implement them.

In Summary

This sounds like a lot to remember – and it is. The bottom line is that teaching should be fun and exciting, something you look forward to. Don’t worry when you make a mistake. We all do (even experienced teachers). Maintain your sense of humor, know your options, and establish a support system of colleagues.

Many thanks to the colleagues who contributed pearls to this article.

Comments:

Clarification: Additional explanation of the triple roar
The "roar" is the amount of conversation noise in the classroom when students are talking to each other. It can get so loud that you sometimes need a mechanism for stopping it, like a police whistle, two-finger whistle, or cow bell. The roar subsides when students are thinking, writing/doing calculations, or have run out of something to talk about. By listening to the volume and what is being said, the instructor can tell when to interrupt and bring the class back together for whole-group discussion.
Dee Silverthorn
 

Don't assume that the students will read the course syllabus carefully; I would recommend specifically discussing the important information in the syllabus on the first day of class.

In introductory courses, I find it helpful to give the students a simple assignment, after approximately 2/3 of the semester has been completed, asking them to describe 3 concepts that they have learned so far in the course (e.g., approximately one paragraph per concept, with enough detail to demonstrate that they understand the concept). This is a very simple assignment for the students (hopefully!), and it can give the instructor an idea of the level of detail that the students are understanding. It also helps to remind the students that they actually have LEARNED something so far.
Angela Grippo
Northern Illinois University

Response: Too true! I've become so frustrated by students not reading the syllabus or listening to the discussion of it the first day that I now give a "syllabus quiz" (with clicker questions) after the 4th class meeting, when late-add students are all enrolled. THAT makes them read the syllabus.

Which brings up something else I didn't mention in the article: If you want students to do something, tack points onto it. Just like the panhandlers on the street corner with signs that say, "Will work for food," students should come with signs that say "Will work for points."
Dee Silverthorn
 

Although I have minimal teaching experience, I have already realized that I was going through my lectures WAY too fast! You have to give students time to absorb the information, because for many of them this is the first time they have been introduced to certain concepts. Abandon your fear of “awkward” silences…they may feel awkward to you but are valuable for the students to let the information sink in.
Sarah Hoffmann Lindsey
Wake Forest University School of Medicine

Response:  Excellent point. Studies have shown that most teachers do not wait long enough, especially when asking questions. Here's a link to a nice summary of this topic in the ERIC Digest: http://www.ericdigests.org/1995-1/think.htm
Dee Silverthorn

1) I, too, teach a large undergraduate human anatomy and physiology course that often enrolls up to 300 students, most of whom are sophomores. Many of my teaching classrooms do NOT have clocks on the wall, and while this is good for preventing "clock-watching" by the students, it makes it more difficult to budget my time during class, especially if I'm responding to student questions on particularly challenging topics. If my PowerPoint slides are projecting, the computer clock is obscured. I learned very quickly to bring a watch, timer or cell phone (on vibrate, as Dee suggests) for my own use.

2) Regarding classroom management, I often have students who arrive late and distract the entire room by walking down to one of the front rows before settling in and unpacking their materials. I am not one to lock the room at class time and prevent students from entering, but I do request that they respect their fellow students (and their professor) by coming in with as little noise and disruption as possible and sitting toward the back and/or near the aisles.

3) I post my PowerPoint slides online before the class period, but am very straightforward with my students about the fact that this is meant as a time-saver for them and they still need to come to class to learn how the information on the slides will be applied.

4) I am in full agreement with Dee on the point of technology being wonderful until it fails. I have managed to survive a dead microphone, but a complete power outage that leaves me in a dark room with 300 startled students or, worse, a partial failure that leaves me as the focal point of 300 stares with no slides, chalkboard or drawing pad, can instill panic. As Dee says, don't let the students see you flinch. Finish your thought and either move on with conceptual or integrative information - I sometimes "tell stories" about the clinical relevance of what we were discussing - or dismiss the class in an orderly fashion in the case of the blackout.

Kristin Gosselink
University of Texas at El Paso

Response: In cases of complete power failure in rooms with no windows, cell phones make good flashlights to see your way out!
Dee Silverthorn
 

On the first day of my large physiology class for biology majors, I have the students in small groups write one or two questions that they have about physiology and sign their names on an index card.  I recopy the names after day 1 and use the cards to call on the students by name during the semester.  I always call 3-4 names for possible answers (assuming that some of them may still be sitting near each other from day one), so that after a think, pair, share activity, no one has to own up to their own opinion but can speak for their group’s opinion.
Barb Goodman
University of South Dakota
 

Never underestimate the power of 'Show and Tell'. I've found that the students enjoy the items that I bring to class for 'show and tell'.

• I bring 2 boxes of Morton salt to indicate the amount of salt filtered per day at the glomerulus = 886 grams or 3.2 pounds.
• Also, 2 50-ml conical tubes represents the amount of sodium chloride in the entire extracellular fluid space = 140 g.
• The amount of salt excreted in the urine is approximately 5.8 grams which is two 1.5-ml Eppendorff tubes.
• To demonstrate the amount of glucose filtered at the glomerulus each day = 0.5 pounds, I bring a Ziploc bag filled with glucose.
• To demonstrate the volume of water filtered per day, I show pictures of nine 5-G spring water bottles in the PowerPoint presentation.
• To demonstrate the total glomerular capillary surface area, I bring to class 10 sheets of 8.5 X 11" banner paper = 6,000 cm2.
• The filtration area is represented by the fenestrae, which is ~10% of the total surface area.
• Also, to demonstrate angiotensin II-induced vasoconstriction of the renal arterioles, I play a movie from my research laboratory.

Lisa Harrison-Bernard
Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine in New Orleans

I retired about 5 years ago. I always believed that experience was the best teacher. Since students could not gain a lifetime of experience, I interspersed my lectures with appropriate stories. The idea was to make them so real that they became a part of the student’s mind. For example, when talking about ventricles of the brain, I told of the origin of the Holter Co. John D. Holter was an engineer whose son developed hydrocephalus in 1956. He was told, according to the stories that I heard, his son was going to die. He asked why someone didn’t install a valve. He was told that such a valve did not exist. He went home and designed the valve that saved his son. The story provides the student with real life events that show the circulation of CSF and how it is drained.

Another teaching technique I used was in a course in nutrition. The last two lectures were dedicated to student presentations. I had them do about 15-20 minutes on a cuisine. The first thing that I was asked was. “I am Italian, can I do Italian food?” I told them that they could because they already were experts on that cuisine. But I told them that they had to go back to parents and grandparents to learn from them about customs and legends. They then asked if they could bring in samples of various foods for the class. I permitted it. Students really enjoyed it. However. the administration did not understand what I was trying to accomplish. First, I got students in front of a group talking about a subject with which they were completely comfortable. The students sharing samples of the food was “breaking bread” with the other students, sharing food.... very basic psychological stuff about food. The administration did not understand. I thought they did understand.... Anyway, it was one of the reasons they offered to buy out my contract.... In the long run, I miss the teaching...but the caveats are that when using really innovative teaching techniques, make sure that the administration really understand what you are trying to accomplish.
Zalmon Pober

Response: Dr. Pober's point about making sure the administration understands what you are doing is an excellent one. When we looked at why faculty in our Integrative Themes in Physiology project were having so much trouble changing how they taught, resistance from peers and administration was a significant factor (see Adv Phsyiol Educ 30(4): 204-214, 2006).
Dee Silverthorn

I wish to express my pleasure for having the opportunity to contribute to this forum on teaching. I wish that this would continue and then we all learn from each other and be able to relate our own unique teaching experience.

Teaching of physiology courses in the medical curriculum in the US is unique and teachers can easily determine the student level of coverage of its topics. However, not all courses in biological sciences (including physiology) are taught in medical schools or in the US. Even at medical schools in Western Europe and North America that follow an integrated medical curriculum, a teacher needs to determine the level of coverage in these sciences at the beginning of a course. At other institutions of higher learning and with introductory level courses, this is a must. Apart from the adopted official/institutional evaluation of teaching by students, a simple course-specific feedback is very valuable to instructors in the long run.

The following are matters that pertain to my experience of teaching, which were developed over the years and per circumstances at different institutions at different geographical locations:

1. A thorough review of the course syllabus must be done with students in class at the beginning of the course.
2. Teachers ought to provide students with a course calendar that contains dates of significant activities and course events. Such should be provided by the end of the first week of the course, at the latest, or should be included in a separate sheet of the course syllabus.
3. An initial simple questionnaire that would be completed by each student is very helpful in determining the approximate level of coverage of what will be taught in the course. This is of extreme value in cases where students are having different educational backgrounds and/or at institutions that have a variety of elective courses. Students identify themselves by name for this questionnaire, which involves answers to: student name, university I.D., related courses taken or being taken concurrently with the course being taught, why the student is taking this course? and what does the student expect from this course?
4. In regard to deadlines for major assignments and examinations, reminders should be made to students within ample time, even if such were provided with the course calendar or syllabus.
5. A student feedback form is distributed to all students in class - which contains questions such as: how did the content of this course affect your general and specific awareness about the subject matter?, what did you like the most about this course?, what did not you like about this course? Also included are requests to provide suggestions for any improvement(s) about the course and to make any comments about the course or about its instructor. This end-of-the-course survey requests students not to provide any of their personal information - i.e., anonymous.

Farouk El-Sabban
Kuwait University, Kuwait
 

When campus clocks and classroom clocks are inaccurate or conflicting, students may have a problem arriving at classroom on time. In order to avoid confusion about when class begins, I tell my students that we will start and end class according to “cell phone time”. On the first day of the course I ask everyone to get out their cell phones and confirm that all of us have essentially the same time. We then agree to use this time as the start and stop point for the class.

Some of my courses start at 8 or 9 am, so late arrivals are inevitable. This can be troublesome if late students want to sit in the front or must step over their classmates to get to an empty seat. I try to minimize the disruption by setting aside the last 1-2 rows in the classroom for latecomers. I explain this policy to the class on the first day of class and gently remind students throughout the course if necessary. One of the bonuses of this policy is that it moves the shy students, who like to hide in the back of the class, closer to the front or the room so that they are one step closer to becoming engaged in the course.

Jodie Krontiris-Litowitz
Youngstown State University
 
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