A Useful Professor-ing Resource

After returning from a conference a few months ago, my department head handed me a thick, lime green book, and said, “I thought this might be useful.”

“Tools for Teaching by Barbara Gross Davis. Great,” I thought, “another 500-someodd pages to read,” remembering that I was about halfway done with another teaching resource guide.

There are so many questions about college-level teaching, and I’m lucky if I’ve found 10% of my answers. Fortunately, for me, I have an excellent department head that is receptive to my concerns and questions. But she’s human and has a life of her own. I imagine this book was a way for her to buy free time from my incessant grilling sessions. I’m not complaining; I’m empathetic.

So I brought Davis home and set it on my nightstand. That evening, I had finished grading, had lectures planned for the next few days, and nothing good was on television, so I figured I’d flip through the book and hoped that it’d be a method for treating insomnia. Within 20 minutes, I had read through 45 pages, which is an amazing feat for a synthetic organic chemist. In fact, my achievement prompted me to open my computer and schedule time throughout the week to read. I actually started finding time to take lunch breaks!

Davis is a truly fascinating read, and I imagine that many fledgling professors would feel the same way, though might even be useful for more experienced profs. Here’s the gist of the book. Tools for Teaching (second edition) is a 550-page bible that covers notions ranging from course design to running undergraduate research projects to interacting with large enrollment classrooms. Her ideas are short, to the point, and well referenced (if you want to read further on a particular issue). The other strength is that the major themes Davis presents are independent of each other, meaning you can jump around from chapter to chapter. I’m now in the throws of redesigning my syllabus, learning how to better advise students, and how to grade with more precision and efficiently (a task we all need to master). It’s gotten to the point that I’ve been carrying this book with me everywhere.

Pertaining to The Lab Bench, as scientists, we’re naturally wrapped up in our fields, so much so that we forget about other equally important attributes: eating; sleeping; etc. Particularly at teaching-focused colleges, it’s necessary to hone our “professing” skills (to a razors edge) to best serve the students—our clients/customers.

Teaching the Soft Stuff

The topic of skill sets came up in the midst of the conversation with colleagues the other day. Specifically, the topic at hand was whether or not soft skills have a place in the science-based undergraduate curriculum independent of the institution type (i.e., big university to community college).

There are countless reasons to support the idea of teaching soft skills in technical-based programs. And although I imagine that teaching soft skills is generally a good idea (there’s certainly is resources available to support this notion) there are also reasons on the other side of the argument. Here were some points that were made on behalf of the more “hard skill-ers.”:

• Why teach a science major discipline-specific writing when they’re destined for a professionally “hands-on” career (i.e., medicine, pharmacy, etc.)?
• Many undergraduates majoring in technical degrees cannot perform basic calculations or negotiate pertinent, yet fundamental, information. Teaching soft skills would likely cut into opportunities to develop these skills.
• Many physics, chemistry, and engineering students do not know how to properly use technology such as calculators, career-specific software, or routine “workhorse” instruments. Teaching soft skills lessens the chances that students will gain the exposure required for career preparation.
• Many companies offer pre-professional development programs that train employees on important managerial skills (i.e., document drafting, one-on-one communication, how to hold a meeting, etc.). Since these opportunities are offered further down the career path, it doesn’t seem important to develop these skills within the technical major.
• Many programs require a fixed amount of credit hours specifically in writing-based courses. Offering more, especially to students with an already good writing skill set, might be perceived as beating (the proverbial) dead horse.

Critically interesting ideas to consider.

Correlating Grades with Student Evaluations

It’s course evaluation time, and like many professors, I’m curious to see how my students perceived their learning experience over the past few months. Ironically, this time of the semester also coincides with the initial stages of grade calculation (a task that probably causes more irreparable harm to the professors than their students). So, after students work their way through two pages of bubble sheets, my office is then inundated with people who want to see their current course standing.

The intersection of grades and course evaluations is nothing new. However, it is the focus of a recently published study by David A. Love and Matthew J. Kotchen (Eastern Economic Journal 2010, 36, 151-163), two professors who developed an economic model that links grade inflation and student behavioral responses (i.e., course evaluations). The culmination of the study appeared quite quid pro quo. Assuming that strong student evaluations increase the likelihood of achieving tenure, many professors appear to (subconsciously) “buy” good student evaluations in exchange for inflated grades.

Here’s one recommendation that stood out among the rest:

“We find that grade targets can be an effective policy not only because they limit grade inflation, but also because institutions can set expectations to improve teaching and research productivity without affecting student effort."

Interesting idea. I guess, in theory, it could work. One summer, I TA’d for a professor who encouraged difficult grading (to keep the averages low) then let us assign our own grades, except that no more than 20% of the class could get A’s. This policy helped distribute grades a bit better, but several tears were shed over the diminishing chances of entering medical school. Interestingly, he was one of the most respected, most liked, and highest rated professors in the department. Another professor, for whom I TA’d, worked hard to keep the grades low then ranked the students. Ultimately, their place in line (so to speak) corresponded to the grade they received; talk about being stressed out. On the other end of the spectrum, I’m familiar with one chemistry department that, in the 1990’s, mandated that 40% of the general chemistry students would fail outright. I imagine that the evaluations were horrid.

In my experience, so long as you’re fair and honest with the grading, students will generally remember this characteristic as they work through their evaluations. Of course, achieving objectives in the syllabus doesn't hurt either.

Teaching Failure

I want my students to succeed. I want to see myself succeed, especially as a tenure-track faculty member. But when undergrads can’t get microtomes to cut, or reactions to work, or pendulums to swing, it can be a pain. I recall these experiences were quite embarrassing as a GTA, but, with time, I’ve learned to shake off experimental failure, personally realizing that it’s all part of the scientific process. These days, the consequences of a bad experiment leave me deciding how best to proceed with the pedagogical outcome (admittedly, this could be a whole other blog post). However, after reading Teaching Failure in the Laboratory (by Glagovich and Swierczynski), I may alter my outlook a bit.

The authors discuss the importance of failure in teaching laboratories. I know this is a prudent lesson to consider, but I hadn’t truthfully evaluated the concept of dealing with failure until I was in graduate school. In fact, my PI had a saying about laboratory life (granted he was primarily talking about synthetic organic chemistry): “You have to be prepared to fail 95% of the time,” which broadly translate to, “despite your best efforts, sometimes experiments fail.” I kept his advice in mind throughout my training, chalking up failure to stats while capitalizing on my successes. In retrospect, I wonder how learning this lesson as an undergrad would’ve affected my outcome as a scientist.

Although the crux of the Glagovich article lies with organic chemistry, I wonder if these lessons are common to other scientific disciplines. Certainly, my analytical students had their expectations blown to pieces when we attempted to isolate iron(II) from egg yolk. Ginormous fail. Although some students considered the outcome (or lack thereof) “typical” relative to their high school courses, others echoed the same experience that Glagovich and Swierczynski reported in their article—they couldn’t believe a published experiment wouldn’t work right. Still, others couldn’t care less one way or another, and felt Mexican food was more interesting (lab gets out at 10 pm).

In light of the Glagovich article, I’m wrestling with the concept of teaching experimental failure. Why does every undergraduate experiment have to be perfect? Should students learn about failure? Should we protect students from the ugly truth? Why can’t we teach failure?

On Providing Equations

A fundamental issue in science pedagogy is over whether or not students should be given equations on exams. Every exam, my professors gave me every equation I’d ever need. They emphasized the importance understanding the material rather than memorizing equations anyone can look up in a book. This is a reason why I chose the path of chemistry over biology; memorization seems pointless.

In grad school, I TA’d for several undergraduate-level professors, many of whom didn’t provide equations on exams. I struggled to respect these instructors, in part, because I found their teaching methods to be quite “passive” (I can’t think of a more polite-sounding term). Not providing equations seemed to be a bit more icing on the lackadaisical cake.

Although I haven’t seen much scholarly analysis on this topic, in the conversations that I’ve had with other faculty members, there’s a fairly even split on the issue. Demonstrating application of course content seems much more prudent than being able to regurgitate esoteric facts. On the other hand, many undergraduate science majors will inevitably take exams for admission into graduate/professional school. Many of these exams do not allow calculators let alone provide routine equations. Knowing your equations could be the difference between admission into and rejection from grad school, med school, pharmacy school, etc. In other words, undergraduate exams are (in a sense) practice for the real deal.

As a professor, I’m torn on the issue.

Interactive

Having now been charged with the holy task of lecturing, I have begun to realize that assembling content is quite time-consuming. It leaves little creative time to develop my presentation of the material, knowing that my “progress” as a professor is gauged on my teaching skills (not on my ability to recall the pKa of water…15.7). My formal training in teaching (as is the case for most science Ph.D.’s) is effectively nil, and, in all sincerity, I’m not complaining. I believe my peers recognize my struggles as a fledgling prof, which prompts many of them to invite me to watch them teach.

Recently, I had the opportunity to observe a history lecture, which is no doubt a far cry from the molecular orbital theory. But I rationalized that good teaching has intrinsic qualities that work in any class (regardless of the subject).

After taking some time to digest my observations, my wife was curious to know what I learned.

I thought for a moment. “Mexico’s Independence Day is September 16, not May 5.”

She giggled. “No, I meant about the teaching style.”

The professor had gone in many different directions, and I tried to narrow down what I liked the most. “I think enjoyed how the professor encouraged student interaction. I wish I could apply more of that in my classes.”

Chemistry isn’t exactly an interactive or (even) team sport. But why not try something different? An increasing number of disciplines are pushing detailed content back on the students while using lecture time to reinforce concepts, provide a birds-eye-view of course content, and engage the class through interactive exercises. Notice how I didn’t say “flip through slides” or “derive equations.”

What can be done about creating more interactive science lectures? Here’s an excellent article about delivering effective medical school lectures (published by the US Agency for International Development, c. 1996). The authors suggest beginning lectures with an open-ended question (to be answered at some point in the lecture), a video clip, or an exercise in “think-pair-share.”

Personally, I plan on visiting more classrooms and looking for new ideas that I can incorporate into my lectures.

An Introduction to Research Ethics (Part II)

A few days back, I wrote about my attempt to expose my undergrads to the concept of research ethics. It was a very interesting exercise, and I plan on doing it again next semester.

The class (approximately 10 students) was broken off into three groups, and each group was given a scenario pertaining to research ethics and questions to consider during the class discussion portion. A typical example of a scenario is as follows:

Student XYZ is asked to perform an experiment, and his/her advisor expects there to be a linear relationship between the independent and dependent variables. After the experiment, several data points do not fit the linear trend.

In this case, students are asked to consider A) re-measuring all of the data, B) re-measuring only the outlier cases, or C) ignoring the data points that don’t fit. When polling the class, the overwhelming majority appeared to have recognized the prudence of doing something about the non-linear data points (albeit the bare minimum…i.e., option “B”). Interestingly, several former analytical chemistry students noted that the non-linear points might be statistically insignificant, a notion verified through a G-test (kudos to me for actually teaching them stats last semester!!).

As the authoritarian figure, I emphasized the importance and responsibility of reporting the “true,” objective answer and the consequences for doing otherwise. I was surprised to see that students had not considered that scientific misconduct could damage your professional reputation, a concept I tried to illustrate by talking about the Bell Labs incident, although it was heavily based in physics, not chemistry.

Furthermore, most students didn’t realize that a Ph.D. could be invalidated; having learned this in grad school, I’m not very surprised. Nature published a very interesting article a few years back about scientists who were implicated in scientific misconduct cases (Nature 2007, 445, 244-245), many of whom have been stripped or his/her Ph.D. Perhaps, I’ll work several of these instances into future iterations and/or seminars about this topic.

In any case, ethics is an ongoing area of research (at least for me).

Apparently Medium Doesn't Matter

I stumbled onto this gem while searching for chalk-talk teaching methods.

Shallcross, D. E.; Harrison, T. G., “Lectures: Electronic Presentations versus Chalk and Talk – a Chemist’s View,” Chem. Ed. Res. Pract. 2007, 8, 73.

Overview: From the findings of several questionnaires and interviews, the authors contend that the “method of delivery (i.e., PowerPoint vs. chalk) has no significant impact on learning outcomes.” Moreover, they maintain that preparation plays a central role in lecturing.

My thoughts: I’ve personally witnessed that students are less focused and more likely to sleep when they’re shown a PowerPoint presentation in a warm, dark lecture hall. My classes usually involve chalk, though I'm beginning to work PowerPoint in...especially in cases where I have to present data, show an instrumentation diagram, or need to illustrate a periodic trend.

An Introduction to Research Ethics (Part 1)

During a group meeting in grad school, a member reported her recent laboratory findings to the rest of us. At one point in the talk, she reported a significant increase in product yield (nearly 40%) when she switched solvent systems. My PI spoke up. “How many milligrams of product do you have,” he asked.

“Two or three hundred,” she confidently responded.

“And it’s pure?”

“Yes.”

“And you have clean proton and carbon spectra?” Silence. “You don’t have data?” Silence. “What good is the experiment, if you can’t prove that you’ve made the product?” Silence. “You cannot report findings unless you have data. Why don’t you know this?”

Great question. Or better yet, where does the disconnect lay when it comes to ethical research behavior? Is it a gap due to cultural or language issues (she was from a different country)? Is it just plain ignorance? Is it simply a blatant disregard for acceptable behavior?

I’ve mentally wrestled with these questions for a few years, and I’ve arrived at several conclusions:

1. Ethical behavior begins in the home. We learn a lot of our initial ethical perception from our parents/guardians/influences.
2. Learning to do the right thing is (or should be) perpetuated in grade school. Students learn that stealing is wrong, honesty is the best policy, and the Golden Rule supersedes all.
3. Professional ethics lies in the beginning of professional training/development. For example, a police officer is taught when it's acceptable to use deadly force at his academy or barracks whereas a restauranteur learns how best to treat his customers in business school or during on-the-job training.

This semester, I am teaching a course in research chemistry, an opportunity to expose undergrads to exploring "uncharted waters" as scientists. But, before getting our hands wet (so to speak), I have planned an interactive lecture on research ethics. I aim to encourage discussion for a number of ethical situations ranging from reporting false data to laboratory safety (instances compiled from Kovac's The Ethical Chemist - see left).

Stay tuned for more developments, as research ethics is a personal area of interest.

Getting Organized - Scheduling Your Life

Throughout gradate school, a key member on my Ph.D. committee was notoriously late to all of my qualifying engagements (over an hour in some cases). On one such event, I remember pacing back and forth, in a freshly pressed business suit with a white shirt, in front of 4 committee members, trying to make neutral small talk without saying something that would spark a Spanish Inquisition when the “grilling” began…all while trying not to sweat.

After waiting for twenty minutes, my research advisor took a deep breath and said, “Well, why don’t you go by his office and see if he just forgot.” The other committee members chuckled at this suggestion, and I left the classroom to find the missing professor. En route, I attempted to hide my anger by repeatedly telling myself that my advisor wouldn’t have scheduled my defense if he didn’t think I couldn’t pass.

I arrived at the professor’s door, with no need to curl my fingers as they had already become a fist out of frustration. Knock, knock, knock. No answer. Knock, knock, knock. Still no answer. I retreated to the classroom, trying best to keep my composure, but every minute leading up to a defense is so tense and solemn you can actually feel your heart beating in the tips of your fingers.

Three trips to his office, two visits to the department secretaries, and 45 minutes later, the classroom door opens and in pops Mr. Dr. Punctual, with a freshly brewed mug of coffee in hand. He says in his typical weak and squeaky voice, “nice to see you all waited.” No apology.

Infuriating? Yes. Frustrating? Absolutely. “At least you passed,” my research advisor said in his office after the defense. In a utilitarian sense, he was absolutely right. But, the lack of respect was so infuriating and insulting. So, what could I do? I wrestled with this question for a few months before I arrived at a few of conclusions. First, don’t get into a stinking contest with a skunk. Nothing positive is likely to come out of complaining. Second, learn from others mistakes to make yourself a better person.

Scientists aren’t exactly known for their punctuality or real-world attentiveness, and these traits aren’t usually intended (at least in the science community). My fellow researchers were notorious for showing up late to group meetings. I had a friend in a different lab who was always 15 minutes behind schedule. When my wife and I first started dating, she had to handle the fact that I got lost in my research, didn’t have a cell phone signal in the lab, and (on a subconscious level) I didn’t care if I missed a meal on occasion. A few dozen roses later, we’re happily married.

Nevertheless, lacking punctuality is inexcusable, especially in the real world, and when I signed on as an assistant professor, I didn’t want to be “that guy” to the faculty or my students. I recognize that time is a valuable commodity, and wasting it, for most people, ranks right up there with nails on a chalkboard in the irritating category. To help combat my absent-mindedness, I’ve enlisted the services of my computer to guide me through my day. I quickly found that programs such as iCal, Google Calendar, Microsoft Entourage, or Sunbird (Firefox) can help with organization.

Personally, I use iCal to keep track of my class times, upcoming events (meetings, conferences, etc.), and important dates (birthdays, anniversaries, etc.). I sync all of my events with my Google account, which then lets me push all of the data to my Blackberry; it’s not nearly as convoluted as it sounds. In the long run, I noticed that better organization results in more productive hours.

My post is not a plug for any software, per se. Rather, it’s a subtle plea to the scientific community to push us to become better organized. I’ll leave it open to discussion and post a poll on the blog. What tips do you have to help schedule your life? Do you do you prefer software or a book-style agendas?