TEACHING AND LEARNING WITH HEATHER
TEACHING PHILOSOPHY
I remembering disliking science in middle school. It was not interesting. I thought the teacher was aiming the material at the boys in the class talking about levers and pulleys. My opinion of science completely changed in grade 9. I remember the teacher did this amazing experiment in front of the class. I was hooked. I needed to understand how the experiment worked. I realized that science was not as boring as I once thought. But in reality, the subject of science never changed the only thing that changed was my teacher.
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My teaching philosophy is based on my own teaching and learning experiences. Since my teaching and learning experiences are a continuing process, my teaching philosophy is also evolving. I believe that learning is an innate desire within everyone that can either be ignited or dampened. This means that students need to be engaged with the material to ignite their desire to learn and my role as faculty is to ask the students questions and provide case studies to ignite this desire. As faculty, my role is to guide and support the students as they engage and travel down the road of learning. If I focus on teaching content, then the students focus on regurgitation instead of learning and understanding. Instead, I need to provide students the tools to have a desire to learn and seek out reliable information.
Teaching Method and Goals
The classes that I teach have a science knowledge base with nursing application. For the nursing application to be understood, the science behind the disease process and the medications need to be understood. The classes are typically three hours long and my goal is to ensure that the 50 to 100 students in my class make it from point A to point B. It can be difficult to keep people’s attention for long periods of time and if they miss key points, they will be lost in the end. I do not consider myself an entertainer nor do I seek to become more entertaining. Instead, I look at the learning outcomes for the class and I look at the key concepts that need to be understood. After each concept is explained, I either show a video that has an application, give a case scenario with a few questions, or give a multiple choice or true and false questions. I find that these little breaks can do a few things for students. The students who lost interest are faced with a question and start flipping through the textbook or looking through my online slides for answers; this has the students engaged in their own learning process. The students who were following along can probably answer the question and engage in a meaningful discussion about the question or case study at hand, this also solidifies and engages the learning in the learning process. I also find that case studies are a great tool because the students need to apply the information I gave them to figure out the answer. I believe these steps are key because I am preparing them for their nursing career where every patient is different with their own complex health history and medications.
Purpose of Assessments
I believe that the goal of assessments is to continue to spark learning. My courses have a variety of assessments including multiple choice and short answer tests, scenario testing, and case study papers or presentations. My goal for multiple choice and short answer tests is for students to apply the knowledge that they have gained to the questions. They need to critically think through each problem, apply their knowledge, and choose the best answer. The process of taking the test should also be a learning process. Scenario testing is an opportunity for students to apply their knowledge by performing the skills that they learned to a specific patient scenario. Case study papers and presentations are an excellent application assessment where students are either given a case study or use the information from one of their patients during their clinical rotation. This gives them the opportunity to delve deeper into a specific case with references to best practice.
Creating an Inclusive Environment
Inclusivity is important to provide a dynamic and safe learning environment for students. Everyone is different and learns in different ways. To account for different ways of learning and because most people will benefit from learning in more than one way, I try to present material in a variety of ways. I utilize powerpoint for visual learners and explain things in depth for auditory learners. I like to show applicable videos in class and post videos for students to watch outside of class time. I have utilized panopto to produce voice over powerpoints for students to watch at home at their own pace. I promote student involvement and technology in the classroom. I like to use programs like kahoot for the students to test their knowledge. It is a low stakes test because I do not know how well each student did but am given an overall of how well the class answered the question. Questions that many students answered incorrectly provide an opportunity to explain the concept more clearly or have a discussion about what aspects were unclear. Lab and clinical provide hands-on/tactile learning to work with the material that they have learned. Students often comment on how concepts made more sense after applying them in lab or clinical.