Here you and your partner can post your interview questions and the observed instructor’s responses to these questions. Please refrain from listing the instructor’s name in your post. We will discuss your observation and interview experiences during class.
About Monica E. Vaca-Cárdenas
Mónica Elva Vaca-Cárdenas is a Ph.D student at Kansas State University in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. She has also been the Graduate Research Assistant at the Teaching and Learning Center of the Kansas State University for the last two years. Monica is from Ecuador, where she obtained the following qualifications: Doctor in Languages, mention International Cooperation, Diploma in teaching (EFL) English as a Foreign Language and a Master degree in Linguistics applied to EFL.
Teaching experience: Monica has been teaching English as a Foreign Language for fifteen years in Ecuador, at elementary, high school and University level; and teaching Spanish for a couple of semesters in the International Student Center of K-State.
View all posts by Monica E. Vaca-Cárdenas
Q1. Students come to your class with different academic background, how do you treat the difference by not making it too boring for some students, but not too difficult for the others?
A1.A small percentage of his students are marketing majors. Therefore, he tries to use real-life examples & bring in current articles from the Wall Street Journal.
Q2. Have your course plan (i.e. syllabus) been changed when you began to teach this course? What are the common traps/pitfalls we should avoid when we start our teaching career?
A1. He said that his syllabus has grown since he began teaching. Much of it is due to “required” information. The biggest pitfall for young teachers is the fact they want everyone to like them.
1. How do you get students engaged/interested in the class?
I used integrating technology in their lessons. For instance, In order to get efficient work, I use online lectures for students. By taking the online lecture, they can understand content easily. Also, our class has 6 teaching assistants. This is a strong system for students.
2. What is your teaching philosophy?
My main goal is to help students to move from college to the working world and achieve their goals and objectives. I want them to overcome the challenge in their field via taking this class.
3. Any advice/best practices for future instructors?
You need passion. Passion is good tool in order to be a good instructor.
Q: How do you adapt your current teaching style we observed to a large classroom with 150 plus students?
A: I feel the current style can be used effectively up to 40 students in a room. Larger lecture style classroom can be broken into smaller groups using TA’s, that can cost a lot of money per class. We discussed that student leaders can be used, but do you give them extra credit? Is that fair? etc.
Q: How do you establish trust in your classroom?
A: By sharing personally. Deciding what to appropriately share and how. Building that through several leadership classes. The key is to be intentional about what you share.
Q: What is your policy on technology in the classroom?
A: I do not have one. I used to, but I feel like there are some students who are using it to look up an article we are talking about or to learn more information about the content material. Should I be punishing those who want to do learn more just because some students use it to browse Facebook?
Q: What do you wish you would have known when you first started teaching?
A: He wishes he would have been more prepared in teaching strategies and classroom management. He uses pair/share, student coaching to assist them in leading discussions. He makes connections between classes by sending a question to students to tie back to their text. He likes to change up the seating arrangement for each class period. At this point in his career, when he has students lead class discussion, he makes it a point to talk to the students presenting a week in advance to help the get ideas and provide them with teaching activity resources.
Q: Is there anything else you would like to tell us?
A: He uses strengths in classes for both his teaching as well as helping students identify what they want to do in life. He also focuses on having them choose their learning experience as well.
If the students are talking outside of class about what they learned in class, it’s a win.
Q: What advice do you have for people about to apply for college teaching jobs?
A: Try being an adjunct. Do not be tied down geographically.
These are questions and answers from both Sarah and Tonya.
Tucker and I sat in on Dr. Wesch’s introductory anthropology class on the 16th. Here were the two big take-aways from our observation.
We picked a very interesting day to observe because it happened to be the day where he discussed prejudices that exist between cultures and how those prejudices can be embodied in laws and economics, which have impacts that last for generations. Obviously this was a very emotionally charged topic, and he was not at all shy about tapping into that from the beginning of the lecture to the very end. In fact, he preceded his lecture with a video montage of civil rights footage set to U2’s “Pride (In The Name of Love).” When asked if he typically used emotion as a tool in his lecture he emphatically said, “Yes! Emotion is a critically under-evaluated tool for teaching.” While I’m sure that emotions can be useful for teaching some things, I’m not sure I completely agree with this statement. Specifically, I think that while emotional links to memories can be especially strong, they may not always yield reliably accurate memories as emotions can sometimes blur important details.
We also noted that Dr. Wesch’s lecturing style incorporated a lot of videos dispersed throughout the class. This is a time for students to shift their focus to a richer medium of information (historical pictures, documents, etc.), which does help to keep the students’ attention. It also gave Dr. Wesch some time to review the structure of his lecture while the video played. He later showed us his notes which were more of a list of key words and phrases, mixed with empty boxes that indicated that a video would be played. By doing this he was able to visualize what is occurring next in the lecture so that it can be presented in a more relaxed and extemporaneous way that is more conversational than information dense. As he puts it, “the idea is to connect with the students, not the material. Otherwise, it’s just you up in front of the room sounding smart,” which does not keep the audience captivated.
Q1: When T-Val’s are done, what is the most common compliment about your teaching style -or- the thing students report appreciating the most about your style of teaching?
A1: “Students usually say they appreciate that I mix it up a lot…I try a lot of different things with students. This keeps them on their feet. Also, because I use many different techniques to engage them and to get them to show their classmates and me what they know, they HAVE to do the work for my class (reading, studying, taking good notes etc.), or, it will be obvious that they didn’t. This ends in them learning more because they have to have done the pre-work for class in order to participate.”
Q2: Where are you going from here? What is the next big thing you are working on regarding your teaching style?
A2: “Right now, I’m working really hard on how to do truly effective group work in class (discussion, debate, collaboration, etc.) and be able to assign a grade to it in a fair and consistent way. There are many great ways to help students learn things that are very hard to assign a grade to that is fair and consistent.”
1. How long have you been teaching the observed course?
Since 1996. About 20 years.
2. How many students are enrolled in your class?
48+48 for two sections.
3. What it your teaching philosophy?
I need to teach to the whole person. Which means I’m teaching people, not only the subject. I focus on course content, but I also need to reach all of interests and aspects that they have. Otherwise they will only memorize the course content such as test.
4. How has the course plan (e.g., lesson plans, activities, syllabus, etc.) changed/remained the same since you began teaching the course?
In this course it remains same over all. Because we talk about behavior and people not change much. In this course the technologies have changed such as electronically. But the content and course plan not change to much and I found it effective.
5. How do you assess student learning outcomes?
Through various methods. They are written or oral, and group projects, individual projects, exams, and so on.
6. How do you get students engaged/interested in the class?
Peer teaching and discussion. (Those also are what we observed in class.)
7. Have you ever met any difficulties in teaching?
My most difficulty as instructor is grading. Because I want to give them many comments, immediately feedback and I have total 96 students. So time is my challenging.
8. Any advice/best practices for future instructors?
For first-time instructors I have two suggestions. The first one is establish your first-day class. The first-day is incredible important for all your teaching of this course. The second one is get to know your student, connect to them, reach their needs, interests and care about their succeeding.
It’s 8am. It’s Friday, and the last place you want to be standing is in front of 200 people, or sandwiched in between in the lecture hall. Yet what we observed was a single professor, without pomp or circumstance, capturing the attention of students. Two highlights from our interview was (1) how this professor maintained a small-class environment and (2) this professor’s thoughts on teaching a large class.
(1) Instructor uses a concept of “Big12 Students” during his lectures, and since we did not really understand what this concept was, we naturally asked him to explain:
Each week, 10 students and asks them to sit in the front row of the lecture hall (the class size is approximately 200 students). The whole idea behind this concept is to allow these selected students to enjoy a small class learning experience while being enrolled in a large class. When he asks a question and there is no answer from the audience, he turns to the Big12 students, he sometimes offers them a bonus question where they can gain an extra credit point. He also stressed that he always tries to estimate whether a student feels comfortable with the questions asked and if that student has enough confidence to answer it in front of the whole class. In other words, he does not want put anyone on the spot or make anyone feel uncomfortable. In addition, he surveys this group of students every week in order to get feedback on his teaching methods and to ensure that students did understand covered topics.
(2) Throughout the class, students appeared engaged; few were on their devices. We asked the professor about classroom management:
The professor discussed changing approaches and structuring lectures dependent on the class size and competency level. He recognized that some students might be bored where as others might be confused. Through periodic surveying, he is able to recalibrate the material and delivery. When using media, like video clips, there is always a clear purpose. He said to embrace the big lecture hall. He said directly, “You can’t be the same as when you are sitting on the couch watching the ball game. . .you’ve gotta have energy.”
Group: Mohammed Hasan Yong Wei
Teacher: Dr. Donald Saucier
Time: 1:30-2:20 pm, 09/08/2015
Title: Major Introduction—–Psychology
Methods:
1. Let students feel the teacher is approachable and friendly by discussing the popular topic in the class.
2. Problem driven teaching method was used in the class.
3. The most important things taught by teacher are methodologies, e.g. , how to plan students’ university life, how to make their plans reality, how to find some information that they need through the internet, and so on;
4. At the same time, this class lets students know: what their major is, what the major research, what job they will get after getting the degree, how to be good at the study in the university, and so on.
Questions:
1. How has the course plan(e.g., lessons plans, activities, syllabus etc.,) changed/remained the same since you began teaching the course?
It becomes much more flexible from students feedback to make next step “depending on where they are”. He changes plan when it is necessary.
2. Any advice/best practices for future instructors?
Understanding the teaching is converting.
3. Have you had been any students has difficulties in this course, why?
Yes, some of them are not ready for collage or they are not interesting in their major.
4. How many assignment do they have, and what else?
They have six assignments and some discussion activities.