News about my teaching at University – Analytical Chemistry for the most part
In addition to teaching labs at Bishop’s University (this semester Analytical Chemistry and Physical Chemistry), I will be teaching “Atmospheric Chemistry” at McGill University (ATOC/CHEM 219).
Check out the ad: ATOC219 Course Advertisement (and spread the word, if you like!)
The Course Design workshop I took at McGill Teaching and Learning Services is done and it was a formidable experience. It was a good reminder for several issues that I first discussed during an earlier workshop in 2008.
Here are a couple of keywords about things to investigate in more detail (again):
I also noticed that a lot of methodology originating from the non-profit sector and professional training increasingly find their way into university teaching!
I will be participating in a Course Design Workshop at McGill University for 2 day sessions in the next 2 weeks. Since I have already quite a few lectures under my belt, it is time to take a second look. So I have decided to give Course Redesign a spin, focusing on my Analytical Chemistry lecture.
There are exciting new teaching approaches around, especially for combined theory & lab courses. Interdisciplinary project-based learning [1] provides a better insight how research projects work and are carried out. The project-based approach provides a highly motivating environment and fosters critical thinking in a group-based process. It is something I have been interested in for a while and I certainly want to explore the opportunities the Analytical Chemistry curriculum provides for this approach.
Reference
[1] e.g., DL Van Engelen, SW Suljak, JP Hall & BE Holmes, Undergraduate Introductory W Quantitative Chemistry Laboratory Course: Interdisciplinary Group Projects in Phytoremediation (2007) Journal of Chemical Education, 84(1) 128-131.
Recently, I gave 2 talks on my research activities with some information on statistics and data analysis (at Bishop’s University: 01 Mar 2012 & Dawson College: 07 Mar 2012) for environmental analytical projects. It’s been fun and there was a lot of discussion with students during and after the talk.
Among other things I explained, why chemists typically measure samples 3 times (hint: check the t-table) and what things to consider, before going sampling (representativity, homogeneity and stability). All this, in the (practical) context of snow sampling from surfaces and pits during my field research in Alert, NU and Barrow, AK.
I taught a class at McGill today – ATOC-210: Simple, straight forward and good fun! Best was that I could focus on the teaching rather than the administrative issues that tend to take over during the semester 🙂 Topic was chapter 3 – Seasonal and Daily Temperatures
All my regular teaching at Concordia University is now done. This term is dedicated to research and it looks as if I am going to be busy (I am already).
After the Arctic Change conference I am finally back to marking the fall semester exams. Luckily I am almost done with grading exams of the “Analytical Chemistry I” course (80 exams), but there is still a lot of work ahead grading the 180 “General Chemistry” exams. The experience gained in the past few years is now quite useful for speedy grading.
I have to say the past months have been extremely busy – although I am well prepared, teaching 250 students is quite time consuming, because anything else than lecture preparation takes considerably more time than teaching smaller classes. That includes office hours, email requests, exam marking,….
My research on the other hand keeps me busy as well. I co-authored a review on bioaerosols that was revised under quite a bit of pressure with the deadline coming up fast. With other manuscripts being out for review by co-authors or or journal editors this kept me quite busy! So – here in more detail:
Research
Teaching
So – no surprise I get so little time to continue writing my blog! 🙂
Quite an interesting presentation by one of the student counsellors at Concordia University! Information on what drives students today – their strengths and weaknesses. Explained quite well some of the behaviour that I see in class and during office hours!
Link: Generation Me
Next week the new semester will start and so will the lectures I will be teaching part-time at Concordia University in the Chemistry & Biochemistry Department. This year I will teach a section of General Chemistry (168 students!) and Analytical Chemistry I (76 students). Since I taught the latter before, I was not as busy as in the past, and support for the GenChem lecture has been great as well!
Course websites are up and running and the first lecture notes together with course outlines posted (sorry, authorized users only) 😉
I am ready!
Although the course design workshop slowed things down a bit – marking is now done and marks are available online! I guess that I will be busy next week with students checking their exams!