Category: teaching

News about my teaching at University – Analytical Chemistry for the most part

Course Design Workshop

I attended a course design workshop this week (5 days all day) and it’s been a fantastic experience. The goal was to set up a framework of an existing or new course; defining course goal and content and breaking it down into different learning objectives. Starting off with a graphical course map I laid out a Quality Assurance Course including the requirements by the Ordre des chimistes du Quebec.

The workshop was extremely well facilitated with inputs ranging from assessment design, Bloom’s taxonomy on learning to “Generation Me” presentations – the latter by a Concordia student counsellor and psychologist. Feedback and sharing ideas, examples of best practice as well as some of our frustrations among participants made it an extremely pleasant experience. It was hard work, but I now have a clear idea, where this course is going with lots of ideas about student participation, assessment criteria, learning objectives,…

Best of all – I have finally begun to close the gap between my previous work as a trainer outside university and inside university; adult learning is a single concept after all!

CHEM-218 Final Exam

Final exam, yesterday – 19h00 to 22h00; it was held in the gym together with several other exams and the temperature was something between 25 and 30 degrees Celsius. I do not understand, why they cant get the AC going?! Exam time is stressful enough for students! Quite a few questions from students, but no omissions on my part – all constants and formulas were there. The alternate final exam will be held next Sunday morning 9h00-12h00 and I plan to be there to support students. Not the best time either, but better than the late night slot.

Lectures done!

… and all there is left to do are the final exam corrections – well that will be quite a bit of work, but that will not start until April 18 (or a few days later, when I will be receiving the exams from the exam’s office). Until then: Students dropping in, checking their midterms and assignments and asking questions. Panic mode is still a few days away for most, but I will brace myself for the day of the exam. I put the solutions to the try-out final exam online!

I gave a talk at Carleton University at the beginning of the week, which was part of an interesting visit indeed! Apart from that – nice campus with minutes into the city of Ottawa! I took the train from Montreal and back; it is a pleasant ride through Quebec and Ontario countryside. WiFi on board was down, so a few student questions had to wait until my return.

Last week of lectures ahead

Next week is the last week of lectures, but the weekly schedule will be busier than usual. Due to the holiday schedule I have added one lecture for each section in order to finish things properly. So instead of April 9, things will be done by April 11. Everything is prepared and set up, though – so no sweat.

Strategic learning sessions already wrapped up and I am looking forward to the comments regarding their helpfulness in understanding the lecture material! All exams are submitted (regular and alternate), so all I have to do is show up and be available for questions. It is really nice that the exam’s office takes care of everything – you have to hand things in early, but they take up quite a bit of the administrative load.

I have also been busy adding my latest results to my research lecture – the past couple of months were quite fruitful regarding data analysis and calculations, so there is quite a bit of new stuff to present. I have also set up a lecture about biosensors for intermediate analytical chemistry students, which was quite interesting to do, since some of these devices are already available on the market – e.g. the iStat analysis system used for clinical measurements. For students it is really nice to connect their theoretical knowledge with current applications.

I get a feel …

… that the semester is slowly drawing to a close. I started the last chapter in my CHEM-218 class – an introduction to spectroscopy (molecular, luminescence and a little bit of atomic spectroscopy) to prepare students for CHEM-312, the instrumental analysis course. I am confident that I will finish presenting the remaining material in time and in mid-April the final exam will be coming up.

I also work on the revision of another publication – not too much to do, so it will be under way soon. More news to follow, once it is out! I discussed my calculations from last week and checked them for consistency – all looks pretty good and the concentration estimates for selected VOC in air are quite robust.

Midterms done!

I am done marking midterm exams and I posted the results well before the course drop date. Since results were quite good with a class average of > 60% (no significant difference between day and evening sections) I hope that not too many students will drop. The results are certainly (significantly!) better than CHEM-217 last semester and there are several reasons for it:

  • Class size is smaller – quite a few students, who failed CHEM-217 did not take CHEM-218
  • Strategic learning classes helped a few to get a better understanding of the material
  • In-class exercises helped to show that the material covered is not easy; at least not as easy as it seems, when you are guided through it by the instructor

Especially the last point is one that I have heard last semester and in evaluations that the exams were more difficult than the examples discussed in class. Since I profoundly disagree 😉 , I tried to provide more in-class examples and more importantly, in-class assignments that students try to solve for themselves before discussing it through a peer instruction exercise and answering the remaining questions in class. Overall I am quite happy about the improvement.

Marking, marking …

… and some more marking. Progress is good, however, and I should be able to get everything done until early next week.I also visited Dawson College today to present the Concordia Co-op Programme, which provides a nice mix of academic and practical experience with work terms in the summer in addition to the regular chemistry curriculum. The work terms provide students with the possibility to network, gain team working skills and get to know several companies! The programme is unique in the Montreal area and not many universities offer such training across Canada.The visit was extremely nice with interested students and some very good questions!

Busy week …

… on the teaching and research side of things!

  • The first assignment is in, but I am already almost done marking – things went quite smoothly. A few students asked for extensions and all I wait for is for these last assignments to come in. Midterms are also coming up the week after next (study break in between), but there will not be any “leftovers” for me to mark
  • The deadline for the proposal that I co-wrote with my former advisor is finally here and I was quite busy filling forms yesterday evening. I finally got my hands on a version of Acrobat that let me save the filled forms; it is a pain that you can’t do that with the reader, because with the budget and summaries,… to fill in there are usually changes to be made.

Next week is the study break!

3 Weeks into the new semester…

… and here is the first post, which kind of summarises my work so far: Well, the good  news is that I managed to finish marking my exams in 2007 – so I could concentrate on the lectures that I teach this semester. The bad news is that this semester started on Jan 3 already, so not much of a break. I did find a couple of days, however, to relax and recharge my batteries. Concerning teaching, things are running a lot smoother. I have only 2 courses to teach and taught these already last year. So the framework of the lecture is set up and running quite smoothly. There are, however, a few things that I have changed, especially in my approach to help students learn a bit better (at least I hope that is going to be the case):

  •  I have initiated Strategic Learning Sessions, which are small group sessions with senior student leader held 3x/week. Problem solving and discussion of lecture topics make up these sessions. So far feedback was encouraging and attendance is growing.
  • I have added elements of peer instruction into my lectures in order to foster better understanding of the concepts taught. Feedback from students was positive and I will continue to add these exercises from time to time.

Lots of news on the research side of things as well – but these have to wait a little longer.Â