Impressions from my teaching duties at McGill
The last job left to do for the course that I have taught last semester was the submission of the marks. My colleague has marked the final exam and now everything is done.
It has been an excellent experience for me and lots of fun – thanks to everybody in the Chemistry Department for their outstanding support!
My teaching duties are almost over, the last oral student presentations are done, the midterms are corrected and graded (and were not bad at all) – so all there is left to do are some lectures on infrared spectrometry. So far I have really enjoyed things, especially the student presentation, which provides an excellent opportunity for a small group discussion and feedback by and for students.A good experience and a lot of fun!
Today I have given my first exam – the midterm – in Instrumental Analysis. It was quite a challenge to put 2 equally difficult exams together, but I think it worked out in the end. After all, the content is not too difficult, but the challenge is rather to keep the different types of instrumentation in mind.The exams themselves were quite uneventful – although I have underestimated the time that it would take the students to answer the questions. I thought 1,5-2 hrs would be enough, but it took most of them the full 3 hours to get everything done.I now have a stack of papers waiting for me to mark them. I hope the weather is going to be bad next weekend. Next week there will be a couple of student presentations waiting for me and that will be enjoyable. The presentations are usually fairly good and I think most people find the feedback quite useful.
It is now several weeks that I have started teaching “Instrumental Analysis 2” and I have to say that I really enjoy this 3rd year chemistry course. Preparation is really a lot of work (especially the first time!) that has kept me busy most weekends since Christmas, but I find the sessions themselves very rewarding. Apart from the lectures, I am also grading a formal presentation by students that should help them prepare for interview situations.They give a presentation on one of their lab experiments, reporting on the measurement principle, set-up, results and discussion. Questions are also part of the presentation. So far it’s been fun and presentations have been pretty well prepared. I not only give feedback on the scientific part, but also on the style of the presentation (slide design, voice, gestures, general impression).
… and I got everything I need – almost 😉 I will teach 2 lectures per week (Tue and Thu) so this can be managed nicely and I really like the content (Instrumental Analysis). Tomorrow’ s session will be mostly administrative (and also concerning the Lab course that I will be involved with to a limited extent), but on Thursday it will be down to business.
Right – with all the administrative issues sorted out, all there is left to do is to put the lectures togehter 😉 Well – still quite a bit of work ahead, but at least something that I have done before. In the past few weeks, we have co-ordinated lab and lecture, including the lab-duties. These will include oral exams and a “business-like” presentation of one of the lab experiments, including commenting on the collected data. This is going to be fun, but also a lot of work!I now have a pretty good idea, what this course is about and everything makes good sense. We have tweaked a few things, e.g. that students can bring colleagues along for their talk, so that they present in front of a committee rather than a single person. Mass spectrometry and IR spectroscopy (theory and applications) are a fixed part of the schedule. I am also going to set-up a course home page with my colleague and make the teaching material available to students, incl self-assessment quizzes, where they can test their understandung of the discussed topics.
The planning for the Instrumental Analysis course that I am going to teach next winter term is going well. We (my co-lecturer and myself) have now met several people that have been involved with the course one way or the other (the former instructor, instructors of similar courses and the lab coordinator).We have set-up a tentative schedule and checked it for overlap with other lectures. We still need to get everything approved by the Chair, but so fare we have kept him informed, so this should not be a problem. After that we can set-up the exam dates, the rooms and look for invigilators. And of course the individual presentations need to be set-up.There is still ample time – so no need to hurry, but I want to be prepared properly and especially the exam-preparation, weighing of mid-term and final exams will require some time to get it right. Everything – including the “academic integrity clause” – has to be ready before the lecture starts and be made clear to students – which I think is a good thing). And the course website needs to be set-up too.
After some discussion within the department, I will now be teaching an Instrumental Analysis course next winter term. I am sharing the responsibility for the lecture with a second person, and my teaching duties will be done at the end of January, so that I can prepare things for my sampling trip in spring.We are now co-ordinating contents with the lab course held parallel with the lecture and sorting out administrative stuff as well as check with other lecturers for overlap with their respective courses. It is a fun thing to do and I am really looking forward to some more teaching again.
I will be doing some more teaching next January, although I do not know any details yet. My supervisor has offered my the opportunity to gather some more experience and I am very grateful for this possibility and really looking forward to doing some more teaching. Let’s see 😉
This week I have substituted once more teaching IR spectroscopy applications. This time the professor was joining the lecture and I have received excellent feedback from him and also from several students, which makes me happy. After all, students are a different audience and although the presentation is itself is quite easy, I never really know, if they took something home from it until I ask. Well, interaction was good and the discussion quite lively, but for the finer points there is not other way than asking.I have presented applications for NIR, MIR-ATR and FIR spectroscopy including real-life data and recent publications in the field. There is a chance that I will do more teaching next autumn and I have offered my services to the department. Let’s see.