September 27, 2008 - Posted by danielle- 5 Comments
“First exam.” Don’t those words bring back memories of angst and long nights of studying and worry? They do for me, at least.
So, this week I gave the first exam to my classes. I spent quite a while designing it and comparing it to last year’s exams by different professors. I felt like it was a good average of their exams. Well, as I was grading them, I found that most students had trouble with the multiple choice but did well on the short answer. This was particularly ironic since they were all excited (ahead of time) to have multiple choice instead of having the whole thing be short answer. It ended up being half and half, and I think more of them would’ve done better if the multiple choice had been a smaller percentage.
The average score was a little higher than the department’s average score for this course, which is good. I also had a good mix of letter grades. But that also meant that I had more D’s and F’s than I was expecting. I am meeting with all of those students one-on-one. Thus far, I think it has to do with their waiting until too late to study and not studying gradually. We’ll see if I can impress upon them the importance of studying as we go along. I know it is always hard to find the time for that during the week. But, well, that IS why they are in college after all. They really should pretty much spend their time learning and studying. A lot of the students are playing college sports, so that sucks up their free time too. But other than that, they really don’t have outside responsibilities, because this isn’t a school where students are also parents or working full-time jobs or that sort of thing. There is one girl with a job outside of school that takes up a lot of time, but she is one of a few, as far as I can tell.
All in all, it seems like they are learning. Some are learning Very Well. Again, I talk about the exam so much, because it is one of the few ways that I can gauge how my teaching is going. I think it is going well, but I don’t really know for certain until quizzes and tests reveal their learning.
I also find that I really like meeting students one-on-one. It is probably my favorite part of teaching so far. It takes a lot of time, but I feel like it makes a difference. And that is one of my goals, after all. To impact the students in a meaningful way that helps them learn better. I like that I can really tell where they are having problems. And I like that some of what I teach them about studying can apply to other classes that they take in the future. The only thing about it is that some students seem reluctant or unwilling to meet with me individually. I can’t really force them to come meet with me. And I know that I don’t want to do something like give them extra credit for meeting with me. You know the saying about how you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink? I feel like sometimes I can’t even lead them to the water (to talk about their study habits etc.), much less get them to drink (study). Ah well, I can only do so much. I can reach out to each student individually, but he or she has to be willing to reach back.
All in all, it is still going well. I’m learning more about what they are capable of learning. I’m trying to challenge them and not discourage them. And soon, I have a couple days where I don’t have responsibilities for class. I’m hoping to catch up on lectures during that time a little bit. Maybe I’ll even take some time off to read a fun book. 
Oh, and I almost forgot to say – I asked them to draw the structure of DNA using shapes that I gave them to represent the different parts (like the phosphates that were the twizzlers, etc) and almost all of them got it completely correct! So, I think the model building was a success!
September 14, 2008 - Posted by danielle- 10 Comments
I spent my Saturday morning doing something unusual.
I made 70 DNA model sets for my Biology classes.
Here is the finished product. I will give the students a ziploc baggie with the components and they will need to assemble it into something that roughly looks like this (using their own creative license to some extent).
Here is the technical part for my bio readers: The red strawberry twizzlers are the phosphates. The marshmallows are the sugars. The 2 of them comprise the “sugar-phosphate backbone.” Then the nucleotides are the gummi bears in the middle connected to the sugars. I was planning on have guanine be green, cytosine be orange, adenine be red, and thymine be yellow. So, if they remember their base-pairing rules, they can match up the colors. Note that I took this photo before I realized that i had the least number of greens and oranges and the most reds and yellows. So the base-pairing is different in this photo. I changed it around once I re-ordered the colors. I also have a 5′ and 3′ end of phosphates and sugars.
It was interesting trying to buy enough candy. I had to take a calculator with me to the store so that I’d buy enough.
2 bags of twizzlers, so that I could cut each strand into 4 pieces and have 420
12 bags of marshmallows – also need 420
5 bags of gummi bears – needed 420 – preferably 100 of each color – but it turned out that there weren’t many green ones. There were 70, thank goodness; so each student does get one green-orange pair
toothpicks – a box of 800 – really only need 210 if students make it the way I did. But if not, they might need 6 each, or maybe even 9-12.
ziploc bags – a box of 100 – needed 70
Here is how it looked after I got the twizzlers cut and the gummi bears sorted into colors.
And I thought the gummie bears looked so pretty that I took a photo specifically of them.
And the beginning of the assembly line of sorts where I put 6 marshmallows into each baggie.
And the finished product
The hershey’s kisses bag was to reward anyone who figured out the 5′ –> 3′ phosphate –> sugar structure. But I might keep them for the review session before the exam instead. After thinking about it, it seems odd to reward someone for making a model right with more candy. Especially when they will probably eat most of the candy in the model set in class anyway. Can we say “recipe for disaster?” A bunch of students with a massive sugar high? For that reason, I was going to have them make the models at the end of class, but I want them to have enough time for it. So, I might lecture for a little while, do the models, and then go back to lecturing for a little while. I haven’t entirely made up my mind.
Anyway, I thought it was unusual enough to share. I didn’t come up with the idea myself, BTW. I got the idea from another bio student who was in my preparing future faculty class. I thought it was a good idea for beginning students in biology. We’ll see how it plays out tomorrow.
I might take a couple pictures tomorrow if I can find some students who don’t mind showing off their DNA models…. We have a department newsletter and it might be kind of fun to have it in there if the person putting the newsletter together likes it.
September 12, 2008 - Posted by danielle- 4 Comments
I’ve had people asking me how my first few weeks have been; so I thought I’d tell you a little bit about it.
First off, I still love teaching. I give 2 lectures back-to-back with a 30 min change period between. Thank goodness for the break, because I need it to slug down water, sit for a few minutes, and give my voice a break. I think I’m doing pretty well at the lectures. I’m trying to boil down the chapters in the book to manageable concepts.
The first quiz I gave showed that they are definitely getting the main concepts. However, the point of the quiz was to get them studying the material ahead of time and not just waiting until the night before the exam to cram it all in. And I think it was too easy. A lot of the class got all of the points, and even wrote extra examples and things on the answers. And I want to make sure those students who are studying hard keep studying, so the 2nd quiz is going to be harder (as I’ve warned them). I mention the quizzes, because it is the main way for me to gauge how they are doing in the class.
The labs are awesome. I really like working with students one-on-one, because I can really see that they ‘get it.’ Plus, I still like lab work a lot – I’m just burnt out on research right now. The labs are very well designed and are challenging, yet doable. I think that the students are really learning a lot in them.
I continue to love my office. And I’m so pleased with how organized I am managing to stay. It really helps that I have shelves on my bookcases that I’m not using for books. It gives me a “landing space” for some of the things with which I need to lecture. I want to keep them together, so that I don’t forget them.
Well, I guess that is it for now. I have some other things going on, but only a little bit of time right now. So, that is a start.
I think FFF is on hiatus for a bit until I can find more time to post. I might have to start squeezing it in on Thursday nights and saving the drafts until Friday morning.
Have a good weekend!
September 8, 2008 - Posted by danielle- 4 Comments
This is what my office looked like on my first day of orientation. ugh. Note the popcorn machine by the window.
And the opposite wall had all these lockers, another drink machine, and a soap dispenser (of all things).
It was a long process to get it all out and finally have a working office. It basically took a full week and 2 days. Mainly because 4 days were wasted on trying to get the vendors to move the machines out. In the end, I think the school just moved them themselves and let the vendors deal with them after the fact.
That first week, they finally got the machines out, stripped and waxed the floor, and painted. I picked out furniture on Friday, which was delivered on Monday morning. I splurged over the weekend and bought a carpet for the room. It is more of a contemporary design. I spent Monday moving in my stuff (and rearranging the furniture a little bit with the help of my hallway neighbors). And then when I finally got my computer in place and working, I was all set (which happened Wednesday). The computer process was much slower than they had promised it would be. And then there were some issues that had to be resolved before it was working completely – isn’t that typical?
Finally, I got framed pictures hung on the walls, and took photos of my office.
I really like these black and white frames. I think they turned out really sharp with the matting and all. I’ve had people come into my office and be impressed that I took the photos myself.
Notice the swirly bamboo on my desk and the pottery that Texas Seestor made on the 2nd and 3rd shelves. She is also in the process of making me a flower pot!
All in all, my office makes me very happy to walk into. For one thing – it is my first office! Every time I come in after being out of it for a while, it makes me smile.
I have my first nameplate with my title on it too – you can see it on Flickr (I didn’t want to post it here).
More about my week(s) of teaching later. One thing at a time.