Spring 2013 and Fall 2013 semesters of teaching

(As I said in the intro to my first semester summary, I want to keep some notes here on the successes and failures from my teaching exploits.  It's mainly for my reference, but there's no reason not to share my successes and failures with everyone else.)  Here's a wrap-up of...

Semester #3 - Spring 2013 - 3 classes

* Lower division intro to weather & climate, 100 students

* Lower division earth system science, 50 students

* Upper division synoptic meteorology, 15 students

I learned a lot about myself this semester.  The weather and climate course began to click, with the just-in-time methods and classroom activities and other assessments.  Now I just need to make some changes to the lab manual, which I inherited from a previous instructor and which doesn't match my style (or content) as well as it should.  Since I didn't draw this course again in the fall, I didn't work on it over the summer.  Maybe I should have.

Our weather analysis-synoptic sequence is taught without the prerequisites of physics and calculus, and it's incredibly difficult--more than I thought--to teach synoptic concepts without it.  How many of you have ever tried to teach QG theory in words?  :-)  It can be done, but it's a slow process.  I really like the Lackmann book, but it's not the best fit for a conceptual synoptic course in my opinion.  I resorted to a lot of Vasquez's material, as well as Chaston's old book.  He has probably the best descriptive QG section out there, that I've seen.

My first foray into my new departmental home was ESS, with a few majors but mostly as a service course as are many 100-level courses.  I struggled with what kind of theme I wanted the course to take--again, given that I inherited a lab manual that in no way reflected my pedagogy--and eventually decided on a tour of the earth system: a few weeks of each of the four (five?) spheres.  And my goodness, if you want to know where your knowledge of a topic is weak, don't do your homework and then go to class in an activity-based course design!  I did learn that students are okay with you saying "I don't know," to a point.  It shows that we're human, that we don't have all the answers either.  I think many of them resonate with that.

 

Semester #4 - Fall 2013 - 3 classes

* Lower division intro to atmospheric science, 10 students

* Upper division climatology, 25 students

* Upper division mesoscale meteorology, 20 student

I moved the "weather and climate" course across campus to a new department and gave it a new name, with lab exercises of my own, and it felt really nice.  One problem: just as small-classroom exercises definitely do not scale up to lecture halls, large-classroom activities don't scale down to a room of 10 students, either.  More than once, an activity that would take 2-3 minutes in a room of 100+ students would be over in 30 seconds.  "Well, that usually takes a little longer."  It didn't hurt that I had an incredibly bright group.  So we improvised with more data, or went to the web for more photos, etc.

This may disappoint a few folks but I'm not going to say much about the mesoscale course, because most of the previous struggles (mixed grad/undergrad, no math and physics prerequisites, etc.) and successes (use of case studies and real events, individual vs. group presentations, etc.) came up again.  It was fun to take the course as I'd taken it--all lecture by powerpoint--and tweak the topics and change the presentation.  Much fun.

Climatology was a new prep for me but also a fun one; I'd taken a couple of graduate courses in it and it's a hot topic in mainstream science, so I felt ready.  Key takeaways:

* Flexibility in the entire course plan.  I hadn't wanted to talk about the Milankovitch cycles until we introduced past climates & Earth's climate history, but students wanted it during the radiation physics section.  So I had to shift everything.

* Don't hesitate to abandon ship.  On "what causes the jet stream" day, I tried to leap too far too quickly (it's temperature gradients ultimately, btw).  The handouts I distributed weren't matched up with what I wanted to say, the way I said it didn't match up with what they had read, and about 30 minutes into the (75-minute) period I realized this boat was a goner.  "Okay, class is over.  That's it.  Come back Thursday."  We did, I revised and resubmitted, and it went much better the second time.

* Students love real life.  As we got to a section on ice ages and glacier formation, a winter precipitation event presented itself.  So we spent a day on precipitation types and vertical temperature profiles, looking at observations and making forecasts, and so on.  They seemed to really enjoy that.

 

What will Spring 2014 hold?  Enrollments of 100 and 30, I know that much.......

 

Ginkgo biloba phenology

I've been taking photos of one of the ginkgo biloba trees on campus as it changes colors this season -- I'll post the set some time next week once the color really pops.  (The leaves are about half green, half yellow right now.)

NCAA FBS "Points Per Yard Allowed"

Maybe Wayne Winston should add this to his second edition of "Mathletics."

This is the number of yards a team must gain for every 7 points they put on the scoreboard.  (That's the inverse of "points per yard allowed," which is in the title.)  The formula:  7 / (total defense/scoring defense).

In other words, teams that score 14 points against Alabama will have an average of 343 yards.  It takes only 280 yards to amass 14 points against BYU.  By the way, #123 in this list is Southern Miss, with 71.5 yards. That 343 yards you manage against Alabama would get you 33-34 points against USM.

Fall 2012: my second semester of teaching

As I said in the intro to my first semester summary, I want to keep some notes here on the successes and failures from my teaching exploits.  Here's a wrap-up of...

Semester #2 - Fall 2012 - 3 classes

* Lower division, 125 students

* Lower division, 10 students

* Upper division + graduates, 12 students

- I switched to Ahrens and Samson for the severe weather course, and that went much better.  The reason?  Our course has no science prerequisites, so a book like RWC that is skimpy on sound introductory material just didn't work for us (even with a ton of great chapters later on).

- Dedicated lab time for that course would've been nice, but save that I incorporated some lab exercises during our class time and they were absolutely a huge hit.  Tornado damage (using photos and the indicators to estimate the EF rating of the damage), hurricane intensity via Dvorak satellite methods, and more.  Must use these again.

- For weather analysis & forecasting, I created a list of course goals and wrote out detailed learning objectives for each unit.  Not a day went by that I didn't check that list to make sure we were on it somewhere--even for the days where we focused on current events instead of canned coursework.  I hardly spent any time on "lecture notes" since they just fell right out once I knew the objectives.

- My large intro course was my first foray into both warmup questions and supervising teaching assistants.  Some small bumps in the road there, but generally successful.

- Some introductory topics are just painful to get through.  The global circulation unit was not well-received.  I'm probably to blame for much of that.

- Google Forms/Docs/whatever it's called now has no easy way to see if any entries match one another (read: cheating).  That's tough to manage without a lot of manual labor.

- Some students frequently mistyped their ID numbers, which meant every class period I had to look them up manually.  (I could've been more dictatorial about it, but that's not my style.)

- Warmup questions must be written so that students have to assimilate the entire reading assignment--not just ask them to repeat a definition or ferret out one fact.  Most of the time, they just read the questions first and then try to find the answers.  Have to make sure the questions don't let that happen.

- The intro course labs (which were written and used for several years before I arrived) were not a good match with my course content.  Students didn't particularly like either.  I'd need to rework them some if I teach the course here more than 1 or 2 times.

- I need make sure my GTAs are to be involved in lecture discussions if they're going to attend class.  Circulating the room, talking to the students, keeping everyone on task, etc.  Didn't do that.

- Just like in a course, it would help if myself and the assistants have some team goals for the semester.

- I frequently walked through the building on lab days, and struck up conversations with students in the hallway while they were waiting.  I hope the GTAs didn't find this intrusive, or think that I was spying on them (I certainly wasn't); I actually don't think I ever asked.  Need to do that next time--and let them know it's just my style.

- Attendance in lower-division, survey courses is quite volatile:  is there a way to ameliorate that?  (Without daily quizzes that require too much grading and too much burden on the students.)

For the most part, it was a great semester with only some minor glitches here and there.  The day I had to teach barefoot, thanks to the rain (that destroyed a pair of shoes and soaked my socks) comes to mind.  Teaching two classes back-to-back on T/R was hectic but I made it work.  Nobody liked the Friday night final exam, but, well, it happens.

Spring 2012: my first semester of teaching

As I finish up preparations for my fourth semester of teaching, I realized I need to journal some of my thoughts about the first three semesters before they're permanently erased from my mental hard drive.  There may be a more organized way, but a post for each semester seems to make sense, so I'm going to run with that.

For the more distant memories of the first couple semesters, I'll probably just leave them as bullet points (but I may come back and flesh these out later if/when other details come back to me.)

My apologies that this is not some well-crafted narrative about my experience.  I'm not a great story teller, and there isn't any big story to be told about the semester.  There are things that worked, and things that didn't, and no need to wax poetically about any of them.  Keep it simple.

Semester #1 - Spring 2012 - 2 classes (enrolled 25 and 12)

- My textbooks didn't work well.  Mainly because I used "the books everyone else has been using."  They didn't fit my teaching style, what I was interested in sharing, or my students.  Lesson learned.

- I was too focused on coverage and content (me), instead of learning (them).  There were several days that were just complete flops because I raced through a topic without really being interested in my audience.

- The upper-division weather analysis course struggled some, because I hadn't structured the course enough to give us much direction on the boring weather days.  The exciting days were easy--but not all of them are always going to be exciting!

- Exams were too long.  (Heck, after three semesters, they still are.)

- "Homework" assignments need to be shorter and more numerous.

- Students really like doing projects, presentations, and event case studies -- even when they know they will be challenged with difficult questions in class.

- Every exam in both classes, except one, was only worth 20%.  This worked really well and students liked it.  Mental note to keep that as the upper limit, even for final exams.  In this way, more emphasis is put on other aspects of the course, and on progressive, gradual learning, rather than a last effort to cram and dump for a huge percentage of points at the final.

two views of collegiality

Two drastically different lines of thought offered here.  View B reminds me of the first dinner scene from American Beauty where Lester, speaking about his teenage daughter, says to his wife: "Oh what, you're mother of the year?  You treat her like an employee."  It is as if, in that view, the mark of collegiality is earned by being subservient to others.  Personally, I don't believe that's the right message to be sending new faculty members--and I believe it runs counter to the very definition of the word collegial.

View A:

1. Whiners are boring.
2. Pay attention to the image you want to project.
3. Get to know your colleagues by asking for advice.
4. Get to know your colleagues by getting to know their work.
5. Spend time with your colleagues at lunch.
6. Don't make enemies with important people.

And 10 more classic suggestions.

View B:

"Remember that many departments and universities are big into this thing called 'being collegial.' It means that you do not ruffle feathers, and you willingly (!) do the assigned jobs."

A: slightly restated from the post on the Tomorrow's Professor mailing list.  Originally by Mary McKinney.

B: from the book Navigating Graduate School and Beyond.

Points on a Stick

"Two points along a straight stick are randomly selected. The stick is then broken at those two points. Find the probability that the three resulting pieces can be arranged to form a triangle."

This is an exercise (#36 on page 151) from Elementary Statistics, 10th Ed., by Mario Triola of Dutchess Community College.  At the end of the exercise is this parenthetical:  "This is possibly the most difficult exercise in this book."

Hmm, this looks fun.  I'll report back when (if!) I make any progress.