Teaching Experience & General Philosophy
I have served as a teaching assistant for 2 undergraduate neuroscience courses: Cellular & Molecular Neurobiology, a large class (~100 students) aimed at more advanced students; and Brain & Behavior: Translating Neuroscience, a smaller class (~50 students) for students of various levels aimed at interdisciplinary exploration neuroscience concepts from genes and molecules up to psychology and policy. For these courses, I have assisted in course design, led multiple discussion sections, and created and graded assignments and tests. In the lab, I have also mentored many students, ranging in age from high school students to undergraduates to younger graduate students. From these teaching and mentoring experiences, I have realized that a particular challenge for students of neuroscience is tackling a question or concept from multiple angles, and drawing from a wide breadth of fields, such as biology, psychology, physics, chemistry, philosophy, computer science, etc. Each student has a different background and thus a different learning trajectory, so my general teaching philosophy is to encourage students, both in the classroom and in the lab, to actively shape their own learning experiences.
Learning as Collaboration
Since every student has a different expertise from which to draw, I frame class as a collaboration among them, and as collaboration between them and me, toward the common goal of gaining a better understanding of new concepts. Therefore, as a teaching assistant, I structured my discussion sections to give students agency in shaping their collaborative learning experience. Prior to every discussion section, students submitted discussion questions, which could be clarification or exploration questions based on lecture or readings. I then used these questions to direct discussion section, encouraging students to help each other out in answering or thinking about these questions. I also gave students formal opportunities after each exam to provide feedback and suggestions for section going forward; this way, the students and I were consistently and actively assessing what learning strategies were effective and what could be improved upon.
Learning as Drawing Connections
Neuroscience research tells us that linking items together promotes more successful memory of the items than trying to remember them all separately. I strive to make material accessible via comparisons or analogies to topics or concepts they may already know, providing links to familiar ideas. For example, the 3-dimensional structure of a folded protein is determined by the balance of repulsive and attractive forces. I make this concept more accessible to students by comparing protein folding to the task of coming up with the seating arrangement for wedding guests. The goal is to come up with the best seating arrangement that keeps guests who dislike each other far apart, and guests who like each other close together, just as protein folding structure balances repulsive and attractive forces between amino acid side chains.
To further encourage this multi-faceted thinking, I encourage students to draw as many connections as possible across concepts and class sessions. For example, in a class about social processes, I ask students to draw connections to past concepts of reward and anxiety, and how those might be mediating the social behaviors or neural circuits. Or, I ask students to draw connections between seemingly disparate empirical papers from different disciplines, like psychology and molecular biology, to compare how their logic, approaches, techniques, and conclusions address a similar brain-related question. In a more instrumental sense, I encourage students to engage with concepts from multiple angles by tackling it from new perspectives. For example, scientific papers are often presented by going one-by-one through the figures. When we are reviewing these in section, students have the opportunity to try another way to represent the scientific logic of the paper, either through a diagram or a table. As the final project for one of the courses, students demonstrated their ability to draw connections. They chose a psychiatric disorder to research from multiple disciplines, synthesized what they learned, and presented their findings to the public in a creative way (see student example).
Over time I’ve realized that there’s a “sweet spot” in terms of lesson difficulty and motivating students to learn: too easy and students get bored, but too difficult and students shut down. Students are more reluctant to participate if they feel like they are behind, or if they just feel bored. Encouraging students to draw these connections gives them more conceptual scaffolding onto which to structure their new learning, and also gives students ways to expand upon ideas from past learning.
Learning as Formulating Answerable Questions
In both the lab and the classroom, I encourage students to shape and facilitate their own learning by formulating concrete answerable questions. For example, in the beginning of the semester when students were first learning to read empirical papers in lab or for class, some students would say, “I don’t understand this paper”. I would ask them to elaborate on their question, like “Some of you expressed that you didn’t understand the paper. Where did you run into a roadblock? Or where would you like to start?” This pushes them to identify where their understanding ends and their questions begin.
Given that these are science classes or lab assistantships, I further encourage students to think about how they might answer their questions empirically. For example, I often follow up a student’s question with prompts like “As scientists, what experiment might we run to test this?” or “What pieces of information would we need to address this?” In addition to thinking about how to pose questions to get informative answers, students also benefit from reviewing past material since they’re applying what they’ve learned to a new question. They also develop their abilities to think critically and scientifically, as they identify questions in the broader scientific context and formulate testable scientific hypotheses.
Going Forward
Overall, I’ve strived to develop strategies to encourage students to be active learners through collaboration, drawing connections, and formulating answerable questions. Students, through their evaluations, have expressed that they have found my teaching style and discussion sections very effective. Having led discussion sections as a teaching assistant, I look forward to designing and teaching my own course. I feel comfortable teaching a broad range of neuroscience (especially systems and cognitive), and especially hope to teach interdisciplinary courses that encourage multilevel exploration. In designing my own courses, one thing I will be sure to do is leave room for students to choose papers or topics to cover.
I hope to continue learning and developing new teaching methods, and one way in which I have begun to do this is through Duke’s Certificate for College Teaching. In particular, teaming up with graduate students across departments as part of a peer observation program has already helped me explore new approaches, and it is something I will continue to do in the future as a way to continue to get feedback and new ideas. I hope that by honing my abilities and teaching students how to learn, they develop skills that can transfer outside of the classroom and into their everyday lives.
I have served as a teaching assistant for 2 undergraduate neuroscience courses: Cellular & Molecular Neurobiology, a large class (~100 students) aimed at more advanced students; and Brain & Behavior: Translating Neuroscience, a smaller class (~50 students) for students of various levels aimed at interdisciplinary exploration neuroscience concepts from genes and molecules up to psychology and policy. For these courses, I have assisted in course design, led multiple discussion sections, and created and graded assignments and tests. In the lab, I have also mentored many students, ranging in age from high school students to undergraduates to younger graduate students. From these teaching and mentoring experiences, I have realized that a particular challenge for students of neuroscience is tackling a question or concept from multiple angles, and drawing from a wide breadth of fields, such as biology, psychology, physics, chemistry, philosophy, computer science, etc. Each student has a different background and thus a different learning trajectory, so my general teaching philosophy is to encourage students, both in the classroom and in the lab, to actively shape their own learning experiences.
Learning as Collaboration
Since every student has a different expertise from which to draw, I frame class as a collaboration among them, and as collaboration between them and me, toward the common goal of gaining a better understanding of new concepts. Therefore, as a teaching assistant, I structured my discussion sections to give students agency in shaping their collaborative learning experience. Prior to every discussion section, students submitted discussion questions, which could be clarification or exploration questions based on lecture or readings. I then used these questions to direct discussion section, encouraging students to help each other out in answering or thinking about these questions. I also gave students formal opportunities after each exam to provide feedback and suggestions for section going forward; this way, the students and I were consistently and actively assessing what learning strategies were effective and what could be improved upon.
Learning as Drawing Connections
Neuroscience research tells us that linking items together promotes more successful memory of the items than trying to remember them all separately. I strive to make material accessible via comparisons or analogies to topics or concepts they may already know, providing links to familiar ideas. For example, the 3-dimensional structure of a folded protein is determined by the balance of repulsive and attractive forces. I make this concept more accessible to students by comparing protein folding to the task of coming up with the seating arrangement for wedding guests. The goal is to come up with the best seating arrangement that keeps guests who dislike each other far apart, and guests who like each other close together, just as protein folding structure balances repulsive and attractive forces between amino acid side chains.
To further encourage this multi-faceted thinking, I encourage students to draw as many connections as possible across concepts and class sessions. For example, in a class about social processes, I ask students to draw connections to past concepts of reward and anxiety, and how those might be mediating the social behaviors or neural circuits. Or, I ask students to draw connections between seemingly disparate empirical papers from different disciplines, like psychology and molecular biology, to compare how their logic, approaches, techniques, and conclusions address a similar brain-related question. In a more instrumental sense, I encourage students to engage with concepts from multiple angles by tackling it from new perspectives. For example, scientific papers are often presented by going one-by-one through the figures. When we are reviewing these in section, students have the opportunity to try another way to represent the scientific logic of the paper, either through a diagram or a table. As the final project for one of the courses, students demonstrated their ability to draw connections. They chose a psychiatric disorder to research from multiple disciplines, synthesized what they learned, and presented their findings to the public in a creative way (see student example).
Over time I’ve realized that there’s a “sweet spot” in terms of lesson difficulty and motivating students to learn: too easy and students get bored, but too difficult and students shut down. Students are more reluctant to participate if they feel like they are behind, or if they just feel bored. Encouraging students to draw these connections gives them more conceptual scaffolding onto which to structure their new learning, and also gives students ways to expand upon ideas from past learning.
Learning as Formulating Answerable Questions
In both the lab and the classroom, I encourage students to shape and facilitate their own learning by formulating concrete answerable questions. For example, in the beginning of the semester when students were first learning to read empirical papers in lab or for class, some students would say, “I don’t understand this paper”. I would ask them to elaborate on their question, like “Some of you expressed that you didn’t understand the paper. Where did you run into a roadblock? Or where would you like to start?” This pushes them to identify where their understanding ends and their questions begin.
Given that these are science classes or lab assistantships, I further encourage students to think about how they might answer their questions empirically. For example, I often follow up a student’s question with prompts like “As scientists, what experiment might we run to test this?” or “What pieces of information would we need to address this?” In addition to thinking about how to pose questions to get informative answers, students also benefit from reviewing past material since they’re applying what they’ve learned to a new question. They also develop their abilities to think critically and scientifically, as they identify questions in the broader scientific context and formulate testable scientific hypotheses.
Going Forward
Overall, I’ve strived to develop strategies to encourage students to be active learners through collaboration, drawing connections, and formulating answerable questions. Students, through their evaluations, have expressed that they have found my teaching style and discussion sections very effective. Having led discussion sections as a teaching assistant, I look forward to designing and teaching my own course. I feel comfortable teaching a broad range of neuroscience (especially systems and cognitive), and especially hope to teach interdisciplinary courses that encourage multilevel exploration. In designing my own courses, one thing I will be sure to do is leave room for students to choose papers or topics to cover.
I hope to continue learning and developing new teaching methods, and one way in which I have begun to do this is through Duke’s Certificate for College Teaching. In particular, teaming up with graduate students across departments as part of a peer observation program has already helped me explore new approaches, and it is something I will continue to do in the future as a way to continue to get feedback and new ideas. I hope that by honing my abilities and teaching students how to learn, they develop skills that can transfer outside of the classroom and into their everyday lives.