Disciplinary Teaching | Exploring Evolution

Developing disciplinary teaching strategies

Description of Competency

Developing Discipline-Related Teaching Strategies involves designing and implementing instructional approaches that are grounded in the specific ways of thinking, learning, and doing within a given field. In the context of teaching biology, particularly Ecology and Evolution, this includes addressing the abstract nature of evolutionary processes, the complexity of ecological interactions, and the importance of quantitative and spatial reasoning. A common challenge is making these concepts tangible and relevant for students with diverse backgrounds, especially in large-enrolment courses or those with limited prior exposure to scientific thinking.

To demonstrate this competency, instructors must be able to translate disciplinary content into engaging, active learning experiences that reflect authentic scientific practices. This includes skills such as using data-driven inquiry, developing visual models, facilitating discussions around uncertainty and scientific evidence, and integrating field-based or real-world examples. Through the three-week CIRTL intensive course, I explored evidence-based strategies for promoting deep learning in STEM, including backward course design, inclusive pedagogy, and formative assessment techniques—all of which support effective and equitable instruction in Ecology and Evolution.

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Summary

Developing disciplinary teaching strategies addresses the first competency of the Certificate in College Teaching, and required the undertaking of a course in teaching. The course I chose was delivered by the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, & Learning (CIRTL) network. This was an intensive three-week graduate level course titled "First Year Faculty Teaching Academy".

This course had several components including:

Plan engaging learning activities that meet your course outcomes and the needs of students.
Create an inclusive learning environment for all students.
Provide timely action-oriented, and effective feedback to students.
Evaluate the usefulness of their assessments to measure learning outcomes.

This course covered a lot of the core competencies for the Certificate in College Teaching, and provided me with many ideas and resources that I was able to bring into my course.

Course completion letter

Below I reflect on each component of this course. Click on one of the course components to jump to that section.

Interaction and motivation
Quality learning environment and inclusive teaching
Effective feedback
Assessment
Transparent teaching, accessibility and online learning
Active learning

Interaction and motivation

Reading:

Palmer (2009)- Building student engagement: Classroom interactions. Faculty Focus.

Center for Teachinf Excellence, 2018, Student motivation with Dr Kim Moore. Teaching beyond the Podium podcast.

Lang, J. M. (2020). Distracted Minds: Why you should teach like a poet- How to use “close reading” of a text, an object, or an idea to focus your students’ attention in class. The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Lang, J. M. (2020). Distracted Minds: The tole of tempo in good teaching- To help students stay attentive in class, think like a conductor, and recognize that students need you to change the pace and the action. The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Lang, J. M. (2020). Distracted Minds: 3 ways to get their attention in class- Want the attention of your students? The first and most important step is to pay closer attention to them. The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Lang, J. M. (2021). Small Teaching: Everyday lessons from the science of learning. John Wiley % Sons, Incorporated.

Reflection:

This section of the course started out by introducing reading material such as Distracted Minds, The chronicle of higher education (2020) and Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning (2021), both by James M. Lang. During the lecture we were introduced to key points from this reading material to motivate students to learn. Some of the models Lang suggests for providing motivation to learn are open with wonder, open with stories, share your enthusiasm, and pay attention to every student. I really liked some of the suggestions so for my first lecture in Ecology, I opened with the story about the giant red velvet mites sexual selection strategies. I then went on to explain the different levels in Ecology using this story (individual, population, community, and ecosystem) and demonstrated the types of questions ecologists might as at each of the levels. I think this helped to gain interest in ecology within that first lecture, rather than going straight into the syllabus. Within some other lectures I started by showing a picture or comic about the topic, or I asked students to participate in a word cloud about their own knowledge they bring to the subject as they are walking in to generate some curiosity.

Lang also mentions to keep students attention by varying the structure of your lecture. While I did have a main structure going through many of my lectures, I did change this up for some to add in variety. I think the use of word clouds also helped in some lectures to re-gain students attention during a long lecture. I also broke up teaching content with activities to ensure students are actively learning and not having to listen and take notes for the entirety of the lecture.

When reading the literature, there was a concept I was intrigued by before teaching, and this was to have fun while teaching. I could see how this would greatly impact both myself and my students. However, after my first lecture, I got a lot of compliments from the students and this helped reduce my anxiety and allowed me to enjoy and have fun teaching the rest of my lectures- something I originally thought would take me longer to accomplish.

Quality learning environment and inclusive teaching

Reading:

Viji Sathy and Kelly A. Hogan- How to make your teaching more inclusive- Advice guide- the Chronicle of Higher Education.

L.B. Hannahs describes practical strategies for an inclusive learning environment in the Beyond the Podium podcast (2017).

Reflection:

When students feel comfortable in class it can optimise their learning. Some key components that came out of this section of the course were; learn their name, connect with students on a more personal level, ask students to share their pronouns if they feel comfortable, set clear expectations, and have multiple media assessments, i.e. quizzes, exams, assignments, that are low steaks but mandatory. This last point I achieved in my course by having in-class activities that accounted for 20% of their grade, four piece of homework that counted as 20% of their grade, and three exams (including one take-home exam) that counted as 60% of their grade.

I was quite surprised with how important it was to students that the lecturer new their name- and this kept popping up in a lot of the reading and research. When teaching practical lessons of 16 students in 2018-2021, I was able to draw a map of the seating arrangement of students and learn their names this way. However, I found this difficult when teaching 35 students in the field in 2019 and 2022. We were given a list of student names and photos to go with that list, but I struggled a lot and only learned their names by talking and getting to know the students- something that is easier to do in a field environment. Therefore, when I heard that knowing students’ names was really important to students, I was, and still am, wondering how to best do this in an undergraduate lecture-style environment with 200 students. By the end of my teaching, I had learned only a handful of student names- mostly the students that spoke to me the most. One idea that came from this workshop was to get the students to create name tents. For my next lectures I will consider doing this and see if I can’t remember more names this way.

I did a few things within my first lecture to try and create a comfortable class-room environment for my students. I first spoke about inclusivity, and how important this is. I also did an ice-breaker activity where the students write down two truths and a lie and the person next to them has to guess the lie. I gave the students a bit of time to do this to spark up conversation, and then I put two truths and a lie up for each of the teaching staff, and the students used ‘Slido’ (see technology section) to vote on what they thought. The students seemed to enjoy this, and I even received an email from a student stating how they really enjoyed that activity. Finally, I spoke about the diversity of famous ecologists and environmentalists that have done great work and got the class to discuss in their pairs if there was anyone in particular that stood out to them or if they know any other ecologist I didn’t speak about- I received great feedback from the students in doing this which was amazing to see. This was particularly prevalent in neurodiverse students, and I am so glad I did this and will continue to do this in the future.

I also use Slido in my lectures to allow introverts to participate in in-class questions, as well as asking for volunteers to share their thoughts for extroverts to speak out. I think this works really well.

Effective feedback

Reading:

Grant Wiggins (2012)- 7 keys to effective feedback.

Barkley, E. F., Major, C. H., & Cross, K. P. (2014). Collaborative learning techniques: A handbook for college faculty. John Wiley & Sons.

The higher education academy (2014). The feedback toolkit.

Reflection:

In this section of the course we spoke about the different types of feedback and software to help create rubrics for the class. I was introduced to Team Based Learning, where students do a quiz or answer questions individually and receive a score (often before class), then in class they go over the questions as a group and re-do the quiz. This offers an opportunity to correct misunderstandings and learn the material a second time.

We also discussed how feedback should be motivating and constructive or actionable, but also how it needs to be efficient for us teachers as well as helping the students learn. This is where we spoke about different software and AI to help create rubrics. It was also emphasised to ensure the students understand why you are getting them to do the work- often having transversal skills within an assignment can create motivation for students if they are not particularly interested in the subject itself, i.e. critical thinking and collaborative work.

Another idea that came out of this section was to get students to reflect on their feedback to ensure they engage with it and implement this for their next assignments. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough time to incorporate this in my class this year, but I would like to become more creative in providing feedback and this is something I intend to do with my next class.

Assessment

Reading:

Define: Assessment and Analysis - 21 Things 4 Educators

Beyond “the grade”: Alternative approaches to assessment. Harvard University

Center for Teaching Excellence- Practical guide to assessment. Dr Brophy

Practical Guide to Assessment | Center for Teaching Excellence (ufl.edu)

Reflection:

We discussed how multiple-choice questions for low-steak quizzes at the start of the class could be a good idea to assess students’ knowledge and I think this will help with engagement too. Then follow this up with in-class questions or assignments that get at that deeper level of learning.

We spoke about a software called ‘Perusal’ which is an interactive social learning platform that is meant to boost engagement using automated tools and allow educators to access analytics. We sampled this by having the pre-reading for this section on Perusal, and we had to highlight and write notes on sections of the reading we found interesting or had a question on. I think I need more time with Perusal to fully see its usefulness, but I think it would certainly add variety to assessments.

We also spoke about other assessments that could be incorporated, such as class reflections, minute papers, group projects and quizzes. I incorporated group projects and quizzes within my lecture, and I think this worked well. When teaching next I want to create pre-work or pre-reading for students, but it was suggested to me that it would be tricky to get students to do the reading. I will continue to think about how to work around this, as that is something that I really enjoyed about this course.

Transparent teaching, accessibility and online learning

Reading:

Nielson K.E. (2012). A disability history of the United States (Vol 2). Beacon Press.

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (1975)

Reflection:

The start of this section opened with an activity where we had to navigate the online learning environment to determine when an assessment was due. This was an eye opener for me as I hadn’t even thought about how to make sure the online environment was coherent. For my class we used D2L and I originally found this quite overwhelming to learn, having never heard of it before and not having anyone to ask about how to do certain things. I created four levels of content, syllabus (which simple contained the syllabus for the fall), lectures (which is where I uploaded the lectures every week), in-class assignments (where students submitted their work after each lecture), and homework (where students submitted their homework). I went through this at the start of my first lecture to ensure students understood where everything was in D2L. I think this was fairly straightforward for the students, but if I were to do this again, I would want some examples from other lecturers, so the students can have some consistency between lectures.

The discussion on disability was also very interesting. I think it is important to know that everyone has something going on that may interfere when trying to learn, whether it be a mental or physical disability, or home and personal challenges. I have noticed that American students seem quite open about this, but being British, I am very aware that other cultures are not as open, and so it is important to acknowledge that and ask how we can better help students learn, rather than dismissing people.

I think with all assignments, being explicit about what you require is a good way to be transparent. To ensure this, I would ask for feedback on my exam questions, and I had other lecturers ask me for feedback on homework assignments. This was great as it allowed me to identify potential misunderstandings I would not have seen otherwise.

I have conducted a Teaching as Research project on diversity in the classroom, where I assessed how people from different cultures, neurodivergences, and genders engage with the material in my classroom to ensure I am reaching everyone. The next steps of this research will be to determine what I can include to make my material more accessible to everyone.

Active learning

Reading:

Planning an Effective Course (ufl.edu)- Barber M (2022) [Video] Center for Teaching Excellence, University of Florida.

Barkley, E., Major, C., & Cros, P. (2014). Collaborative learning techniques: A handbook for college faculty, (2nd Ed.) Jossey-Bass

Dirksen, J. (2012). Design for how people learn. Berkeley, CA: New Riders.

Reflection:

Once of the things we spoke about in this section was the difference between a course goal and a learning objective. We discussed how to word learning objectives to ensure they are measurable. While I think my learning objectives for each lecture could have been better, I did include a slide at the end of my lecture with everything the students had accomplished that lecture and to re-cap that they achieved the learning goals through their in-class activities.

There were some great strategies discussed, and resources given to allow me to implement some creative active learning techniques into my lectures. One of the key things we spoke about that really resonated with me was to ensure we don’t mentally exhaust the students by providing a lot of important information in one go. Therefore, I broke up my lectures with low-steaks quizzes, active learning techniques, and videos- I also ensured they had a 5-minute break halfway through.

One great suggestion was to ask yourself whether you need to put information on a slide or whether there is a way you can get the students to review the material themselves and discuss the information after this. I incorporated an active learning strategy on one of my lectures that allowed the students to review the material. This was the ‘Stump your Partner’ technique where I got students to read a short (one page) article and to think of three questions to ask their partner on the reading material. They would then spend some time asking their partner the questions and reviewing the material. I also used ‘Think, Pair, Share’ at least once in every lecture as I felt students learned a lot from these discussions.

We were provided with some great resources for active learning activities, and if I have more time to prepare my lectures next time, I would like to incorporate some more of these activities to create variety within my lectures.