This fall is going to be different! In addition to my regular General Chemistry course, I’ll be teaching a new course in my college’s recently redesigned first year seminar program--Food for Thought: The Chemistry of Cooking. I’m both incredibly excited about this course, and pretty nervous. I’m excited because it’s not too often (at least at a small college with the usual staffing challenges) that you are handed a blank page and told “teach (almost) anything you want!” I’ve wanted to teach a chemistry of cooking course for a long time, and luckily many others in the chemistry community (including Adam Johnson, a member of the IONiC leadership council) have been incredibly generous in showing me what they’ve done in similar courses and giving me more than a few labs I can “adapt and implement.” I can’t wait to get to explore this topic with a group of first year students!
So why am I nervous? Well, while chemistry graduate school prepared me to teach the chemistry and to help students learn how to investigate a question and work together in teams to come up with an answer, it didn’t teach me much about how to formally teach writing (one of the aims of our first year seminar). As I have been preparing for this course, and going to numerous faculty development workshops, I have become much more aware of the research about how students learn to become good writers (and, thankfully, it turns out it’s not about the commas). I’ve been reflecting on the fact that many of the skills I already try to teach students are transferable to different contexts—lab reports, just like analytical essays, also rely heavily on clarity and structure and evidence supporting students’ conclusions. The more I read up on teaching writing, the more I realize that the VIPEr activities I have used have helped me learn how to better structure and teach in an active-learning and collaborative way. I feel more prepared for this decidedly non-lecture class than I otherwise would have been without the push to expand my teaching toolbox and all of the examples of masterful teaching that have been posted to VIPEr. So, hopefully I can take these ideas and apply them to a different kind of class!
Even though I’m still pretty nervous.
We’ll see how it goes!
I am experiencing something similar. I am now teaching a core class called "Natural World" instead of sophomore organic. I had to adapt my teaching style completely. My unit is on medicinal chemistry "from the natural source to the pharmacy shelf" and it is meant to reach from freshmen to seniors of different backgrounds and interests. Some differences I have found are:
Grading scale: If the class average is 75 a student in the sciences interprets a 78 as a B or maybe better but the non-scientists faint if they receive a 78 and immediately assume is a poor grade and maybe a C (even when it is above the class average).
Reading material: The material always needs a reading guide with 3 or 4 questions that they should be able to answer upon completion of the reading. This helps the students of all different backgrounds to understand what to focus on. Otherwise they get lost in the technical details because they can't tell what is important and what is not. We also include a glossary of technical terms with the readings. Also, the humanities students prefer to read before the lecture and the scientist tend to procastinate more.
Encouraging students: Since students of all majors are combined I have to constantly motivate the non-majors to not feel threatened by the "scientist". I also try to bring examples that they will relate to and try to slow down the pace of the class to make them feel welcome.
And I am so used to grade exams filled with molecules that I am really having a hard time grading answers with lots of words!
Are you using a book for the class? Cookbook or textbook?