If I’m being honest, I started the Fellows project feeling unsure of whether or not I would be a good fit.  I teach large enrollment courses (120-180 per section for inorganic and 350 per section for general chemistry) at a university where research is heavily prioritized.  Coming into a group of people so excited about teaching and improving student learning was exciting, but more than a bit daunting.  Adding that to the fact that I have zero background in chemical education or statistical analysis and I felt out of my depth before the program really started.  However, I am happy to say that all changed (and quite quickly!).  At our first Fellows summer workshop, it was fun to see how we all just wanted to help our students through improving our own teaching, regardless of the fact that the classes we teach may look incredibly different on the surface.  One of the things that struck me was that no matter how different our courses looked, many of the learning challenges we faced were the same.  How do we get students more engaged in practicing content versus just passively listening to content?  How do we provide feedback in a timely manner (and get students to look at it)?  How do we do all of this in a way that does not cause us as faculty to be completely overwhelmed?  It was comforting to realize that I was allowed to feel overwhelmed and that it was okay to feel exhausted after pandemic teaching.  Over the past year, these feelings had caused me to doubt whether I was still a "good" teacher- shouldn't I still feel excitement when I thought about my job?  Being around this group of people whose opinions, experience, and friendship I value and realizing I was not along in feeling these emotions and that feeling this way did not make me any less of a teacher was incredibly powerful.

Getting my COPUS data back was one of the most interesting moments of the workshop.  I have taught Bonding Theory in a flipped classroom format since fall 2018 and I was unsure what I would gain from COPUS since, in my mind, my students already spent their entire time engaged in group work.  Instead, my data revealed that I spent a lot of time going back over the group activities at the front of the room and this was significantly impacting the amount of time students were actually practicing the content.  Additionally, the motivation data gave me some ideas on how to tap into my students intrinsic motivation based on my particular student population.  These two pieces of data helped give me a specific focus for redesign as opposed to feeling like I needed to change my entire course.  Leaving the workshop, I am actually looking forward to designing this coming semester!