Teaching and Technology
As I guide my students through the world of biochemistry, it will be important to have the right tools along the way. Many of those tools will make use of the new technology that is widely available. While I do not believe that technology should be used just for its own sake, I do think that there are many techniques that can help the student learn and the teacher teach. Technology can support many facets of teaching, including information presentation, group activities and discussion, evaluation, and many others.
Powerpoint
The first tool that will be used is Powerpoint. I will use Powerpoint to present lecture material, which will include graphs, pictures, movies, and other information. Powerpoint will be very help both the students' learning and the professor's teaching. If lecture slides are posted online or handed out at the beginning of class, students can use them to guide their note-taking. Also, by providing complicated structures and diagrams, students can think about what the professor is saying about these materials, rather than frantically trying to copy everything into their notes. I believe that giving students time to think about material as it is presented is very important. If a student realizes he is confused about something at the time it is presented, he can raise his hand and ask for clarification. If he realizes that he didn't understand something after class is over, he has to go see the professor on his own or ask the question in the next class after new material has been started. By allowing students to think about the material as it is presented, they are much more likely to identify gaps in their understanding and have those gaps filled by asking questions. However, students will not be able to just print out the lecture slides and not come to class. The student version posted online will be missing key words, labels, and structures. They will need to attend class to get the full version of the lecture.
Blackboard
The first thing I plan on using Blackboard for is to allow students access to their grades for the class. This way, they can easily keep track of how they are doing and where they may be having trouble. For example, a student may realize that they are doing well on quizzes, but are not contributing much in class discussions. They could then focus on improving in this area. I will also use Blackboard to post lecture materials, handouts, and assignments. This will allow students to access materials ahead of time and look them over before coming to class. The activity that I think will be the most useful will be online quizzes in Blackboard. Everyday after lecture, a quiz on the material covered will be posted. Students will have until two hours before the next class to complete the quiz. This will then give me the opportunity to see what material students understood well and what material gave them trouble. I can then review any troublesome material before we move onto something new. I also believe that by forcing students to think about the material every other day and look at their notes, they will learn the material much faster and easier. Hopefully this will save them the headache of cramming for exams.
Personal Response System (PRS)
Another tool that I think will be very useful and can be incorporated into Powerpoint is the Personal Response System (PRS). This system allows for the incorporation of questions into the Powerpoint lecture. A question is presented and the students use the PRS to answer it. The class's choices are recorded then they break up into pairs to discuss their answers. Students can then revote and see if the results have changed. This type of activity encourages discussion, allows students to help each other learn, and gives the professor a quick idea of whether students understand a concept that was just presented.
Scientific Papers
As a scientist, reading scientific papers is an important part of one's training. It is a skill that I think all people who think about science should try to acquire. To introduce my students to the idea of reading research papers, one of their assignments will be to find a paper from an area of biochemistry covered in class and prepare a 10 minute presentation about the paper. They will need to describe what questions the researchers were trying to answer, what experiments they used, and what conclusions they reached. They will then give this presentation to the class. This activity takes advantage of online technology that has allowed for the collection of large numbers of research articles and the ability to search through them easily. This activity will introduce them to Pubmed and the amount of information that they can access online.