Teaching Observation Reports
2018 – Teaching Consultation
While teaching college General Chemistry II in Winter 2018, I requested an Individual Teaching Consultation from the Chicago Center for Teaching. Due to the many roles that this one-hour discussion section was supposed to fulfill (review of material, practice problems, announcements, and typically a preview of the upcoming lab), I asked the consultant to particularly hone in on how the pace and flow of my teaching affected my students’ engagement and understanding of the day’s topic (molecular orbital theory). On the engagement front, I was happy to hear that students took “extensive notes” and that “roughly half of the students spoke during the discussion section.” The consultant also attributed a “relatively high level of student comprehension” to the organized worksheet I had prepared with practice problems, as well as my frequent, verbal “sign posting” about how the concepts fit together. In the post-observation meeting, the consultant and I chatted about student-centered learning objectives, which I ended up explicitly including on the top of my discussion section worksheets when I taught General Chemistry III in Spring 2018.
2016 – Peer Observation
While teaching college Organic Chemistry I in Fall 2016, I was observed by a fellow member of the teaching staff during my 90-minute, Friday morning discussion section. Reading over the comments afterwards, I was thrilled that my careful planning and the class outline I put on the board helped students to see the “forest” as we were making our way through the “trees” of substitution and elimination reactions.
I agree with my observer’s comments about how difficult it is to include a representative set of practice problems during a lesson that give both enough repetition and difference to help students see the overall trends. One way in which I tackled this problem was by suggesting additional practice problems for my students to go over in my weekly emails, alongside announcements and words of encouragement.
