I believe that learning chemistry is a difficult task for beginning students and in particular non-science major students. Therefore, my goal and philosophy as a chemistry teacher are to create an atmosphere in the class that makes the subject interesting and easy to learn. This can be achieved by communicating the topic material in an interesting way to the students. This is mainly challenging in the large, preliminary chemistry courses where one must find a technique to grab the attention and to keep the interest of students of diverse backgrounds and abilities. I think that the way an instructor approaches his or her teaching tasks will have a deep influence on the learning process and knowledge development of the students. If a teacher makes the material covered in a course interesting, their students are expected to remember the information presented.
During my teaching, I realize that to achieve excellence in instruction, like excellence in research, needs serious thinking, learning, and openness to novel ideas and strategies. I believe that my passion and energy make the course more entertaining for students but it is important to encourage students to claim possession in their own learning process. So, I am continually looking for and applying new techniques for effective teaching to help students learning. As an experienced lecturer, I would use a number of methods to clearly illustrate and exemplify principles related to the chemistry classes I would teach. I taught general chemistry courses such as CHM1032 and instructed general chemistry laboratories. I was in charge of preparing lectures, exams, quizzes, work handouts and other electronic resources for students like Mastering Chemistry from Pearson, as well as assisting them during regularly scheduled office hours.
The learning course begins with classroom lectures and demonstrations with in-class activities, such as quizzes during which the students can use their books, notes, and discuss their answers with their peers. This active learning task has shown a success. Student-to-student interactions increase dramatically as students teach each other the concepts of the day. The quizzes are also used as a reward for class attendance since new college students need to be gently reminded that attendance of class is good for them and their education. The quizzes are returned during the next class and discussed briefly to clarify any misunderstandings and answer questions.
I ask many questions to students to encourage them to participate and be fully engaged during lectures. This technique reestablishes contact with students who are starting to lose attention during the lecture. Outside the classroom, students are encouraged to work independently by giving homework assignments both from the textbook and electronic resources such as Mastering Chemistry from Pearson and Connect from McGraw-Hill. Homework assignments are a vital part of learning process and should be used to prepare students for the intermediate tests and a final exam.
My office hours are always crowded with students. Office hours are great fun for me and I think the students enjoy them as well. The time is spent not only by answering questions, revising concepts, and answering questions but also discussing subjects I usually don’t have time to talk about in class. It is also a great chance to get to know the students and for the students to get to know me on a more personal basis. In addition, the internet search engines are very important means to provide extra information for the students and me. Updated notes, previous exams, sample exam questions, are among the educational tools provided on the First Year Chemistry website. All Tests are computer-graded, multiple-choice format, inclusive of calculations/conceptual questions taken from lectures, discussions, course textbook (exercises, examples, and suggested end of chapter problems) and other course resource materials. The grades are 5% for quizzes, 40% for tests, 30% for homework and 25% for the final exam.
The main coal of Laboratory teaching is to provide a safe, interesting, and challenging educational and practical experience in chemistry for students through the conducting of experiments in different aspects of general chemistry. All instructions and guidelines on safety in the laboratory as specified by the Department of Chemistry and the University must be strictly enforced at all times without any exceptions.
The Laboratory class starts with posting a pre-Laboratory assignment on the Web courses one week beforehand to allow students to study and research in order to answer the relevant pre-laboratory questions. Pre-lab worksheets are significant tools for success during experimentation. They are purposely designed to help the students recall the prior knowledge they will need in the laboratory. As such, the students will often need to review concepts by rereading general chemistry textbook. The reason for the students to start assignments early, is to allow them to familiar with the subject material and get help from instructor/GTAs during office hours. The laboratory assignment must be submitted at the beginning of the Laboratory class. Then a short quiz will be given in the first 10-15 minutes of the laboratory class. Each quiz may cover the chemistry theory, experimental section, and safety issues associated with the experiment.
The Laboratory class starts with an explanation of safety instructions and distribution of procedure outline sheets on the students. AS a graduate teaching assistant (GTA), I used to explain the experiment in detail for students and answer questions and concerns raised by the students. The Students then divided into equal groups to perform the experiment. The students are required to write a laboratory report which includes written observations, results, explanations, and conclusions. Each student practice how to evaluate other student’s work then grades their peer’s laboratory report, and finally self-evaluates their own report. To reduce plagiarism, the report is submitted by the student to Turnitin.com. The website will instantly display to the student the sentences and phrases copied from other sources, the student revises and rephrase/reward the sentences and submit his/her report for grading. I grade and make comments on the report, after which the student will be allowed to resubmit for rescoring. This is an important part of the learning process since writing can be viewed as knowledge- telling or knowledge-transforming. Knowledge telling is remembering information while transformation of knowledge needs a degree of cognitive demand. The laboratory notebook will guide the students through their thought development in the form of writing and help in the perceptive understanding of chemistry. The grades are 10% for pre-laboratory assignments, 20% for quizzes, 55% for Lab reports, 8% for notebook and 7% for the final exam.
In summary, I am and will remain to be committed strongly to the model that one of the fundamental goal of the University mission is the education and training of students, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels in the field of chemistry. I am confidence to improve each of my student’s knowledge to the level where they will have exceed their own expectations in terms of the extent of their personal and scientific development. I have received outstanding teaching evaluations every semester from my students, and they have been very thankful for my work. I love teaching chemistry and feel lucky that I have the chance to share my knowledge, energy, and enthusiasm with my students.
