Teaching Observation 3

I teach two Masters classes on carbon accounting and reporting. In this class we discuss why companies report, how they report and the mechanics of carbon conversion. In the first cohort I taught the mechanics of carbon conversion i.e. how to convert electricity use or travel in to a greenhouse gas equivalent and then progressed to the theory i.e. consistency, clarity and transparency of reporting. This didn’t work so well.

I had tried it upon listening to a presentation by a lecturer in computer science who tried a similar approach with coding. He had previously taught the theory of coding then had a practical session where the students did their own coding. He found that in the first session they students tended to disengage. So he switched the way the order so that coding came first. He found that while it didn’t work because the students got confused but he was willing to persist with this approach as he felt that pedagogically it should work because it should have allowed the students to practice then reflect upon it in the more theoretical session.

I wasn’t quite so willing to persist. So what I did was to spend the first part of the session providing more theoretical background and looking at the kind of data that are reported (via a Google Doc exercise) and the mechanics of carbon accounting and reporting and then towards the end of the session do some carbon conversion. We then did more carbon conversion and went over the previous conversions at the start of the next class before then picking up on the quality of reporting the data. This seemed to work better as students had a better understanding of why they were being asked to do so many mathematical equations.

One of these sessions was observed as part of my PG Cert, for which there was some good and constructive feedback:

The key areas for improvement were:

• Expanding beyond GHG reporting in the UK
  • this session could definitely cover EU and US law on carbon/GHG reporting
• Presentation of information on screen – size of text; use of long URLs where students might be expected to use them
  • Fundamentally this session probably just needed less text on the slides, which would allow for the slides to be suitable in almost any teaching room.
• Given good use of technology in session are students encouraged to bring laptops (for nature of activities)
  • set the expectation early on at the beginning of the module that students will need to bring some kind of mobile technology.
    • My only concern is that this could be discriminatory. So I encourage students to work in pars or groups to ensure that they all have access.
• Allowing students time to respond to questions
  • see previous blog on student engagement – I just need to shut up!
• Reflecting student responses back to group, to ensure all heard and understood
  • Google Docs helps with this as student responses can be seen on screen, but in this case I need to speak up more.
• Provide tiny URL’s for Google docs rather than long URL’s on PowerPoint slides
  • I put this right for the next session and is something I continue to do.

However there were a number of positives:

• Good student engagement in the session
• Use of Google Docs
• Good rapport with students
• Clear delivery style
• Very good subject knowledge

But also around some positives around the areas that I was concerned about as I neve convinced that I do them well:

• Good encouragement of critical analysis
• Good use of questioning through the group activity, prompting students to consider implications of information they were finding. So encouraging a higher level of thinking
  • Speed/pace of delivery
• Good classroom management/facilitation
• Managed group activities well, but could considered ways to ensure wider participation to questions from group as a whole, i.e. use of technology (Socrative/Padlet)

So some real positive things to work on and improve the student experience and hopefully performance.