The opportunities to teach and work with students, to introduce them frontier research materials and techniques, and to nurture their desire to learn and pursue their own career path are part of my reasons for seeking an academic career. I believe that the most important thing that we can teach our students is that Biological Science is interesting, fun and relevant. It is the responsibility of the teacher to engage the student to the subject and nurture each student's desire to learn. Depending on the type and level of courses, we would expect the students to learn general concepts, skills for problem solving, and the abilities to plan and design experiments independently. Students should also learn the importance of collaboration and critical thinking as these abilities are necessary for their success in the future.
As we have an extremely diverse student body with different backgrounds in science, it is crucial to determine the levels of understanding among students. I have been using in-class pop quizzes, concept checks, as well as online homework assignments to abtain real-time assessment information. In order to engage the class, I have assigned course-related Disease/Diagnosis challenge worksheets to stimulate group discussion and active learning. In class review sections, I have tried to challenge students with stuctured questions for problem solving. These approaches allow me to make course adjustment based on students' learning outcome. In addition, since our students are the digital generation, I have been integrating online resources provided by the publisher in my course through Blackboard. I encourage students to use those online tools to improve their skills of self-study. I design optional online assignments to engage students in learning outside of classroom. I share online animation or short movies with students so that they can learn the material besides reading the textbook. I believe that making varied sources of information available to students not only makes them enjoy learning more but also improves material retentation.
Moreover, I hope my students learn the skills of problem solving and critical thinking. Through hands-on laboratory works as well as oral presentation and discussion of orignal research articles, the students not only have better understanding of what they learned in the lecture course but also get the opportunity to learn how to approach scientific questions, how to work as a team, and how to share and convey ideas.
I make references to current events in news and scientific journals to promote their curiosity in science, foster their classroom discussion, and encourage them to apply what they learned in the classroom to the outside world. The process of science is exciting, dynamic, and unpredictable. We all can be an active part of it.