Working with students

During the past spring semester I found that I really enjoy working with students. I don't like to use the word "teaching" all that much apart from more official context to refer to a generally understood term (like when talking to my boss about careers and such). To me "teaching" automatically signifies a power structure of teacher lecturing and students listening passively.

I have touched on this subject before in my professional oriented blog. The most efficient learning at least to me has been highly involved process with great teachers giving their encouragement and input, but not pouring information down my throat. This has usually required close interaction with the teacher on personal level and project based or problem based learning.

http://www.worksheetlibrary.com/teachingtips/projectbased.html

The problem or project based learning gives students a lot of responsibility and a more personal look on the subject they are learning about. My Waldorf high school project on inheritable diseases in my family tree was a great project to have. It prepared me for project planning, literature mining, showed how untrustworthy interview based data collection is, and really showed that genetics might not be the field for me after all. These are very important lessons for anyone with an interest for science careers.

The Finnish higher education system does need an over haul. There are some great educators who really help students. Sadly there are still some unintentionally bad teachers. Part of this problem might be the requirement of research personnel to teach with very little rewards. Here are some points that could be improved:

1. Stop lecturing material students can read on their own. This should not be a goodnight story read to an audience. Higher education should build a knowledge base AND help students take the first steps in applying the knowledge to real problems. 
2. Stop testing for memorization. This causes talented students to wonder if they really deserved that A. And might give false sense of accomplishment for students who in reality cannot use the information in real life problems.
3. Offer better career advice. This is a huge deal. The employment situation is tricky in many fields especially if you spent years of your education unaware of the different careers you could be preparing for. Having a person with good sources for different career paths help the incoming students, could make their university experience more goal oriented and useful.

As a future potential academic educator I would like to create an environment for students to make their learning personal. There should be opportunities to fail spectacularly in many ways and learn from the mistakes valuable lessons, that perfect situations never offer. In the end I want my students to be better off than I was.

Digital learning at Virginia Tech

Digital learning at Virginia Tech

This semester I am taking my last classes. They all use plenty of digital content compared to any of the classes I took in Finland.

Scholar is the digital gateway to all my classes. Every class has its own page and these pages contain the syllabus, assignments, announcements, forums, wiki pages, polls, calendar, and other content for participants.I have found this extremely useful tool both in managing the classes I am assisting in and classes I am taking.


I am a teaching assistant in Mammary Immunology class this semester. I have the opportunity to use the scholar tools to manage the class. I have found that sending reminders via scholar to all students and posting materials have been the most useful features thus far. I would like to add interesting news articles for students to see on the front page to bring a bit of every day dairy and immunology content to their attention.

The on-line class on emerging infectious disease is naturally fully on-line. PowerPoint slides can be printed out and the visiting lecturers have a talk recorded with the power point presentation. This is still a bit passive to my tastes. Maybe because it is a pass/fail class, the content is not as varied. Preparing the Future Professoriate and Modern Pedagogy classes are a whole other story. They both have very interactive in-class formats. Both also require blogging as part of attendance. Forums are also used when needed. The blogs for these classes are designed to start us on professional blogging. This is going to be a kick-start for me to actually write every day in either blogs, forums, or most importantly my thesis.

Here is a link to my professional blog: http://blogs.lt.vt.edu/highoneducation/

Preliminary examination and CRWAD

The time has come for me to take the preliminary examination to get promoted from graduate student to PhD candidacy. Preliminary examination should test the graduate students limits of knowledge on the topics relevant to their research and studies. The committee decides if the knowledge base was wide enough or if more classes need to be taken and examination re-taken. Needless to say this is a big deal and a source of stress.

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1419

The examination in my case started with 4 days of written exams, one day for each of my committee member. The committee is a collection of people with PhD under their belt, meant to help me in my research and degree. I have one expert in proteomics, department head of dairy science, and two immunologists. This all culminates in an oral examination by the committee. Never have I been so out of my depth. The cross-examination was very challenging and remembering even most basic things was a struggle due to the extreme stress. At least I recalled my own name. Apparently some people knot themselves up so completely, this simple question baffles them. Luckily I passed.

After preliminary examination the yearly CRWAD (Conference for Research Workers in Animal Disease) meeting preparations begun and before Christmas we headed to Chicago for three days. I absolutely loved it. I got to see some people I met last year and hung out with new people between talks. Sadly the boss could not be there this year. Luckily her old PhD adviser took us under her wing. Like an academic grand adviser. This year the poster competition 1st place was mine! And I did not even faint on anyone. According to the lab tradition, after winning 1st place you are no longer allowed to have posters for meetings. Next year I will have to give a talk, which will be a whole new bad off stress. But I am actually looking forward to it.