Bugs 101: Week 1

This was the first week of class and with that came all the usual nerves and stress. It’s been exciting to have students back on campus and feel the buzz of excitement. The weather has also been wonderful this week, and walks across campus have become a daily occurrence for me and my lab mates as we’ve been enjoying the pre-autumn air.

Lesson 1: Insects + Bugs

Learning Goals & Objectives:

• Address major aspects of the syllabus

• Introduce students to GNAT

• Soft-launch Proficiency Based Grading (PBG) to students

• Begin building rapport and community

• Get students familiar with D2L and LMS organizational structure

• Introduce Google Scholar and relevant helpful hints

I’ve found that the first day is always my least favorite. I’m nervous to get back in the groove and feel comfortable in front of strangers, students are inundated with typical “sylli week” information overload, and the uphill climb that is community building begins. To combat this variety of hurdles, I like to have students do something self-directed so I have time to get everyone situated, usually while completing a syllabus scavenger hunt. This year I created a ‘Version A' and a ‘Version B’ so that while working together students would be forced to communicate with multiple people around them. While they are completing this scavenger hunt, which also checks the box of addressing the most important syllabus components, I like to greet each student one-by-one, check name pronunciations, and start building those connections. I find that I learn names much faster when I’ve shared an experience with a particular student and so I start to force those right off the bat by asking students their year and major and making the briefest of small talk before moving on. 

Halfway through the allotted time to complete these scavenger hunts, I introduced students to GNAT to allow them to start using him as a resource. Of course, the display box for GNAT immediately stopped working and was displaying brown text on a black background. This was the first time I had had this issue, even through all the testing I did myself or sending links to other people. I was able to quickly jump in and fix the color scheme, but there is the potential for a blow to student willingness to use because of this initial hurdle. Time will tell how students chose to engage with GNAT. 

From there the slideshow sort of shuffles us all along; mini-introductions from myself and Maris (my ULA this year), a 3,000 ft. overview of the course, an introduction to the grading system and assessment types, and review of the course policies that are unique to my course.

I’ve been really nervous about the initial optics of the grading system in this course. University classes tend to stick to a percentage based grading scheme. In my experience, even the teachers that claim to be using alternative grading schemes or ungrading stick to a 0-100% system that I don’t feel serves the purpose of assessment, and rarely are rubrics provided. On this, the first day, I don’t want students to get lost in the weeds but rubrics and grading scales are so foreign that students don’t have the context to process what I’m giving them. The first unit of this course is designed to be a dry run of assessment types and assessment systems, but if you’ve ever taught before you know:

Just because you said it doesn’t mean they heard it.

- C. B. Brown

Looking back on the slides that I created for this, what I thought was simple and introductory last week was definitely too dense. This is definitely going to be a topic I touch on again and again throughout the semester and I’m going to trust the process and see it through. Theoretically, I think this provides students with a much more authentic and holistic learning experience, and the numbers have worked out in the student’s favor when I’ve played with them, but I’ll have a more definitive answer on PBG in post-secondary when the semester wraps up.

This “trust the process” narrative was continued for the most unfortunate part of this lesson. Due to the structure of assessments, these fresh kiddos would all be required to turn in an essay at the end of this first week. I was very apologetic during my instructions and reassured everyone that (a) the required amount of time was minimal and (b) this grade would be eligible for replacement, and I think students received this very well. Whether they feel that way after receiving their grades will be another story, but I did provide the template for the essay and reference page and gave the first half of instruction related to the grading rubric. Once students have written something and received comments, I think the targeted lessons will be much more effective, but until that context is established I think I can only do so much on the teaching end of this practice. 

This first day ended with an Exit Quiz, as all lessons will. This one asked very few questions and all of them were related to meeting times and days, and served as practice to get used to completing a formative assessment at the end of class rather than provide any valuable feedback to me. This exit quiz also provided a question with information so that students could provide or deny consent to their materials being posted publicly by me. I’m really excited to get to share what I know is going to be really cool student work in the future and I’m thankful that I thought ahead and addressed this early on. Of my 48 students, only one denied consent which was surprising and means I get to show off more cool stuff.

Lesson 2: Anatomy & Life Cycle

Learning Goals & Objectives:

• Introduce classification and where insects exist in the context of life on earth

• Students can explain the technical difference between insects and bugs

• Introduce basic insect anatomy

• Students can explain the difference between holometabolous and hemimetabolous life cycles

• Demonstrate how to establish a claim, provide evidence, and support with reasoning

• Review citation expectations

This was the first content rich day which was a treat after a full 80 minutes of course policies, grading schemes, and assessment introductions. I started this lecture by framing the context, reminding students of the current unit (Insects + Bugs) and how that information will inform the three future units. We then reviewed this graphic, which really pops off when you include the animations, to talk about life on earth and how insects are related to all their distant cousins. This created a perfect scenario for us to discuss the difference between insects and bugs, and talk about the colloquial use of the term bugs to describe pretty much anything you find in your backyard. This also gave me a chance to address common misconceptions, including those I pulled from the previous activity’s scavenger hunt, as to what organisms are strictly not insects: snails, worms, snakes, slugs, spiders, scorpions, etc.

From that point we began to talk about insect anatomy and review the basic body parts using these graphics (also available without labels) that will also show up on Exam #1. Students take this info up pretty well, and I always love being able to talk about the abdomen being the insect’s “booty,” which is important to preface because I am known for commenting on insects with exceptionally large “bee-donks.” I was already starting to realize that 80 minutes of lecture was too much for both me and the students, so I have been coming up with ways to break up the monotony. At this point, all the students were given a large notecard and were asked to create their own insect with all the relevant body parts, making sure to attach the legs to the thorax. This was fun as it gave students a chance to actually apply what we were talking about and forced them to start using the vocab as they were asked to check their elbow-partner’s drawing. These are golden star moments for me, because I get to walk around and uplift student work and build those little connections. One of those moments where I can feel my heart smiling and I really feel proud and in my element. It’s this feeling that draws me back to teaching and encourages me to find more authentic ways to engage students in fun and exciting ways. 

This exciting little drawing exercise bought me some extra attention going forward, and I dove into life cycles. Demonstrating the difference between holometabolous and hemimetabolous life cycles is one of those things that feels daunting, most likely due to the six syllable vocabulary, but is not as complicated as it seems. I also am very proud of the slides that address this so I’m going to drop them separately below - just to show off a bit more.

Around this point I could feel that I had shoveled a decent amount of info in and I wanted to again let students practice, in walks a Kahoot. I had to pay for a year of premium so you best believe we’ll be Kahoot’in often. The questions draw from the same illustrations from the slides, which will also be on the exam, and students seemed eager to engage until about question #16. Note for future me, sixteen is enough questions for a game. I pushed us through the final nineteen questions and then we continued with the lecture.

Content was clear, and I just needed to address the remaining instructions for Essay #1 which would be due the following day at midnight. I was surprised to learn that about 30% of students had attempted the first half of instructions and prepared some material for their essays. I used my favorite “WTH is happening here” image and we talked about claims, evidence, and reasoning. This is a really difficult skill, even for me sometimes, and so this simplified example does a decent job of lowering the bar for students to engage. I will admit, providing reasoning on their essays requires a higher level of thinking and in some ways students were not equipped with all the tools to properly tackle this assignment. I knew that going into this week, and this is the source of much of my apprehension, but students have ample opportunities to make additional efforts, receive feedback and targeted instruction, and so I just have to be okay with this seemingly punitive assignment. 

As an exit quiz, students completed a survey that contributes data to my dissertation chapter related to attitudes toward science and insects. I didn’t love the quiz setup in D2L for the previous exit quiz so I’m trying to decide on how I want these quizzes to be delivered. I don’t want to introduce another platform for students to use, but D2L’s quizzes are so restrictive in the types of questions you can ask, the way they’re graded, and I would like a higher level of flexibility. 

Reflecting on this week…

… I am hoping that I set a good tone and gave a teaser this week of what’s to come. If I had unlimited time and scheduling flexibility I would have slowly worked up to the essay and provided more in-class opportunities for students to practice those skills. That being said, their grades from these essays won’t negatively impact their overall grade because of the number of grades that are automatically dropped and I was very transparent about that fact early on. 

I’m happy with the quality of my instruction this last week, switching to Canva has made my slides more inviting. I am curious as to whether students are engaging in the digital materials online as a study resource, and if there are more accessible ways for those resources to be presented. This is a question I’ll need to revisit a little later in the course. 

Transitioning to actual content was a relieving shift from the boring course policies, and I’m excited to see how this momentum is carried forward.