Amanda Rasmussen: Studying the process of rooting: Education Overview

It is my firm belief that teachers have one of the most important jobs. My own science teachers in Taree were supportive and encouraging. Being a rural centre, Taree does not have a university or strong science industry in the area and my teachers helped me apply for summer schools (or winter schools) held in Sydney 6 hrs train journey away.

Left David Siddle (DVC research at UQ at the time);
Middle: Christa Critchley (supervisor throughout my
education and my mentor

Teachers are also important at University level and (like many others) I tailored my degree where I could to subjects taught by good lecturers and to avoid subjects taught by less good lecturers. This highlights how important it is to be a good lecturer.

From my third year of undergraduate studies I began tutoring and discovered that I also really enjoy guiding students to acquire new knowledge. That look on the students face when they have that 'eureka' moment of understanding is priceless.

During my PhD I decided that being a good lecturer was important to me so I studied for the Graduate Certificate in Higher Education at The University of Queensland and graduated in December 2009. This is a great program to provide lecturers from across the university (and open also to PhD students) with new teaching practices and with the underlying theories behind these practices.

Teaching philosophy

Through over 500 hours of practical teaching and from reading the literature provided during the Grad Cert I believe in a constructivist style of education where students are guided to solve problems themselves and build on their existing knowledge. My tutoring style is to answer student questions with other smaller questions until the students can answer their own question without my further help.

I also believe that students can learn more from working in teams, by teaching (or learning from) their peers and through exposure to a diversity of ideas and experiences. Students will also inevitably work in teams in whatever careers they choose and so experience on how to work together successfully is very important.

My education research projects (described below) are based on these beliefs.

Teaching action modules

One of the flow charts built by the students working together

During the course we were guided in adapting teaching modules and one of my first projects involved adapting a set of three lectures in a third year botany course to be student centred instead of traditional transmission-style lectures. This involved the students reading different papers before the lecture and then sharing what they read with others in groups of 4 or 5. They then create a flow chart together on a large sheet of paper. In the next lecture each group explains their flow chart to the rest of the group and ask questions of each other. The last lecture is more traditional and involves summing up the topic and filling in any clear gaps in knowledge

For my other main project I designed and implemented a team training module for students in a large first year undergraduate course. The students in this course are asked to make a documentary video in groups of 4 but many had never worked in teams before and there are often problems within the groups. The team training module contains 4 sessions of about 20 minutes which are conducted during practicals spread out across the semester, starting with getting to know each other and role allocations and continueing to reflections on their progress, to negotiating when problems arise. The trial was quite successful so we implemented the program for the entire class of 500+ students in 2010. The results of this are published in conference proceedings (Rasmussen et al 2011) and we hope to publish multiple years of data in a future publication.

Rasmussen A, Rossini R, & Kuchel L (2011) Is it worth taking time out of first year science courses to explicitly teach team skills? IN: Krause K, Buckridge M, Grimmer C & Purbrick-Illek S (Eds.) Research and Development in Higher Education: Reshaping Higher Education, 34: 238-252. Gold Coast, Australia, 4-7 July 2011.

http://www.herdsa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/conference/2011/papers/HERDSA_2011_Rasmussen.PDF

During the summer of 2010 I designed an experiment for high school students to measure photosynthesis in water plants for the Siemens Science Experience at UQ. (see the other page for how to do this).

Scientists in Schools project

Currently I have continued my science outreach by collaborating with a school in rural Queensland via the CSIRO Scientists in Schools program. This collaboration involves assisting the science teacher to design experiments and to answer questions about life as a scientist. We communicate via email, dropbox and skype and the project has so far been very successful.

http://www.scientistsinschools.edu.au/

In May 2013 we ran a Plant Science Day for the students for the International Fascination of Plants Day. For year 10 students at St Brendan’s College this meant a day filled with plant pracs. Each one hour prac was set in a real-life situation where students had to solve a problem through an experiment and discussion. One of the activities included deciding whether a flood plume would damage the local sea plant life by reducing photosynthesis. This activity has students lying under benches with lights counting oxygen bubble production in a water plant (picture). In another session students were given a top-secret folder with instructions to solve which of their teachers had murdered Terrina (head of science) by identifying types of pollen found on her clothes. Since plant science is not just about plants but also uses chemistry techniques another practical had the students identifying whether the cancer-fighting anthocyanins were present in some plants taken from the surrounding area. The students were suitably impressed by the different bands of pigments that separated out of their samples using paper chromatography.

The last two pracs involved studying transpiration, one in the context of florists making rainbow flowers by soaking up dye into different xylem vessels and the other in terms of finding drought tolerant plants using a photometer to measure the rate of transpiration.

The day was a huge success with students having very useful and interesting discussions about all aspects of plant science.