Teaching Statement @ Grace的進修雜記:)

I believe as a Physics instructor my duty is to challenge and support the students. In Community College I teach 200 level general Physics lab and seminar. The big picture for the courses is to learn basic Physics concepts. I know that learning is a development process, so students might need to face challenge and feel a little down when they cannot solve the questions at the first time, but I just need to give them a little push, and soon they will develop their own way to work most effectively.
In the beginning of each lab, I have brief introduction about what we are going to do in the lab, and I will also give students the goal what we are going to approach in the lab. The most important idea for students to learn in the general Physics lab is to have experimental verification of different principles or laws. The goal is to insuring that student know the foundational concepts from the hands-on experience. In other words, learning by doing and also to see is to believe can give students an easy way to understand difficult ideas and concepts.
The most successful assignment and activities I use in the class is to set different roles for individual students. For instance, in group discussion there are four roles, including manager, sketch, summary, and planer. Students take turns to learn how to do time management, and knowing how to make a plan for the problem solving. In seminar courses, the key point is to developing students’ problem solving skills. Each group has four students, and they can help each other by discussing or expressing their ideas about different assignment. They might also find out that have study group can save their time from try errors on their own. This is a method to assess student learning.
This is my third term to teach in the general Physics lab. Engagement is a key component of learning. Without engagement there will be less motivation to learn. Therefore in the lab session, let students in group two or three. To insure every student can have opportunities to undertake different tasks. Although I am still in a learning process to become a better physics lab instructor, I want to keep the passion to work with the students.