Intro Geology Teaching Successes & Um, Not Successes

Meaghan has now taught three terms of Introductory Geology as an adjunct, and has a few things she's been sampling with her teaching that went well, and a few that, well, didn't. Since she's no longer working for CWU and won't be teaching this year but instead traveling and looking for a more permanent position (HINT HINT READERS WHO ARE EMPLOYERS), here's a review of what she's learned so that it can benefit anyone else looking to teach an introductory geo class.

But it's a lot easier to write in first person so we're going to do that in 3...2...1...NOW: For context, the classes I've been teaching are:

1. Between 30 and 85 students
2. 4 days a week for an hour
3. Cover only a single quarter (10 weeks, September to December)
4. Have an accompanying lab, but the lab grade is separate and also optional so not all students are taking the lab
5. Are stand-alone intro courses: CWU doesn't have an intro geology series, just several variants of one class so students can choose to take whichever intro class that seems most appealing
6. Meet one of the gen-ed standards, so typically are full of freshman that are undeclared
7. Have a high failure rate. All the intro science classes do at CWU, though.
8. Have some form of Canvas (online software) component
9. And are taught using a mixture of Powerpoint and other activities/discussions

OK! Now onto the teaching techniques!

Photo by the AMAZING Marli Miller, whose photos are all free for geology class use!
http://geologypics.com