- 2 Introductory Physics Lectures
- 1 Modern Physics lecture
- 1 Demo for Modern Physics
- 1 Electronics "lecture"
- 1 Reading Quiz (intro) graded
I'm loving Introductory physics, but I can anticipate that I will not be able to teach all of the students as much as I want to. I've spent a good portion of the first two lectures setting up class structure and expectations. But even without that, it doesn't feel like I have enough time to adequately cover the content. A large portion of the students are feeling uncomfortable with vectors. I don't think the 30 minutes on it today helped much. I want to make sure they understand the basics, but I can't spend all semester on vectors.
The students are amazing. They are showing up on time and are very engaged in lecture. I had 100% completion rate on the first reading quiz. I'm optimistic that many of them will utilize the additional resources that I am posting on our online course management system. I know that not all of them will, and that some of the students who are struggling the most will be the ones without the skills to push themselves to do additional problems. I'm getting fewer students using the clickers than I would anticipate. I'm unsure if they need more time, or if they are unsure of the answer so don't want to 'vote'. I'll need to address that soon.
Electronics has also been amazing. I had them do an assignment before the first day. It is amazing - they all did it! We had a great discussion on the content of the worksheet on the first day of class. I also had them do a group activity, and it went much better than expected. Yay! I now need to get the second worksheet posted and prepare the second lab activity.
I made the first electronics lab way too long. I knew it would be long, but I think I still underestimated the time it would take them by a factor of 2 or 3. Ick. I do think I did a good job on the pedagogy behind the lab. I've seen students run into the type of problem that I was hoping they would see now and figure out how to debug. One student spent many hours in lab last night, and had many questions. I am somewhat worried that I won't be able to stay far enough 'ahead' of the students in my own preparation to adequately help them. Since the class ended up 50% bigger than expected, there isn't extra equipment that I can use to prepare the next lab. I have to use the students' equipment, which is fine as long as I am working on the lab before every student has started or after at least one student has finished.
Modern physics went ok. Since I hadn't expected the students to do any "beefy" reading yet, I wanted to mostly have a 'hook'. I showed them one motivational demo, and then we measured the speed of light. Aligning the laser was a huge pain, and we got far fewer data points than I had hoped for. I ended up asking them to fit the line for the measurement on their own, rather than do it in class. Hopefully that works out. I've looked at the data and we actually did fine on the measurement, even though we only had 3 points!
Modern is now the class I feel least sure about. The first day wasn't indicative of how the rest of the class will go. Additionally, I am less sure the best way to combine mini-lectures with group activities and interactive demos. Since there are 7 students, it is slightly too big to have everyone truly participating when doing things as a whole class. However, clickers feel superfluous. It is the course that I was most comfortable with how it has been taught in the past, but I now really need to figure out what lectures will look like.
Then there is everything that isn't lecturing. I graded my first reading quiz. It was somewhat a disaster, but I think I know how to better format it in the future. I had my first departmental meeting today! I enjoy meetings more than the average person. I'm sure that will change eventually. But this department meeting was great - we went quickly, had clear action items, and are implementing lots of new things. Because the department is small, there is no huge inertial mass (momentum) that opposes change. At the same time, we have reasonable financial resources and everyone is excited to try new things. I'm sure it won't be that awesome at the faculty meeting I get to go to next week.
This job is amazing. I'm getting less sleep than I did for most of grad school, and I expect that to be constant for most of this semester. I'm freaking out about how I will be ready for the next day, and whether I am teaching the students in a way that they can learn. I want to involve a student in my research, which I don't have time to start.
Even after the novelty has worn off, I will still love working with the students. I will still love my colleagues in the department and whole college. I will love the college's mission. I will love this job for a very long time. Right now, I am shocked that they pay me to have this much fun.
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