Teaching

My teaching practice has been shaped by my early exposure to laboratory work. I was given the opportunity to work as a research assistant for Dr. Sylvain Canesi (Université du Québec à Montréal) in 2007, prior to taking lecture courses in organic chemistry. With this unique point of view, I tend to see laboratory courses as their own entity as opposed to the application of the associated lecture. Especially in organic chemistry, where introductory courses often include reactions not often used in modern research or in the industry, I instead focus on classic techniques (liquid-liquid extraction, thin-layer chromatography, distillation, etc.) by placing the student in a realistic scenario, or by having them identify unknowns based on the result of their experimentation. Since I teach mostly non-Chemistry major students, involving them in the experiment design and leaving choice elements, usually means they are much more interested and engaged. In my current position as laboratory instructor at the University of Waterloo, I have full control over my curriculum, and consider the background students have from the lecture as well as pre-requisites when designing it.

My positionality further informs my pedagogy by directing many of my priorities. I am a white woman, and a native French speaker. I was born in Montreal, a few months before the antifeminist mass shooting at Polytechnique, which was up the hill from my childhood home. While I have seen first-hand the challenges of women in Science, I am also aware of the upward mobility available to white women and how white feminism has harmed racialized persons. My feminism is intersectional, and I strongly believe in an anti-racist and liberationist pedagogy. These are not often views shared by science educators and can be perceived as being opposed to the academic rigor required by science, but I think to the contrary. In my laboratory, safety comes first. This means chemical safety of course, but also the emotional and intellectual safety of my students. Learning requires an enormous amount of vulnerability, and students must be open to slight discomfort in order to expand their knowledge. However, if the discomfort is too great, a student may lose trust in the teaching relationship. As their instructor, students can see me as the holder of knowledge and person of power, but I much prefer a democratic environment, and providing resources for students to develop self-directed learning skills useful for lifelong development. I was also raised by a single mother who herself had a mother who was functionally unlettered. I am therefore sensitive to socio-economic barriers and the difficulties faced by first generation students. As such, I avoid the use of textbooks and printed material that would be costly for students, and enjoy mentoring them as well as teaching assistants, to help erase some of the veil of the unwritten curriculum in Academia. Working in Canada, I also try to insert Decolonization in Equity, Diversity and Inclusion since many of the goals of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission touch education since residential schools were used as tools of oppression and genocide. It is urgent that educators in higher education act towards Reconciliation and Decolonization. I have experience working with international students, since Canadian institutions are largely funded by the high tuition fees international students pay, I am interested in ensuring they have a positive experience and meet their goals.

The reputation of organic chemistry often precedes students entering our classes or labs, and labs can be particularly stressful due to the high cognitive load of using new equipment under time constraints. Students often note that my lab is fun, which is the best feedback I can wish for. I incorporate interesting scenarios from daily life or even use common household items for experiments, and I keep a very enthusiastic and supportive attitude. I believe in experiential learning as the penultimate active learning example, this way students are fully accountable for their success. While a teaching assistant or I are present to assist, troubleshooting an experiment also requires us to ask what the students did, and they then still have an active role in problem-solving. With repeated experiments, students can witness their own growth, and I usually ensure repetition of techniques so students can approach experiments more confidently at every visit. Laboratory space is also a space of community. I try to ensure no student works alone and allow collaboration between groups, and I care about a positive ambiance. I will always go above and beyond to ensure students obtain the required data and avoid having a failed experiment impacting a student’s grade too severely.

Taking laboratory courses usually means for students having to draft long laboratory reports. While I think such formal reports have their purpose in upper year courses for students in their major program who may be tasked to perform small projects, I do not use them in my introductory courses. I prefer to target the understanding of key aspects of a procedure by asking probing questions. When giving formal laboratory reports, students can sometimes miss on a key aspect of the procedure, and by directing their reflection or by placing their new knowledge into different contexts I can better ensure they achieve the learning goals I have. Another concern of mine is the fact that laboratory courses often require several hours from students while being worth few credits (or just a portion of their grade for the overall course). I have tried to minimize this burden by converting two of my reports in CHEM 266L into worksheets. By doing so, I encourage discussion of the theory between peers and have TAs available to help nudge students along the way and dispel misconceptions. With my courses being high enrolment, worksheets can also reduce the use of social learning sites where students would ask so-called experts to help in their homework.

During the lockdown period of the pandemic, I had to bring all my courses online. This reinforced two core values of my teaching: the active learning community created via laboratory courses and my desire to create high quality, free or low-cost open educational resources. First, a challenge I had teaching online was offering proper student support. With the difficulty of creating peer to peer engagement in the emergency remote teaching environment, I felt high pressure to be the source of help for all students, which was not sustainable given the class size. Even with my teaching assistants, I had to be mindful of their own contract hours. In addition, many of the strategies to quickly put together an online course (provide videos and text), puts students in a passive state versus being an active participant via lab work. Finally, providing synchronous sessions was challenging as my students were in various time zones and unless I offered multiple repeats, it was difficult to reach everyone. The limited available tools available at the start of the pandemic motivated me to obtain funding from eCampus Ontario to develop my own fully customizable virtual laboratories. This ongoing project uses a simple “choose your own adventure” story-building tool called Twinery to develop scenarios where students are brought to make choices in their experiment and can observe the outcome. This can help bring back active engagement in the online environment, help students identify learning gaps they still have and better replicates the lab environment compared to video watching. I am interested in building more open education resources related to laboratory as one can now find free or low-cost textbooks online edited by chemistry faculty, but resources for laboratories beyond experiment procedures can be difficult to find. My desire for these resources to be low-cost or free to students is a high priority, as I am sensitive to the cost of education

By incorporating the above priorities in my teaching, I aim for a student-centered approach. I focus on the students’ goals and incorporate a scaffolded approach to learn basic organic chemistry skills. I then center my teaching on decision-making and simple design to engage their critical thinking skills. As most of my students will not become chemists, I highlight the transferable aspect of this learning and use scenarios close to real-life to boost their interest. I also see the laboratory as a place to build community and help students see themselves in control rather than following instructions. I care deeply about student needs, which is why I want to keep creating high quality resources free of charge, as I think this material is what the students pay for when enrolling in my classes. Finally, although my students have different career goals, I hope they leave my courses thinking organic chemistry and the lab is a space for them, and a space for everyone.