Daily diary- teaching

Teaching diary

2nd October-2 hours: My first teaching practice! I was very excited and a bit anxious in the beginning :) My teaching guide Outi helped me to set up with the initial equipment like the projector and so on! and offered to support me if I finish before my schedules 2 hours of time.  I was asked to talk about 

Medical laboratories in India and 

What is the influence of customs and traditions in Indian medical treatment. 

What is the type of training health care providers in India undergo. 

What are the differences between the laboratories in India and Finland. 

Also the differences in basic medical treatment procedures.

I tried to include all different learning styles in my teaching material. I showed some videos to the students about the medical laboratories in India and tried to show them the diverse range of medical services in India. I asked every one to say one word about the qualities of laboratory nurse and about India. This would give me an idea about what they know about India and where I have to start the topic.

After some time with the presentation, I gave them a group task by dividing them into 6 groups and distributing three topics about the world of laboratory nurses. All the students were asked to discuss and write something about the topics and finally present a short summary towards the end. 

The task was taken very well and the students contributed well! Some students want to know more about India. They asked me to talk about Yoga, more about traditional medicine-Ayurveda. This I decided to focus in my next lesson.

Outi also asked me to mention about some nurse training schools in India and what is the curriculu, how long is the course and what kind of jobs the graduates from the school would place into and what is the working environment in detail. 

October XX: Today I have more interesting information to share as I found really intersting links and material to Ayurveda and what is healthy life style according to Indians, yoga and influences on basic health. I feel I have got better with suggestions from Outi to mention about a group task before the beginning of the task and also after they have settled down in their new group places.

Feedback from Outi: I had good contact with the students. They were interested to listen carefully for what I have to say. She also mentioned that it was a good start to ask the students to speak something before the lesson starts as they all then are more participating in the learning process.

30th October-3 hrs: Chromatography techniques: Clinical chemistry course for second year students.

I am happy to teach this course as this is Biochemistry, my background. 

I was given a time of a week and a half to prepare the material and specifically asked by my Guideing teacher Lecturer Paula Repponen to give group task to students and teach in a interactive way. This was slightly tough as the subject is methods in biochemistry and I have only one lecture session to give them the task and get it done!

I decided to give two tasks :

1. a simple question task where the students have to think and answer individually.

2. a group task inspired by Outi's circulation method, by distributing articles about the chromatography techniques and asking them to write their reflections in simple sentences. 

Paula asked me to mark those areas in the text that directly point out to the technique as the articles are really scientific study publications which might be very difficult in understand in 10 minutes. This helped me and the students a  great deal as they did not have to read the entire torturous text that is very difficult to understand for the first time and for me becuase the task became simpler and quicker and successful 

After my presentation about the techniques, I threw at them the first simple task and gave them 10 minutes to come up with answers. Many actually pointed to the right technique!! I was surprised actually because they were listening to the techniques for the first time! 

This might be that they were following my material and teaching at the same time :) I am happy.

The second task also went down quite well and all the groups summarized well and added something new from their group.

Paula's feedback:

Positive: 

I was natural while teaching by using , the blackboard, my hands and also the slides pointing well to the figures etc.She particularly liked the question based task in the middle of the lesson and said that it is perfect time for the students to pause for a moment and ponder over what they have heard and how they can put into practice!

The parts that needed improvement : 

I was going on very fast with my material. She suggested that I slow done after each techniques and give a summary specifying the main points of the technique. This I very much agree and would definitely take into account in my next teaching class.

31st October-6 hours: Practical course on SDS-PAGE (sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis). This is a technique to find out the molecular weight of the protein sample of interest and is a very important technique to learn in biomedical laboratory course.

With Paula I checked (on the previous day) for all the equipment and reagents for the next day of practice. We placed the stuff in their prescribed places and checked so that there will be no breaks for the actual day. I learned that this is very important and crucial for the smooth execution of the practical class.

On the 31st,  we arrived at 8.00 am (15 minutes before) the session begins. I was asked to give the introduction to the session. Since the students were the same as those for the theory lesson, it was a bit easy to start. Paula added some things that I forgot to mention regarding the division of the groups.This I would remember during my next lesson on 6th of October.

There are four groups and each group has 4 students. Four students together set up one experiment that involve several steps.There are 3 steps that require waiting time and Paula asked me to explain the principle in detail and its uses. 

The short teaching went on well and here again I asked everyone to speak about the technique in one word or sentence using something that they think is important. Although the students were very shy they spoke anyway when asked to do so. The laboratory practice is very important for my background as I could observe the time management and the preparation required for the course on the previous day.

All in all the practical course training went on well and I also  have a chance to observe more practical courses on the following days 4th and 5th before my final practice session on 6th.