THE POWER OF OBSERVATION: DISCOVERING SCIENTIFIC PROCESSES THROUGH DETAILED ANALYSIS OF STILL-LIFE IMAGES

As instructors, we strive to bring out the best in our students. Many new ideas and techniques have emerged in recent years to help us achieve this goal, but realizing student potential can be elusive. John Reid was arguably the gold standard among instructors for guiding students toward their own observational discoveries. This talk will present The Power of Observation, John’s how-to guide describing his techniques.

The talk will use John’s slides and words to demonstrate his “Page 1/Page 2” minimalist approach to introducing a new topic in an enticing way. You will see how easy it is to simultaneously assess student understanding of concepts and their ability to build resulting hypotheses. Working from slides, you will be asked to develop a list of detailed factual observations (Page 1) and after a brief collective summation, develop a hypothesis (Page 2) that may explain the processes at work. The importance of separating observations from interpretation will be emphasized. This approach and the discussion that follows often lead to open-ended student investigations that delve more deeply into a subject than can be expected from traditional lecture format