TEACHING AND LEARNING IN EARTH, OCEAN, AND ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES: PREPARING THE NEXT GENERATION OF POST SECONDARY EDUCATORS

Teaching the next generation of teachers is an ideal way to achieve attitude shifts amongst post-secondary teachers. Additionally, Graduate Student Teaching Assistants play a vital role educating Undergraduate University students. Therefore, in conjunction with a thorough revamping of undergraduate teaching in the Earth Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences Department at the University of British Columbia, we developed a course for Graduate Students to earn credit toward their degree while learning pedagogical theory, including utilization of learning objectives, lesson planning, and active learning techniques. Further, students in the course gain experience teaching lessons, receiving facilitated feedback from their peers, as well as participating in reflective practice. Pre/post attitude tests and feedback from participants demonstrate an increased confidence in teaching skills, lesson planning, classroom demonstrations, leading discussions, and using active learning in the classroom. Graduate Students completing this course are able to apply the teaching and learning skills they acquire to the benefit of the Undergraduate Students that they teach, and this course has produced several award winning graduate student TAs. In this poster we discuss the development of this course and also present results indicating positive attitude shifts amongst students participating in the course over the last 5 years.