Evaluation by Program Director EnEd 550

Observation of Lisa Zinn
Conducted by David Ostergren, PhD., Director, Master of Arts in Environmental Education Program, Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center of Goshen College.

Course Title: Research Materials and Methods for Environmental Education

Seven weeks into the class Lisa has developed an excellent rapport with the students. It is obvious in her conversation with students and the fact that she feels comfortable asking tough questions of the students. The students are comfortable in dialogue with Lisa, asking questions in return, offering opinions, and providing direction to the discussion.

TOPIC: Lecture t-tests (not used for causality, used to detect relation)
Lisa provided a demonstration of using a data set to test a hypothesis. Lisa used the internet and powerpoint presentation to integrate current data and information into the lecture. The students used the NOAA web site to test whether the wind speed and direction are different in Pacific and Atlantic. The graduate students respond to web based, real time information.
There was clear direction and purpose to the lecture.
Lisa asks questions to stimulate thought and stimulate curiosity and thought. Stimulating Question for Discussion ---What should we, or can we, control for? Land topography, latitude, distance from shore, same type of source, same period of sample, (students noted obvious problems with the hypothetical research question and Lisa explained that this was a simplified demonstration, not their exercise).

Class organization
Lisa brought the students step by step through the process of downloading and then analyzing data.
Excellent choice and use of reading material that was assigned prior to class.
Lisa ran into a technical glitch during the course of the presentation. This is an all too frequent event in our technological world. Moving from her office to the classroom she expected that the Excel program would be the same (we all expect that in our facility). For some reason the classroom computer program is different, and so different that she found she was taking too much time to conduct the analysis.
Lisa showed flexibility and creativity but taking the class to a different room and doing the analysis on different computer.


Day 2
Lisa Zinn
Worked through administrative issues such as assignments and lesson plans.
Started lecture by reviewing questions about lab work and working with binoscope and hand lens.
She used questions to prompt students into determining the rationale and purpose of research. In this case they were working with forest data to determine density, dominance and importance. (Density --- Freq individual divided by frequency of total.)
Lisa’s interaction with the students depends on constant dialogue. This strategy serves well for small graduate student classes. Each personality emerges in the group while they learn and support each other.
One student began to work down the wrong path working with software. Lisa allowed the student to get into ‘hard to work situations,’ or impossible “excel arguments”. The student complained about being allowed to make a mistake but then she backed up and worked through the material properly. The entire class agreed that this was an appropriate demonstration of how experiential learning works. A tremendous challenge is that no one wants to ever be frustrated.
Lecture
Lisa compared “good charts and bad charts”. Lisa clearly laid out the goals and objectives of the lecture. Lisa clearly objects to the inadvertent and/or intentional misuse of charts or graphs. Lisa is teaching critical thinking and, more important, how to teach critical thinking in the students.
Pie charts. Lisa maintains excellent eye contact with students. Moves right along in lecture so that the students are clearly following the information. She paused appropriately to ask question and engage students.
How does a line graph fit in? Lisa asserted students’ answers and follows up with explanation. Line graphs imply continuous information usually over time. [Pie chats are part of the whole.]
Lisa went through a series of examples. One student has a tendency to offer opinions contrary to general assumptions or Lisa’s lesson. Although not always a recommended strategy, gently interrupting this student is acceptable in the course of discussion. All faculty have experienced this student dominating the discussion and digressing into areas not pertinent to the lesson and this is a case where waiting for a ‘polite’ break is futile. Over the course of the Term the student became much more aware of his tendency and moderating this behavior.
Lisa provided concrete examples of good and poor graphs, deceptive charts or graphs. She had excellent examples and made very good points of how people make mistakes.
She worked well to integrate the technical aspects of statistical sampling with the lecture. This was not a stats class but a research methods class and they will determine their sampling method or analysis strategies later.
Introduced a ‘game’ into how more people are more right than any individual guess. The jar of candy got their attention because they all like candy so we guessed how many pieces in the jar.

CONCLUSION
Lisa Zinn is an excellent instructor. She has excellent rapport with the students, good eye contact, clear lecture style, and stimulating topics for discussion. Areas for improvement include double and triple checking the hardware and software in a classroom, and spending the extra time to provide an example that was not completely contrived (i.e. relatively small scale wind speed and direction on two oceans are not comparable because it is too hard to control for variables). It is my pleasure to continue working with Lisa as she teaches in our MA program and I strongly support aspirations and will gladly provide a strong recommendation letter if the time should arise (however, I must say I hope that time is far into the future).


David Ostergren, PhD.
Director, graduate Program
Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center of Goshen College
260 799-5869
daveo@goshen.edu