Speaker: Dr. Alma Novotny, Lecturer of BioSciences
Dr. Alma Novotny is a faculty Lecturer of BioSciences and has taught at Rice since 2000. She earned her PhD in Developmental Biology at Purdue University, and knew that she wanted to teach science when she was 10 years old. Since coming to Rice, she has developed a MOOC in Immunology that has accumulated over 100,000 registrants in EdX and Coursera, reaching students in over 160 countries. She has also taught Genetics and Molecular Biology simultaneously by distance to Universidad de los Andes in Chile and developed two courses for the Master’s in Liberal Studies program in Continuing Studies. Dr. Novotny is also a five-time winner of the Will Rice Residential College Outstanding Faculty Associate Award and a three-time winner of the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching. The Fundamentals of Immunology Specialization she developed for Coursera was named one of the best Immunology courses online, ranking higher than courses from Harvard and the University of California.
This monthly event is part of a Teaching and Scholarly Learning series that will feature instructor successes and will be a place for anyone who is teaching to ask questions, give feedback, share success stories, and get advice.
Date: October 1, 2021
Summary: Dr Novotny’s presentation was focused on using technology to improve face-to-face-teaching (as opposed to developing MOOCs, flipping classrooms or teaching online) in order to reduce stress on the instructor in cases where teaching is disrupted, due to student absences, instructor life-events, natural disasters and technology failure. Dr. Novotny discussed her history of teaching using technology, adapting to needs of a diverse set of nontraditional learners, including adult learners, professionals, distance students and MOOCs.
Dr. Novotny described her process of preparation in using and becoming familiar with technology, in order to develop a library of backup material as a of bank teaching hours. She observed that making lecture recordings available electronically do not result in students not attending class. In fact, she found that attendance improved when she employed flipped classroom strategies and then used clickers in class as a check for understanding, with the in-person human interaction also being an important component of feedback.
She recommended showing moving visuals with either models or animations, instead of just speaking, using slides with pictures or writing on blackboards, as the colors and movement help keep students’ interest and attention. When designing colorful visuals, she also recommended using blues and yellows as the distinguishing colors, instead of greens and reds due to a significant percent of the population being red-green color blind. She also described lecturing in classrooms using two screens with different inputs, which allowed for comparing different visuals, or running a presentation on one screen and clickers on the other.
In the Q&A after her presentation, Dr. Novotny answered questions about how technology strategies have changed how she uses her class time and how they have affected learning outcomes, feedback, student interaction and satisfaction.
Links: MLS Instructor Highlight: Alma Novotny from the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies blog.
The Science Teacher from the Winter 2015 issue of Rice Magazine (excerpt below).