Delivery or Transformation?
Image by John R Perry from Pixabay
Teaching as delivery of information is the expectation of students and the default for faculty. But telling is not teaching. Real teaching engages students’ minds and transforms them.
Getting new faculty members to reset their pedagogical default is a fraught business. Nonetheless, that is the goal of Track 1 in the Summer Institute in Teaching Science (SITS) at Bob Jones University.
What follows is an approximate transcript of a podcast consisting of reflections by a member of the Track 1 cohort of 2023.
[00:53] Mike Gray: On today's podcast episode, I’m going to be talking to one of the faculty members who's part of the Track One cohort now in the 7th week of the first summer of the Summer Institute in Teaching Science. Welcome to Timothy Tittiris. Let's just get acquainted a bit. You're from where?
[01:21] Timothy Tittiris: So, I grew up in Cyprus, which is an island in the Mediterranean. I spent about the first 18-20 years of my life there and then moved to the US for undergrad, and then I went on to grad school.
[01:40] Mike Gray: You still have family back in Cyprus?
[01:41] Timothy Tittiris: Yes, my parents and my sister and then my dad's side of the family still live in Cyprus.
[01:49] Mike Gray: I'm completely ignorant about the educational system in Cyprus. So did your preparation precollege stand you in good stead when you came to the States, or were there surprises?
[02:06] Timothy Tittiris: Because the British had some control historically in Cyprus, they left their mark. And so in the private school that I attended, where my dad worked, we followed the British system. So if anyone's familiar with GCSEs or A levels, O levels, that's kind of what the school went to. And because of that, I ended up having to go to a 13th grade to graduate from my high school. So in some ways, I would say that that extra year did help prepare. I didn't feel like I was behind on anything. And those exams are pretty high level because they are what you use to get into university in the UK. So the material covered was good. I think that the spread was a little bit different, and so some of what I had learned didn't exactly translate to what Bob Jones University wanted in terms of the classes. So I wasn't able to transfer a year's worth of credit, if you want to think of it that way. But I felt like I had more background in certain topics, specifically, I would say in organic chemistry, because I actually did organic chemistry in high school, which is not the norm in the US. So I was able to transfer a general chemistry credit and then go into organic chemistry in my freshman year. And so that was I would say I had a leg up. In some ways. The English grammar aspect was definitely limiting. They don't focus on grammar as much over there. They're into comprehension and I guess creative writing. And so that hurt. There were a lot of things that I didn't even know that they were rules in English. So English 102 was a challenge in that regard, especially with a research paper. That's why I would say probably the weakness in my previous schooling would be.
[04:11] Mike Gray: Did any of that have to do with differences between British English and American English?
[04:18] Timothy Tittiris: I don't even know because I don't even know if there I mean, the spelling was definitely there, but if you use a spell check, that would be one thing. There are some phrasing issues, I guess, but, the biggest example I would say is like the pronoun and antecedent was a big thing that I struggled with my first paper that I turned in because I would say everyone had their. I had no idea that was a rule. So I just don't know if they focus on grammar because the US made it a lot.
I had one six months time when I was in the 6th grade that I did English as I did school in America and I was like, wait, you can diagram sentences. I mean, I know they don't really do that anymore, but I was surprised that English was as structured as America seemed to teach it because in Cyprus or in the UK based system, it wasn't as clear.
[05:22] Mike Gray: So you came as an undergraduate here to Bob Jones University and you majored in what?
[05:29] Timothy Tittiris: So I came in as a chemistry major and then saw an opportunity to use some of the biology I had done in high school in the A level in biophysics, because that was a major that was kind of new when I came as a freshman. And then I think it was going into my sophomore year, I found out about the biochemistry major and that one was more appealing. It had more bio and had less physics, which I think was more of where I was leaning. The chemistry was about what I would have been taking anyway, but that was part of why I switched. So I ended up graduating with a biochemistry and molecular biology major. But all my changes made no impact to what my schedule of classes was. I graduated on time.
[06:22] Mike Gray: So then how did that set you up for graduate work? Where did you go to graduate school and what degree did you get?
[06:29] Timothy Tittiris: So I got a PhD in medicinal chemistry from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Really, the biggest thing of how I ended up going to UB was I had a friend who had already applied and so he said, hey, why don't you apply to the same program? I already think I'm in. And so I said, okay, I'll apply there. And what I didn't even realize really was that the school also had a biochemistry department. So I was in the chemistry department and focused on medicinal chemistry as opposed to being in the biochemistry department. But there was potential overlap there. I had some collaborations set up with the biochemistry department but we were on different campuses at the university.
[07:16] Mike Gray: I think you joined us this past January. Yes, January 2023. And jumped right into teaching.
[07:26] Timothy Tittiris: Right.
[07:28] Mike Gray: So was that your first university level teaching experience? Do you have other teaching experience that helped ease the path in?
[07:38] Timothy Tittiris: So that was the first time that I was responsible for a university class. Prior to that I had worked as a high school teacher but in terms of university I worked as a TA. I TA’d the general chemistry course at the University of Buffalo several years of my grad school experience. And then a summer I ran some of the honors sections of the lab there in terms of having responsibilities of making sure students’ questions got answered in study sessions and helping prep for tests. That was more of what my responsibility entailed there and running the labs at the school. So I would say that it was helpful in giving me the experience of interacting with the students and trying to deal with their questions, which is important. It was nice because I don't think the students really had opportunities to ask questions in the lectures. The lectures were a lot larger than I was used to and I don't think there was much opportunity at all for questions. And as we've discussed in SITS it's really important to ask questions. And so I got those whether it was in the help session hours we did or in the recitation which was like the hour before lab. So that aspect of dealing with students questions I thought was helpful in trying to implement some of the things we're trying to do with SITS.
[09:22] Mike Gray: So you're teaching biochemistry and molecular biology major courses now. What's your responsibility?
[09:29] Timothy Tittiris: Yes, so my main responsibility is organic chemistry. That's the course that I kind of focused on as I came into SITS specifically first semester. But then some of the nutrition, health, science, biochemistry or some of the other course responsibilities that I have.
[09:53] Mike Gray: Good. Well, glad to have you. In 1977, Joseph Novak, who is the father of concept mapping, likened education (you'll like this) to Brownian movement which he characterized as constantly churning but going nowhere. And Novak went on to say this is likely to persist unless educators seek to base change on a comprehensive theory of education.
[Novak quote detail on p. 245 of this 2012 book:]
Published by Routledge
The three-legged stool that we've talked about in previous podcasts this summer is in fact a compact embodiment of such a comprehensive model of teaching and learning. And at this point it also has more than a 20-year history of successfully transforming students through teaching them how to think. So the condensed version of Track One as we stated in the three-legged stool (this comprehensive model) is a foundational piece. In fact, it could be argued that everything rises and falls on the success of the first summer where we set our goal as producing clear-thinking teachers. What has clear thinking meant to you this summer?
[11:31] Timothy Tittiris: Thinking is personal. My thinking is obviously personal to me. And so I think it might be clear to me because I can figure out, I can navigate my own pathways of thinking. The idea of clear thinking, as we've discussed in SITS, is about getting all your thoughts together and trying to show them to others. So that way you can I mean, it's a challenge because you have to put all this stuff together in a way that not only makes sense but makes sense to somebody else. So it's really been about kind of collecting thoughts and then putting them through a filter. So that way you're not just overwhelming anyone, you're showing your thoughts to here's all the thoughts and you just spew out all this stuff and that's not helpful either. So kind of getting all the connections set up and then the most important ones and then ranking different thoughts. That's been the big thing because we have so many thoughts. And if you're going to sit there and really evaluate your course material, there's so many things you could think about. But what are the main ones? And how can you show that to somebody else? Not eye opening, but it's a nice reminder that not even within your own department, you think you're talking to a chemist. Not all chemists think alike. That's helpful because that way when I try to explain something and I think I'm being clear, there's something that needs to be clarified further because I'm speaking to someone in analytical or inorganic chemistry. Really, the clear-thinking idea for me is about taking how I think and then presenting it in a way that makes sense to somebody else. So that way they can evaluate my thinking because maybe there's a flaw there. But also, even if there isn't a flaw, maybe it needs to be fine-tuned because it's not as clear as I think it is.
[13:34] Mike Gray: Have you been surprised in any way as being a student effectively this summer as well as a faculty member? Surprised at all by what you've encountered or the ease or difficulty of taking your own thinking apart?
[13:55] Timothy Tittiris: There are some aspects of what we've discussed this summer that I guess were surprising. I think in some of the discussions about how long we've perpetuated this inadequate model of education, that's kind of surprising. Why haven't more people woken up to that and wanted to make a change? I get that some people want to stay in that, you know, they stay with what's comfortable. I think that's a temptation for people. But in terms of what we were going through, I knew that there had to be some tools and techniques to think through some of these things. And my biggest thing was that I had never had really the opportunity with designated time so I really appreciated that about SITS that allows you to do that. So in some ways, maybe another thing that's a little bit surprising that I don't mean this in the “I'm so humble kind of way,” but I was like, oh, I actually have good, clear thoughts sometimes. So I think that aspect of it was a little bit surprising that I was actually able to put the thoughts out clearly because sometimes I just think that it might be too much of a mess of ideas that I spew out. And so the fact that I was able to do that with the training that we went through and then kind of filtering through different things, the different tools that were presented in SITS, I think that was helpful. So yeah, I really enjoyed the time. I knew that it was something that I needed. It was just hard to figure out by myself. I knew that there was something lacking, something that I wanted to go further with how I thought and how I approached education, but I didn't know where to find it.
[15:56] Mike Gray: I'm wondering, wondering out loud, if the fact that you were an undergraduate here influenced that. You were an undergraduate here during what years?
[16:04] Timothy Tittiris: I was here in 2006 to 2010.
[16:08] Mike Gray: Okay, so those would have been early years of SITS. And to the extent that the SITS model of teaching and learning had made its way into at least some of your classes, I'm wondering if maybe some of that became operational for you and there was less of an adjustment than if this was a foreign way of approaching learning. So you're on the student side then, and you're on the student side to some extent this summer as well.
[16:54] Timothy Tittiris: Yeah, I don't disagree with that. I think that did have in some ways that was true even though I didn't know it, it was introduction to what we are looking at in SITS. And a lot of the classes, I guess a lot of what you're saying, how SITS was getting started out more of the biology classes is where that a lot of the SITS kind of concepts, while not explicitly taught in a biology class, they used some of the tools, some of the ways, some of the avenues of thinking. So yeah, I agree with that.
[17:32] Mike Gray: Thinking of being in the position of a student, you had a dual role this summer.
[17:42] Mike Gray: You had 24 hours to prepare to teach a topic that was new to you. You want to reflect about how that experience of not knowing something, but then needing to master it in a very short period of time to a level that would allow you to help somebody else to learn what you had just learned yourself? What do you think that exercise did for you in terms of inhabiting both roles within a 24 hours period?
[18:20] Timothy Tittiris: I think one of the aspects that you can take away from that exercise is that it can be done. I mean, not that I thought that I was a complete master of the topic that I had, but sometimes we make excuses about how I couldn't possibly do that. I don't have enough time to do that. But I think that knowing that you have a deadline in this assignment that had some of an impact, but in terms of being able to do the quick turnaround, I guess I'm asking kind of . . .
[18:55] Mike Gray: From the learner perspective on the front end, what were you hoping to find about this topic that would allow you to gain some mastery?
[19:08] Timothy Tittiris: Yeah, I think the focus there was trying to find some sort of pattern.
[19:14] Mike Gray: Which the brain is really good at.
[19:16] Timothy Tittiris: Right. The specific topic I had definitely had a pattern in there. The talk was about the Circle of Fifths. Okay, so it's more of a music application, but from my learning or looking at, it has quite a broad and very important application to a lot of musicians. If they can master the Circle of Fifths, it helps with a lot of key changes and it speeds up some of what they would need to do when they're dealing with specific compositions of music. So there was a very different pattern there about how many spots you move up to figure out, okay, well, now for this key, how many sharps are there? And it had a very logical setup and progression and that was nice. There was a little bit of which in terms of trying to present it, the big limitation for me was the time because I was like, oh man, I learned this whole thing. How am I going to cut this down to 20 minutes? There were some parts of the Circle of Fifths that don't follow, like a perfect pattern. And so that part, I think, not annoyed me, but it wasn't as great. But the main part of the thing, the way I was able to kind of lock it in, to be able to teach it, was to figure out what the main pattern was. And once you figure out that pattern, then you can present that pattern to your class. So that was what I guess I was trying to find in that initial learning stage.
[20:54] Mike Gray: And there would be a natural receptivity if done well, that's what you distilled out and you just figured it out. So I should be able to embrace the difficulties that my audience is experiencing and be able to help them to efficiently embrace the pattern that I've discerned is at the core, the root of what I learned about this. And that really is kind of like a microcosm of what we're trying to do with this first summer. Patterns are there in your head as an expert in biochemistry/molecular biology. But the tendency is to communicate a whole bunch of other relatively extraneous things and the pattern gets lost in all the details that are being presented. And sometimes, instructionally, we just assume that the students will figure out the pattern. That I don't actually need to be explicit about it. And this kind of turns that on its head. Like once I have the pattern, then I've got a reason, scaffold, hooks, whatever term you want to use to embrace some of the more important details that aren't the central message, but are significant things that I can build off of this core conceptual structure. Actually, it's very satisfying to be able to break through complexity with powerful core simplicity that’s at the bottom of it. It's really about this and I figured it out. Let me help you figure it out now. So what we're doing in clear thinking is sometimes called metacognition, which maybe not very helpfully, is called thinking about your thinking, which sounds like eastern mystical religious practice or something. But there are tools that we use so that we're not simply in some kind of a trans-like state that may happen in the middle of the afternoon anyway, and has nothing to do with thinking. Are there particular elements of the learning environment which I think we've created for track one—‚are there certain elements of that that have been more helpful to you personally this summer?
[23:32] Timothy Tittiris: So speaking about the tools themselves yeah, I really like the logic wheel [see below for copyrighted template] aspect that had a lot of kind of digging in to think about, well, what are some of my assumptions? And what you don't always think about what your motivation is for why you even picked a particular topic or that kind of thing. But ultimately, I think coming out of the inner part of the logic wheel, moving out to the kind of the output layer and looking at explanations and the consequences and the implications. So that part was what I thought was helpful in trying to think about how to apply it to a class because you have to come up with what a big idea was, an essential question, or all these different ways that we discuss it and then how do you explain that? And then if you do explain it well, what does that mean going forward? How do you use that? And so I think that we had a lot of things that kind of did that, but I think the logic wheel was one of the first ones. And so that one was where you start that initial thinking about the essential questions or the big ideas, the big concepts, which in some ways that leads to the concept map as well. I know they are different tools. I think that the logic wheel —the reason why I mention it is because it's one that I hadn't really done much before, but concept maps I had done while I was a student in undergrad. So that wasn't as new of a concept to me, although I still found concept maps challenging to present. It’s my temptation, kind of what I was saying before, with some of my thinking to over connect things and that's where you have to okay, well . . .
[25:31] Mike Gray: Which is sometimes called the curse of knowledge. It comes with a PhD. We also didn't just turn you loose to do these things. There's a good bit of collaboration which should be characteristic of any kind of learning environment. Our learning reaches a much higher level when we've got other people involved, which probably goes against the western cultural strong individualistic tendencies that are wired into our culture. In what ways did bouncing your ideas off of other people or having other people give input (maybe unsolicited) that helped you to recognize there's something else at stake here? Or maybe this is not as clear as I thought it was, maybe even to the point I needed to change my thinking about an aspect of my expertise. Any comments about the collaborative learning environment?
[26:35] Timothy Tittiris: Well, that's something I really appreciate about the whole SITS model and everything. You have people that have gone through it or they have different expertise and then they're willing to be available for you to bounce ideas off of. And so I was going to say besides the logic wheel, the whole mentor and then having that discussion I thought was also helpful, which I guess is kind of what you're asking. That was great to be able to have that. Because sometimes when you're having thoughts about this and you think it's going to bother somebody else or they're so busy, then you don't have a chance to share that. But because of the way we do it in the SITS program, their responsibility at that moment is to be available for that discussion. And so I really appreciated well, I'll say two things. I appreciate the input from non-chemists because they'll bring something—they would often bring up like well, I haven't done this course since . . . , or I've never done that particular course, but I was wondering about this. And so I found those to be valuable questions for them to ask and for me to have to think about well, how can I explain this to someone who has focused on biology or engineering their whole life? And so those are really good. But like I mentioned earlier about being able to just within the department, not everyone has the same field of expertise. And so speaking with my main mentor in the chemistry department was also really good. Also I think, not just changing some thinking but maybe putting more of a focus or even reordering certain things. So a specific example: in organic chemistry structure is really important. And I know it's important, but I don't always rank it because this seems kind of just drawing structures or whatever. But then in my discussion it's like well, you keep bringing up structure so structure must be really important to you in your thinking like someone that's doing organic. And so that had me thinking more about why is structure so important? And so I think my big takeaway with that is to try to and here's what the kind of flip was, because the progression normally, I think you start two dimensional and then you try to remind everyone that things are 3D. So what I'm going to try to do is try to start off having students think about all these structures are three dimensional. Start there. Why do I have to draw them on paper? Well, I can't model them in augmented reality, that's the challenge. But putting them in 2D, understand, recognize, realize, remember, they're 3D first. Like, that's what they are. I'm not drawing in this 2D. And it's like, oh, and don't forget here's the added complexity of them being 3D. So just having those discussions and thinking of perhaps not new, but kind of redeveloped ways to present certain things I thought was really helpful. So, I mean, there's pluses and minuses. There's benefits of both kind of those discussions. People that aren't in your field, they may not challenge you on maybe some of the more complex ideas, but they make you think about, well, how can I explain it and make it applicable to someone who thinks like a biologist or like an engineer?
[30:11] Mike Gray: And then whether you like it or not, biologists take organic chemistry.
[30:14] Timothy Tittiris: Yeah, a lot of the premed, yeah. And so they need to see the thinking, the pattern as well. The problem solving, I think, is probably the big thing, but there's obviously problem solving in biology as well. But yeah, the mentoring and the discussion thing I really appreciate as well. I think those were the two things that kind of my takeaway of the best parts of it, mostly because some of the other tools, like the concept map I mentioned before, I'd done before. So the logic wheel in terms of a tool was new, and I enjoyed that and how it had me think through those essential questions and then the discussion was great.
[30:55] Mike Gray: So as we wrap things up, you've been working in the background so that these ideas don't become pure theory. You've been working on a target course, which I guess is organic chemistry. So what elements of organic chemistry do you feel like you have some clarity on? You've already mentioned one kind of idea, but are there a few elements of your course design that in this first pass, because this is an ongoing career level kind of thing, in this first pass, it's trying to apply clear thinking, your clear thinking, to produce clear thinking on the part of students. Are there some elements of the course design that you now feel like, okay, I think this is a way to get them closer to the target of thinking like an organic chemist, and I'm going to do something a little different, maybe than I experienced.
[31:58] Timothy Tittiris: What I'm trying to apply is going to be early on, just because I think that that'll make the most sense in terms of just coming out of the summer and have all these ideas.
[32:07] Mike Gray: For setting expectations, perspective. Is that what you're trying to do with the students as they enter? These are things to be on the lookout for. These are attributes that you need to develop in your thinking exactly be successful.
[32:21] Timothy Tittiris: So do it more right at the beginning of the semester in kind of the introduction, in that summary bridge between general chemistry into organic. Like, try to clarify, well, okay, these are the big, these are the essential things you need to be looking for. This is what we're trying to focus on. And I think one of the big things I'm trying to accomplish from all the discussion through SITS is just to understand the amazing design of carbon. And I think that that's something that I hadn't really spent a lot of time focused on or maybe even using the word of design of carbon. Sometimes chemists get locked in. It's like, well, group four, you're at a table. It's just what it does. Whereas, well, there's the design aspect there. It was designed to be that way, and what does that mean going forward? And I'm curious to see what kind of impact, if the students get it, first of all, but what kind of impact it will have moving forward. That appreciation. It's not just, well, that's just carbon acts that way because that's just the way it is. It's more of, well, it was designed that way. And if you think of it from that kind of starting point, how does that impact things moving forward? So that's kind of some of the big, but like I said, as you mentioned as well, do it early because it's been something I've been thinking about all summer. And if I try to implement it somewhere in the middle when everything gets crazy in the middle of the semester, that's probably not ideal. So trying to work in these concepts early on in the course has kind of been my big idea.
[34:01] Mike Gray: It'll be very interesting to hear the way you're trying to embed worldview, which is one of these big metacognitive dispositions that very seldom gets recognized, and maybe more so in the so called hard sciences like chemistry and physics. That it is what it is, is the perspective rather than it is because somebody who's omniscient designed it that way to result in my discipline explaining the way it explains and it working the way it works. That's been very helpful. Enjoyed the conversation. I Look forward to your contribution to the chemistry department, Timothy.
[34:48] Timothy Tittiris: Thank you.
[34:54] Mike Gray: Join me in two weeks as we consider how clear-thinking teachers design curriculum and learning experiences that maximize the development of clear thinking in their students.
[35:07] Mike Gray: I'll be talking with the entire faculty cohort for track two in this, the final installment of the 2023 summer season of podcasts.
[35:18] Mike Gray: As always, I'd love to hear from you. You can send me your questions and suggestions by going to Deepanddurable.com.
This image and concept are copyrighted and may not be reproduced without my express permission. Core, working, and output layers are developed in my book, Unforgettable: Enabling Deep and Durable Learning. Using my book as a guide you can list those three layers and fill them in as you think through the logic of any knowledge domain, e.g. history, biology, law, etc. Try it out!