"Students, you've all seen a bird, what is a bird?"
The students were slightly stunned when they heard this question, and immediately reacted and scrambled to give their own answers.
"Can fly"
"Feathered"
"Two Feet"
beak
……
"Will the bird definitely fly?" Does it have to be a bird that can fly? ”
Professor Wu Jingyu is in class
This is the class of the basic course "Paleontology" of the Geology Major of the College of Geological Sciences and Mineral Resources, and the lecturer Professor Wu Jingyu and the students are hotly discussed. At the beginning of the course, Wu Jingyu brought students into today's classroom through such a back-and-forth Q&A.
From dragons to birds, crawling to flying, the courseware displays a variety of beautiful fossils, spectacular and novel dinosaurs and intricate bird pictures. In just 45 minutes, Wu Jingyu took his classmates back hundreds of millions of years to appreciate the magic of earth's history and explore the mysteries of the evolution of life.
How does this ancient and mysterious course come to life? Let's find out.
Let the ancient disciplines "come alive"
"Geology and paleontology belong to the natural sciences, which are very ancient disciplines, and the emergence of a new understanding may take 10 years, 20 years or even longer to accumulate, so the overall framework system of the discipline will basically not change." Wu Jingyu introduced.
However, Gao Ruixue, a 2019 student of the Institute of Geology and Mining, is not bored because the course content is rare and unchanged: "The two teachers are funny and humorous, never emphasize rote memorization, but take us to understand knowledge, flexibly use, combine practice, and turn book knowledge into their own knowledge." ”
How to tell the old subjects into a new way, so that students are willing to listen and love to listen? This is the goal that the entire paleontology teaching team is working on.
At present, the "Paleontology" course is jointly taught by Wu Jingyu and Du Baoxia, while the paleontology teaching team of the College of Geological Sciences and Mineral Resources of Lanzhou University is led by Professor Sun Bonian and composed of four teachers, Yan Defei, Xie Sanping, Wu Jingyu and Du Baoxia. The team undertook courses such as "Paleontology", "The Mystery of Earth History and Its Life", "Earth History and Its Life Process", and "Geohistory".
In teaching, they found that many students nowadays generally have the problem of recognizing the value of their major and even themselves:
"It's too hard to learn geology"
"I don't know what to do after I finish my studies"
"What's the use of learning this?"
With these preconceived notions, interest in learning is greatly reduced. But in Wu Jingyu's view, "now the field work situation is not like the past, the development of the country, so that many basic and living conditions have become better, transportation is more convenient, to go to the field research is not difficult, can be close to nature is a very rare pleasure." ”
Summer field practice expedition
Students are visiting fossil specimens of paleontology
In order to start from the classroom, the team discussed the course content in detail many times, and they shared with each other the results, deeds, and interesting facts that can be used to motivate the students, hoping to make the students "happy" to learn geology well.
Professor Sun Bainian, who has made great achievements in the field of paleontology and stratigraphy, will throw out some fresh and scientific questions to discuss with students - when he tells students about plant fossils, he will ask everyone, "Have you ever seen black leaves?" Why are all the leaves seen now green, but the leaf fossils are black? "Students are curious about his problems, and when they think along his lines, they will find the paleontology interesting and increase their sense of identification with the paleontological discipline."
Professor Xie Sanping will focus on the new geological contributions of domestic scientists, such as telling the students that the new data on stratigraphic boundaries proposed by Chinese geological scientists in recent years is the original conclusion obtained by China's independent geological survey and research, which is more accurate than the internationally popular and recorded in textbooks.
In addition, interaction is also an important magic weapon for teachers to attract students' attention. After teaching the content of "invertebrates", Wu Jingyu and Du Baoxia designed a "paleontological" version of you say I guess, integrating the complex biological phyla and structural names such as "trilobite", "brachiopods", "four-shot corals", "horizontal corals", "head beetles", "abdominal shells", "body tubes" into the classroom interaction.
Li Ziyi, a 2019 student of the Institute of Geology and Mineral Resources who has just experienced such a vivid classroom, said: "This class is really interesting, not only the interactive part is impressive, the key is that this part of the knowledge points are also particularly clear. ”
"A lesson of 45 minutes makes it difficult to ensure that students can keep their attention undisturbed. When I feel that the student is not in a good state, I interspersed with some of my own experiences and new things in the subject area. When I first studied geology, the professional mood was also very serious, and then I went to a doctorate, and with the deepening of research, I found that geology was actually very interesting. Wu Jingyu said.
These unique knowledge and interesting facts let students understand the latest disciplinary progress of geological paleontology, so that this ancient discipline is no longer the old saying in the textbook and really "alive", so that everyone can find interest in learning and truly enter the door of the profession.
"Pass on the help belt", relay polishing course content
Behind a course is a team's long-term meticulous polishing. The paleontology teaching team continues to grow and progress in sincere cooperation to bring better teaching results to students. All this is inseparable from the unity and tacit understanding of Professor Sun Bainian, the core of the team, and everyone "twisted into a rope". At the 1st Asian Paleontology Congress in 2019, Sun Bainian and Wang Yongdong (1st from the left, 86th grade students majoring in geology at Lanzhou University, currently vice president of the Chinese Paleontological Society) were pleased to meet Professor Manabe Makoto , a member of the Japanese side of the first joint geological paleontology internship hosted by Lanzhou University in Jingyuan, Gansu Province, in 1988 , and former president of the Japan Paleontology Society ( 2nd from the left , who was a student of the Department of Earth Sciences at Yokohama University in Japan ) , who talked about the geological paleontology internship 31 years ago. Professor Manabe Makoto still remembers it vividly and praises Lanzhou University's undergraduate training level.
Professor Sun Bainian, who has been teaching for 36 years, has served as the graduate tutor of Yan Defei, Xie Sanping, Wu Jingyu and Du Baoxia, and under his inspiration and influence, several young teachers have also continuously pursued excellence on the road of teaching and scientific research.
Professor Sun Bainian (2nd from right) attends the 1st Asian Paleontology Congress
The team has achieved remarkable results since its inception. Their courses on Paleontology and The Mysteries of Earth's History and Its Life have been approved as first-class undergraduate courses at the national level. Sun Bainian, Yan Defei, Wu Jingyu and Du Baoxia have successively won awards such as Lanzhou University's Shide Pacesetter, Lanzhou University's Favorite Teacher, Baosteel Outstanding Teacher Award, Lanzhou University Longji Teaching Famous Teacher Award, Backbone Award, Rookie Award and other awards, and the team was successfully selected as the provincial teaching team of Gansu Province in 2018.
In 2014, the state, the Ministry of Education and the school successively issued relevant policies and documents on improving undergraduate education, paying attention to the teaching problems of undergraduate students, encouraging teachers to set up teaching teams and focusing on improving the teaching level. Sun Bainian keenly saw the development direction of undergraduate teaching and realized the importance of establishing a teaching team, so he immediately applied for the establishment of a basic education team for the main courses of paleontology, and the "paleontology teaching team" was born.
The same profession and mentor made the team less of a run-in and adaptation process, and several teachers hit it off. "We don't need to deliberately ask for unity, we form a group smoothly." Yan Defei said. Whether it is writing textbooks or doing courseware, whether it is teaching or scientific research, everyone will participate, if they encounter differences, they will get together to discuss, listen carefully to each other's suggestions, and finally find a solution that everyone is satisfied with.
As an old teacher, Sun Bainian feels that it is his unshirkable responsibility to help young teachers grow: "If I don't care about team teaching, young teachers have little experience, and the overall teaching level will be difficult to improve." This sense of responsibility allows him to actively guide young teachers and pass on the baton.
The team meets once a week to discuss instructional planning and design. Sun Bainian attaches great importance to curriculum design, "Lectures are rhythmic, you can't just go to lectures, where fast and where slow, where light and heavy are all needed to be designed." "In the process of lesson preparation, Sun Bainian unreservedly shared his teaching experience with young teachers, sharing where students are easy to grasp and where there are often doubts in each knowledge point." Only by carefully preparing lessons can we design a reasonable course structure. This should be the case every time. ”
In addition to the weekly meetings, the team also developed the practice of listening to each other's lectures, that is, one teacher gave a lecture, and the other four teachers all went to the class to listen to the lessons, and everyone would give some suggestions and guidance to each other after listening to each other.
In the past third national young teachers geology course teaching competition, Du Baoxia and two other teachers of the school to represent Lanzhou University to participate, before leaving the "brothers" to give her a lot of useful suggestions. She originally wanted to choose some better content to participate in the competition, but Wu Jingyu, who had already participated once and accumulated experience, put forward bluntly: We should choose to speak some content that is in-depth, professional and not easy to speak, so as to reflect the teaching ability. Du Baoxia followed the team's advice, although the preparation process was very difficult, but the final presentation was very brilliant, and won the grand prize in one fell swoop.
In the impression of "Little Master Sister" Du Baoxia, everyone has always gotten along very well, and everything is discussed, like a big family. "The other teachers took special care of me, Teacher Sun was like a father, and the teachers and brothers were like brothers." Teachers and students are also colleagues who fight side by side, in the process of running and supporting each other again and again, they have become close "family", just like "a rope", and they are constantly carrying out curriculum reform and practice, innovating teaching concepts, improving teaching methods, carefully polishing teaching content, and leading students to explore the world of paleontology.
Constantly challenge and push the curriculum to the national excellence
In 2017, in order to promote online and offline hybrid and flipped teaching, and implement the Opinions of the Ministry of Education on Strengthening the Application and Management of online open courses in colleges and universities, the school set up a project to build the first batch of MOOCs. The course "The Mystery of Earth History and Its Life" taught by the team was successfully selected and began to produce MOOCs.
Online classes are different from the usual classes, integrating all the precautions of the class and shooting videos, and the preparation of the pre-production most requires the preparation of scripts, lesson plans, courseware, and outline writing, all of which are new starting points, which is a major challenge for the paleontology teaching team without online course production experience. But Sun Bainian said, "Since you do it, you must do it well." "To this end, they have carried out preparatory work for half a year.
The early team met frequently to discuss the division of labor and teaching plan, and after repeated discussions, a detailed division of labor plan was formulated to determine the chapter to be taught by each person; then each teacher independently collected pictures, videos and courseware used in the classroom; and finally wrote a script according to the courseware. The preparation of the script is the highlight of the online course, and only if the script is solid, the online course shooting can be smooth.
Sun Bainian was responsible for the teaching of the first part, which meant that his script played a "set tone" role in the team, and the other four teachers wrote their own chapters according to his scripting pattern to form a unified style. After all the scripts were written, Sun Bainian put together all the scripts and read them carefully word by word, proposing suggestions for revision, and for two or three months, the team has been repeatedly polishing. "I do this every day of the summer vacation, going up the mountain during the day to take students to internships, and coming back at night to write scripts." Du Baoxia recalled.
After the syllabus script and courseware were prepared, the team immediately approached the shooting company to discuss the shooting time, during which several teachers also undertook the task of taking students to summer field internships, and the time for filming MOOCs was particularly tight, and it was necessary to cross-arrange according to everyone's time in Lanzhou, "recording like a rotation." "The day before, I was looking for fossils on the mountain, and the next day I went into the studio to shoot the lesson, and every teacher was in a state of high-speed operation and running back and forth.
Kung Fu pays off.
In October 2017, the MOOCs "The History of the Earth and the Mysteries of Life" were well received as soon as they were launched. Sun Bainian said: "After doing it with all our might, we received a lot of praise after going online, and we immediately relaxed a lot." Since then, students from all over the country have been able to learn paleontological knowledge through this course and see the colorful paleontology disciplines, which makes everyone feel that they have invested a lot of time and energy in teaching, and the sense of harvest is more full."
At the beginning of 2019, the course became a national high-quality online open course.
At the beginning of 2020, the world's large-scale credit course operation platform Wisdom Tree Network sent good news, this carefully polished course lived up to expectations, stood out from the more than 2,000 online open courses in operation, and was selected as the "Mixed Excellent Course TOP100" in the spring and summer semester of 2020, becoming one of the only few courses shortlisted for the "TOP100" in Western universities.
Teaching and educating people, sincerity first, this is the consensus of all teachers in the paleontology team. As Wu Jingyu said: "Scientific research may fail, but teaching will not." Teaching is something that as long as you are willing to pay time and energy, you will definitely gain something. ”
Today, the paleontology teaching team insists on telling the process of the evolution of the universe and life in a concise and concise way, accurate and unmistakable interpretation, popular and interesting language, and beautiful pictures, revealing the history of the earth and the mysteries of its life, thus alerting us to our reverence for heaven and earth, life and even all things, and triggering our unshirkable responsibility to protect the environment, love the earth, cherish resources, and care for life. Ancient geology and paleontology-related courses are also guided by this concept, giving them a new and endless charm.
Content Source | Propaganda Department of the Party Committee (Press Center)
Text | Confucius Zijun Xiao Kun Yang Yujie Fan Zhuqing
Source: Lanzhou University