Dr John Reynolds – Tertiary Teaching Excellence Teaching Profile

Senior Lecturer, Department of Anatomy and Structural Biology, University of Otago

John has been teaching for 11 years. As a student he “frequently felt out of his depth”. Reflecting on his experiences as a student and his own teaching performance, John aims to “be a teacher who would have helped and inspired the ‘me’ of a few years ago”. As a neurobiologist, John’s research interests in positive reinforcement mechanisms impact directly on his own approaches to teaching. Leading by “enthusiastic example”, John actively seeks student and colleague evaluation and feedback. He uses these to shape his practice, with resulting comments such as “Dr Reynolds has been one of the best lecturers I’ve had. He has made me want to pursue a degree in Anatomy”. John has recently led the development and launch of a new first-year Human Body Systems paper with enrolments in excess of 1870 students. His Head of Department described this achievement as “inspirational” and “his commitment was total.”

I was a lousy medical student. By this, I don’t mean that I failed papers, or that I couldn’t cope with patients. Rather, regarding learning I frequently felt out of my depth, struggling to integrate what seemed a constant barrage of new knowledge across many disciplines. However, these situations were punctuated with positive learning experiences driven by a few teachers who stood out for their enthusiasm and ability to inspire. These experiences have helped shape my philosophies on learning
and have guided my own practice as a teacher over the last 11 years. Reflecting on my own performance, I aim to be a teacher who would have helped and inspired the ‘me’ of a few years ago.

Developing a philosophy

When I returned to the University of Otago as a postgraduate my first teaching experience was to give physiology tutorials to Medical students. These sessions were intended to be run by the students themselves, however, having absolutely no group teaching experience, I found myself instead trying
to fill the silences by delivering a mini-lecture (to their delight - possibly). I learnt very quickly: that students will modify their learning approach to suit the situation. By empowering them to be self-directed, students will become active in their approach to obtain new knowledge. More importantly, the teacher’s approach needs to be dynamic, to achieve the correct mix of information transmission and student self-directedness that is appropriate for the situation.

It is important it was to get students to understand where the material they are being asked to learn fits into the ‘big picture’. For a teacher in the Sciences and Health Sciences this means continually integrating new knowledge with other disciplines in the course (eg. anatomy with physiology; structure with function), and, frequently positioning the material within the context of clinical practice.

These two observations formed, in hindsight, an embryonic teaching philosophy that influenced my early teaching style and formed an initial yardstick for self-evaluation.

The research-teaching link

Whilst developing my skills as a teacher I was also, in parallel, developing skills and knowledge as a researcher in neuroscience. This led to a number of opportunities for cross-fertilisation between my research and teaching, forming the beginnings of a broadly-based research-teaching link that has become central to my subsequent practice.

For me, the research-teaching link operates on a number of levels. First, I am privileged to be involved in a research area which is rapidly progressing and newsworthy, and endeavour to incorporate up-to-date information to shape my lectures, labs and tutorials. I strive to get the students to think beyond the findings. For instance, I run a formative exercise during one of my Neurobiology lectures, based around an original research paper and a follow-up article. The students are given guidance on how to critique the paper and actively encouraged to contribute to the subsequent discussion on its strengths and weaknesses. This exercise does more than increase the students’ scientific knowledge, because in the follow-up article, the scientific paper was in fact retracted by the authors because of mistakes in the methodological approach. I use this as a springboard to get the students to consider the Philosophy and Ethics of science, and ask them to discuss how they view the unnecessary use of experimental animals in this situation and what they would have done had they been the principal investigator.

Second, and more fundamentally, I am fortunate to be able to apply my own research area to guide my approach to students and to facilitate learning. In my own work on positive reinforcement mechanisms, I have shown how rewards strengthen active synaptic connections in the brain, thereby making us more likely to emit the same behaviour that led to the reward. In the years that followed, I have employed the philosophy that rewarding students for their learning efforts strengthens neural links between actions and outcomes, thereby reinforcing those efforts. Actions can be as broad as showing up to lectures, contributing to classroom discussions and undertaking self-directed learning activities and revision; outcomes include becoming a self-motivated learner and, ultimately, achieving good grades. It is likely that rewards also reinforce the neural association between the situation and the behaviour, hence I use rewards (usually chocolate ‘Freddos’!) to encourage student participation in class question time, not just for supplying the correct answer. This involves even the largest class of students in active listening and
learning and is frequently identified in the students’ written evaluation comments as a highlight for engaging them in lectures.

Large class teaching – overcoming the stereotypes

Taking a lead role in 2006 as coordinator in the development and launch of the new Human Body Systems (HUBS191) paper at the University of Otago was a particular personal challenge. This paper is compulsory for entry into all second-year professional courses and Health Sciences degrees, attracting large numbers of exceptionally driven students. With enrolments in excess of 1870 students in its inaugural year (2007), HUBS191 is likely to be the biggest first-year Health Sciences
paper in the world. I have embraced and enjoyed the challenge of overcoming popular beliefs about the limitations on teaching and assessment imposed by these larger classes.

An underlying philosophy which pervaded all aspects of the design of this mammoth course was to engender a 'deep learning' approach by the students, ie. to encourage the seeking of meaning and understanding rather than the superficial learning of facts. Lectures of up to 800 students at a time were now framed as tools to actively facilitate this understanding, with the students expected to obtain the detail through their own pre-reading. For many of the teachers, this was a significant philosophical departure, as it stepped out of the comfort zone of delivering the ‘curriculum’ during a lecture to instead focus on teaching concepts and making links across subjects and disciplines. To offer support, I delivered workshops to fellow lecturers and teaching fellows, demonstrating how people might make this stylistic transition. Pleasing student comment and evaluations attest to the tremendous effort put in
by teaching staff to achieve this change.

For the students, in their first lecture I introduced them to the use of concept maps (‘mind maps’) as one tool for making links across subject areas, during note-taking and revision. I enlisted the help of the Student Learning Centre to demonstrate, by engaging the students in drawing a concept map of the topics I presented during my lecture. In recognition of the diversity of the students’ learning styles and acknowledging that students may bring a variety of approaches to learning from their previous experience, concept maps were strongly encouraged but not assessed.

Students doing the HUBS191 papers are a heterogeneous group, including those who will be successful in gaining entry into a competitive health professional training programme, as well as 1000 others who will pursue science, physical education and other careers. I believe that all of these students to some degree should share an early appreciation of the contribution that research and scientific discovery make to the material they learn. Hence, I strive to instil in them a passion for science at the first year level which they will carry through the diverse range of their career paths. In my HUBS191 lectures I instituted scientific vignettes, with the theme "How do we know that?" In these, I recount interesting and often serendipitous discoveries which underpin potentially 'common' knowledge.

An example is the accidental staining of individual cells in brain tissue by the Italian physician Camillo
Golgi in 1873, which has led to our common understanding that the brain is made up of millions of physically distinct cells. Although the content of these vignettes is outside the assessed curriculum, they are selected to illustrate and complement core material. In all the teaching I have done at first year, I aim, through leading by 'enthusiastic example', to attract some students by the thrill of scientific enquiry to pursue a research career.

Leading by example

The relationship between teacher and learner can be a lifelong partnership which extends beyond the classroom into the areas of career and personal development. However brief the actual contact, this relationship can have far-reaching consequences, since the influence of one’s words and actions does not cease at the conclusion of the lecture. I still aspire to the good example provided by a teacher at my Intermediate school, as well as that provided by influential lecturers at Medical School. These people motivate, lead by example and direct you as a student into areas that you might not normally venture. Sometimes this is literal, in the context of inspiring students into postgraduate research programmes, as I myself was drawn into Neuroscience research at Medical School by an inspiring teacher, who is
now a close colleague. This relationship in its broadest sense can also be between teaching or
research peers, with a positive impact on the practice of one or both.

Closing Remarks

In the practice of medicine, teaching is fundamental. The Hippocratic Oath, taken in some form by most
graduating doctors, includes the reference: “…by precept, lecture and every other mode of instruction, I will impart a knowledge of the Art to my own sons and those of my teachers…”. Perhaps a modern and less eloquent synthesis of the Oath is an edict used to describe the acquisition and (almost immediate) passing on of clinical procedures to junior colleagues, known as the “see one, do one, teach one” rule. The emphasis is on passing knowledge from generation to generation, and the implication is that the learning involved is empowering and lifelong. Teaching medical students was my first exposure to
pedagogy. It laid the foundations for my philosophies on the need to shape student approaches to learning and inspire them to visualise their career goals, which I have woven into my design strategies to facilitate student learning.

Teaching medical students is now a subset of my teaching activities, supplemented by the teaching of science students at all levels. Many of the current highlights in my teaching come from the postgraduate students in my laboratory, through sharing the triumph they feel after a successful experiment, and assisting them to interpret their findings and formulate ideas. These students arguably get the least of my physical time due to my other demands, but are the most satisfying to
observe on their journey to becoming independent researchers and, possibly, future collaborators. I aim to use some of the Teaching Excellence Award to honour their contributions and to provide them with audiovisual and communications equipment that will facilitate our group discussions and their learning.

Peer and Student Comments

HUBS 191 and 192 were and are bold experiments in teaching large classes; not just organizational experiments, but also an experiment in shifting the way large classes are taught. …. John convened HUBS 191, and it is no exaggeration to say that his leadership was inspirational. His commitment was total.

Prof. David Green, HOD, Dept. of Anatomy and Structural Biology.

So successful was John’s influence that staff who were initially reluctant to change their teaching style are now advocating that the changes in approach are carried on and developed further in the subsequent years of the health professional courses.

Prof. Helen Nicholson, Dean, Otago School of Medical Sciences.

I found Dr Reynolds to be a committed supervisor, who constantly challenged me on both the academic and technical aspects of my project, thus helping to develop critical thinking skills that are required to complete studies at this level.

Dr. Toni Pitcher, the first PhD student to have completed studies in my laboratory.

Of particular note was the involvement in his lectures of research concepts and evidence gained from research, which he used to demonstrate the link between what is learned in the lab and how it translates to lecture material. Asking students questions about material covered, or enquiring what their thoughts would be in terms of the logical next step in research, is an effective component of Dr Reynolds’s teaching style. This particularly encourages students to be actively learning

Lisa Smith, third-year Neurobiology student (ANAT335), 2007.

I believe that the qualities required for good supervision are different to those required of teaching. John has both. He is an extremely enthusiastic supervisor who invests a lot of time in his students and post docs. and is actively involved in their research. He teaches by example and encourages us all to take
part in and present at seminars and conferences.

Rachel Sizemore, a current PhD student in my laboratory.

John’s depth of knowledge and clear passion for the subject matter enlivened our interest and made the information real. We cannot convey how important it was in our learning process and enjoyment of medical school, to have been taught by such an outstanding communicator and passionate person.

Vivienne Faithfull, Sophie Tapper, Lindsay Todd, Felicity Dominick, past third-year Medical students.