Faculty Advisor Spotlight on Terry Austin, Temple College (TX)

This year at the HAPS (Human Anatomy and Physiology Society) annual conference, held in Victoria, British Columbia from May 28-June 2, Terry Austin was busy. Austin, an A&P and Microbiology professor and Biology department chair at Temple College, led a workshop at HAPS focusing on strategies for improving student performance in A&P. MasteringA&P was front and center because of its ability to pinpoint topics that students struggle with on a class-by-class basis. Presenting with Rodney Holmes from Waubonsee Community College, Austin says the most exciting component of using MasteringA&P is students’ excitement over the product itself. “At one point [during the workshop] I shared a story about a committee of students who approached me early last Spring asking for post-lecture assignments so they could demonstrate how much they had learned after having studied with Mastering and my lectures... the kicker - they were asking me to DOUBLE their homework. I would never have expected that!”

In addition to the workshop, Austin also ran a lunchtime session at HAPS and sums up his experience at the annual conference as “rewarding” because of the opportunity it afforded him to work “side-by-side with some talented Faculty Advisors as well as Pearson folks and excited instructors.”

But HAPS is just one activity Austin is involved in; he’s a pretty busy guy. In addition to the courses he teaches, Austin created two very different sets of videos relating to Mastering. The first is a set of VideoTutor videos and the student response so far as been great, says Terry.

My own students got the (dubious) pleasure of being my test audience for the early edits on several of these and were quite encouraging. They were very supportive and were excited that 'their instructor' would be shared with the rest of the world through Mastering. I've often been told by my students that my way of explaining complex ideas tends to make things easy to understand. They were quite clear that they were excited these would be available to students around the country.

The second set of videos is for instructors and focus on using Mastering. One video in the series even creates an entire Mastering course, from scratch, in under four minutes.

Things don’t stop there. Austin is a very active Faculty Advisor as well. His favorite Faculty Advisor activity is ‘Ask An Expert’ which requires frequent participation. His personal record for answering a question coming through ‘Ask An Expert’ is under six minutes. “The FAs have an informal contest running to see who can be the first to answer,” says Austin. This friendly competition also allows all the experts to work toward an “ultimate answer” to a question since each answer layers on different perspectives in response to the initial question. According to Terry, the instructor seeking help, “gets several viewpoints and a much more rounded response,” as a result of so many ‘experts’ working together.

All of these activities aside, Austin works hard personalizing and incorporating Mastering into his courses. He uses Mastering both before and after lecture with pre-lecture reading assignments and post-lecture quizzes for each chapter that’s covered in class. Additionally, students in A&P do Interactive Physiology (IP) assignments. Austin is also getting “pretty good” at creating content using the Simple Editor. He’s dabbling in using the Advanced Editor, but nothing he’s created in there has gone live yet.

Incorporating Mastering both before and after class has led to surprising results for Austin who says that his students, “actually read before coming to class! Students also ask questions in a much more productive manner and tell me they’ve been much better prepared for class having used Mastering.”

So, what advice does such a busy educator have for Faculty Advisors new to the program? “JUMP IN – don’t let us ‘old hands’ intimidate you with our fast responses!” Austin’s favorite aspect of being an FA is solving instructor issues from around the world relating to Mastering and some of the best answers to questions he’s seen on ‘Ask An Expert’ have come from some of the newest Faculty Advisors out there.

Have you recently presented at a workshop or conference?  Tell us about what you talked about.