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Miscommunication or no communication at all was the central theme throughout the fall semester for Amanda Poffinbarger and Brent Todd, they said.

They said there was no structure to communicate with their graduate assistants who were teaching lab sections of Biological Principles and Issues.

“It was very difficult to run a class where half of their contact time was spent with somebody else, and I had no control over what was going on,” Poffinbarger said.

Poffinbarger said, because she is an annually contracted faculty, she cannot advise graduate students because it is not a part of her job. It was decided when the program was implemented that graduate students would teach a part of BIO 1001, and that so happened to be the class Poffinbarger taught.

Bud Fischer, associate chair of the biology department and the biology graduate program coordinator, advises the graduate students in their supervised instruction.

She added her only communication with her graduate assistants was through email. She would send them during her free time because she is not technically allowed to send them because her job does not allow her to advise graduate students.

“But, for the sake of my students, I would send emails.that way there was some flow between lab and lecture,” Poffinbarger said.

Graduate assistants taught four of Poffinbarger’s six sections of BIO 1001 lab. She taught all six sections of lecture.

Todd, who left his instructor position at Eastern on Jan. 3 and took a non-teaching position at Lake Land College, said the only communication he had with his graduate assistants was about grades, which they were supposed to do.

He added he had to give the students, who were being taught by graduate assistants in lab, their final grade. He never saw these students in lab.

“We could have been doing different things in lab yet I was having to evaluate those students,” Todd said. “So, I’m having students appeal grades this semester, which I think they are right in doing so.”

Graduate assistants also taught four of Todd’s six sections of lab. He taught all six sections of lecture.

Another problem the two cited throughout the semester was information taught by them in lecture was repeated in the labs taught by graduate assistants.

“The students complained a lot that the lab was reiteration of what I taught in lecture,” Todd said. “While my students were given up to an hour and 50 minutes in lab, those who were taught by graduate students were given these extra lecture periods, and then a shorter lab.”

Poffinbarger said her students told her how they would spend close to an hour going over what was taught in lecture during their lab.

She added a lab and lecture should not be separate entities, and that a lab should complement a lecture.

“It was horribly inconsistent, and my students have complained the entire semester,” Poffinbarger said.

Christine Miller, a graduate student seeking her masters and teaching certification in special education, was in Poffinbarger’s BIO 1001 lecture. A graduate student taught her in lab.

She said the graduate student would spend up to 45 minutes going through a PowerPoint with information already taught by Poffinbarger in lecture.

“He would still do that every time, and that would take up almost an hour of time we could have been working,” Miller said.

She added because of the repetition of information, it made many students have a negative attitude.

Poffinbarger had the ability to break complicated subjects down so students could understand the material, Miller said. The graduate student often times would answer her questions in a roundabout way, making it even more confusing, she added.

She said, because of Poffinbarger, she was able to understand biology, a subject that she struggled with in the past.

“For me, it was like yin and yang,” Miller said. “I loved lecture, and I hated lab.”

She said having Poffinbarger teach both lecture and lab would have been beneficial for every student.

“I think it would have just help to be on the same page,” Miller said. “It would have eliminated confusion and frustration.”

Kate Cankar, a freshman elementary education major, was in Todd’s BIO 1001 class. Todd also taught her in lecture, and a graduate student taught her in lab.

She is appealing her grade for the class.

She said she did not have a bad experience with the graduate student teaching lab, but would had a better understanding of the material if Todd taught both sections.

“People have different ways of explaining concepts and information and, when they are expressed differently, it makes us students more confused than they should be,” Cankar said.

She has no doubts her grade would be higher if Todd taught lecture and lab, and that is one of the reasons why she is appealing her grade, she said.

“I love Eastern but this is just something that, in my mind, needs to be adjusted,” Cankar said.

Stephen Di Benedetto can be reached at 581-7942 or at sdibenedetto@eiu.edu.

First page of survey that Amanda Poffinbarger sent out to students. (Courtesy of Amanda Poffinbarger)

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