To address the 2019 theme "creativity' for UQ Teaching and Learning Week we highlighted some of the innovative teachers who enhance student learning in UQ's Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences.

Q&A with Dr Jacqui Bond 

Dr Bond teaches within UQ's School of Pharmacy
1. What kind of innovative teaching and learning practices do you incorporate?

It depends on whether the aim is memorisation or understanding. When it comes to teaching foundational or introductory material, I like to use a wide range of approaches, all selected based on their capacity to make learning ‘sticky’. These include writing song lyrics, developing novel acronyms, finding interesting anecdotes that go beyond what is found in journals or textbooks, and engaging all the senses in class (e.g. using hand movements to recall complex chemical systems, practising tongue-tying drug names together out loud as a class). 

In terms of promoting understanding, nothing beats well-designed activities that tease out common errors and show how the content is relevant in the real-world.  (I particularly love marking assessment as it provides material for these activities.) In courses that don’t have tutorials or workshops, I devote a lot of lecture time to modelling my own problem-solving approach, talking my thinking process aloud and making notes in real-time using the visualiser so students can follow my working. This has been the strategy I’ve received the most positive feedback about.

2. How do you hope to influence the student experience at UQ?

By making all students feel ‘seen’, individually acknowledged and deeply respected.

3. What do you enjoy about teaching students? 

Intersecting with so many lives, each with their own history, and future.  

What I find most rewarding is seeing the mastery that is possible when students are both challenged and supported.

4. What are your career highlights so far?

I have not been a career academic, so have done most things in an unconventional sequence. My top three would be winning a national teaching award, being successful in obtaining a continuing appointment, and finally graduating from my PhD (which I completed in this order!).