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Tips marked with an * are consistent
with learning-centered teaching
Plan now for collaboration for your teaching
for next year
Before you leave for the summer or get involved in other activities,
ask a few faculty members in your department or across campus
to form a working group to improve teaching. Each member of your
group should plan to visit each other's class and offer constructive
feedback to each other. Use your group for planning ideas and
mutual support. Form your group early so that it will happen in
the fall.
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Being a better teacher
You will be a better teacher if you work to increase or improve
the following 3 aspects:
- Your understanding of the subject matter you teach, including
staying up to date in your field
- Your ability to interact with students in a meaningful way
- Your ability to design learning experience for your students
Remember you need to balance these 3 and not just concentrate
on one aspect.
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A break from classes: A time to reflect
on your teaching
A short (such as March break) break from classes give us a good
time to reflect on our teaching roles and responsibilities. Take
a little time to engage in this exercise:
- Put each course that you teach on a separate sheet of paper:
- Divide the paper into two columns and label the left side,
"What is happening or what happened?", label the right
side," "What is the meaning of what is happening?"
Some of the questions consider on the right column might be:
- Whose interests are being served?
- What assumption am I making here, what if they are not true?
- Am I meeting the larger objectives of the course, the educational
program etc, by what is happening?
- Would different perspectives, e.g. students, future employers,
university administration, etc. see different meaning in what
is happening?
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Balancing Personal and Professional
Life
As you complete the semester and hand in grades, take a little
time for personal renewal. Ask yourself these important questions:
- What do I want out of life - personally and professionally?
- What commitments am I willing to make to myself, to others,
to USP, to the community?
- How shall I allot my time and energy in response to these
commitments (knowing that there never is enough time or energy
for everything)?
Try to act on your commitments.
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Do students' evaluations of teachers relate
to anything?
This is a brief summary of some research (conducted at other
universities) on student evaluation of teachers. You draw your
own teaching implications.
- A teacher cannot buy high student evaluations just by making
the course easy. Making a course difficult need not necessarily
lower your student evaluations provided you help students to
reach your high expectations.
- There is a positive correlation between the grade the students
expect and their global evaluation of the teacher.
Possible explanations include:
- If the teacher is good, students learn more, get higher grades
and like their teacher.
- There are underlying qualities in students that cause them
to learn well, get high grades, and like their teacher.
The student evaluation questions are really measuring these
underlying qualities.
This research is discussed in Walvoord, BE and Anderson, VJ.
Effective Grading, Jossey-Bass, 1998.
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Becoming a more reflective teacher
Reflection on one's teaching is the act of thinking about the
process of teaching. To be a reflective teacher, one needs to
identify the assumptions underpinning his/her own teaching. To
be a critically reflective teacher, one should constantly question
these assumptions. An effective way to become aware of and question
these assumptions is to view the teaching practice from many different
perspectives. The most common perspective is the individual's
perspective (how that person learns and now teaches). Other important
perspectives to consider include: our students' perspectives,
our colleagues perceptions and their experiences, and also through
the scholarly literature on teaching in higher education. In order
to be more aware of the other perspectives, it is necessary to
ask for feedback from others and to discuss issues relating to
all aspects of teaching with peers and colleagues. Other people
can offer insight into concerns and come up with a fresh solution.
For more ideas of how to be a reflective teacher, see the book
in the Teaching and Learning Center by Brookfield, Becoming a
Critical Reflective Teacher.
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Finishing up the semester: a good time
for reflection
As you hand in grades, and clean out the files for the courses
you taught this semester, reflect on your teaching. Ask yourself,
and then make notes for future reference some questions.
Here are some suggestions.
- What went well with this course? Can I adapt these good ideas
to other courses?
- What did not go so well? How can I improve this?
- What improvements did I make to the course this year - you
might want to note them on your AFE
- What did I try for the first time? - Can this be written
up for an OWL award or for the Document of Innovation that the
Teaching and Learning Center coordinates?
- What were the student reactions to the course and specific
aspects of the course?
- How do you want to handle this course in the future?
Before you throw anything out, make sure you keep a copy of
your syllabi, exams, assignments, handouts, teaching learning
activities, etc., in a file for future reference.
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A guiding principle for your interactions
within students
Try to keep this in mind in all your interactions with students:
Students will forget what you say, forget what you do, but they
will never forget how you make them feel. Thanks to Ed Neal, a
faculty developer at UNC for reminding us of this important guiding
principle. Let's all try to be remembered for how well we make
people feel.
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Reflecting on successes, saving for
teaching portfolio
As the semester winds down, take some time to reflect on your
teaching this past semester. Save copies of what went particularly
well, including the syllabus, active learning exercises you developed,
assignments, projects, examples of student work, etc. Put a copy
of these examples in your teaching portfolio. Write yourself a
note about why these worked especially well, how they fit with
your teaching philosophy, how much improved it was over the previous
time you taught this course, etc. The example and your notes will
save you time when you are updating your teaching portfolio for
your annual evaluation, trying to get promoted, or looking for
another job, etc.
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*Guiding principles for good teaching
practices
All of your teaching should be consistent with seven well regarded
principles for good teaching practices (the Seven Principles for
Good Practice in Undergraduate Education Chickering, Gamson, and
Barst (1989)):
- Good practice encourages student-faculty contact
- Good practice encourages cooperation among students
- Good practice encourages active learning
- Good practice emphasize time on task
- Good practice communicates high expectations
- Good practice respects diverse talents and ways of learning
Ask yourself, how much of my teaching meets these good practice
standards? Collectively, ask what percentage of the educational
program (s) you are involved in meets these good practice standards?
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Working smarter not harder
As I read over many of the innovation abstracts being submitted
for the Document of Innovations, I am struck that many faculty
have worked smarter not harder. Take some time to think about
ways that you can work smarter . Often technology can help you
work smarter. For example, putting your course materials on ERes
can save you from recopying them, starting an exam pool on Blackboard
can help you see how you tested for a concept in the past and
modify it, or using some of the tools on Word or PowerPoint to
create materials for class presentations or assignments. Ask some
of your more technologically empowered peers for tips on how to
do what you want to do. I recommend learning how to use Blackboard
and playing around with it to see how it can be your course design
tool, even if you are only planning a small distance or computer
aided component. There is a good tutorial for it also.
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*Making your students responsible for their
own learning
The one facet we seem to agree on regarding student-centered
learning is having the students take responsibility for their
own learning. Throughout your career, make this your mantra- what
I am doing to help my students take responsibility for their own
learning? The appropriate answers will vary with the level of
the student, the type of learning that needs to take place and
how responsible the students are. For example, faculty who teach
students who are beginners (first year students , or novice professional
students) need more modeling to facilitate students knowing how
to take responsibility for their learning.
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Helping students to make the most of
college through meaningful interactions with faculty
Richard Light, a professor at Harvard, has written a book about
making the most of the college experience. Through his research
he has found that one of the best predictors of college success
is having meaningful interactions with faculty outside of class.
We should encourage students to talk to us outside of class, but
students are often afraid or uncomfortable to come to office hours
or make an appointment. Therefore, it is up to the faculty to
initiate such dialogue.
Within the next few weeks, invite each student (or as many as
you can) to speak to you individually in your office. You might
ask them to make an appointment with you during office hours to
talk about the course or just themselves. This should not be in
relation to an assignment or test. Try to get to know each student
a little to let them know that you are available if they want
to talk to you further.
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Preparing for your annual performance evaluation
Here are some tips to make your annual performance evaluation
a meaningful, feedback opportunity for you:
- Think about what areas you want to receive feedback on.
- Develop specific questions to help guide the discussion to
help you to improve.
- Be clear about what your chair's expectations are of you and
how you can achieve your objectives.
- Find out what is the expected standard so that you know how
to achieve it next year.
If you need someone to talk to after your annual performance
evaluation, I can be a confidential, somewhat objective person,
or talk to a friend who does not work here.
Good Luck.
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Preparing for AFE's
As you prepare your annual faculty evaluation keep the following
in mind:
- This report is not the time for modesty. Summarize your achievements
and accomplishments as if your mother or lover were talking
about you. Include as much objective data as you can.
- Did you incorporate any ideas learned at the August Teaching
and Learning Center workshops? If so, let me know in a brief
email and I will send you a gold sticker to place on your certificate
of attendance. Place a copy of this certificate in your AFE.
We will issue certificates for all workshops in the future (including
the January 8th and 10th ones) that are more than 2 hours long.
Document your own professional development (either internal
or external) as part of what you did.
- Think about what you want to discuss with your chair before
the meeting. Do you want to discuss how your courses went, your
plans for the future, etc.
- Make this a time that is useful for you. Seek feedback on
specific areas for improvement or where you think you have improved
since last year. Talk about how you want to grow or new challenges
for the future.
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Balancing Work/Life
Periodically it is a good time to think about balance in our
lives. The Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology
and Religion has a great web site relating to balance. web site:
http://web.sbu.edu/vitality/faculty_vitality/index.html
I especially liked their profile of faculty with high well being.
Included on the list as important factors for high well being
are collegial support and career acceptance. Check out the site
for more great insights and some research findings. We all should
be very proud of how much we achieved this year.
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Gathering data now to support your education
strengths
Think about how you want to present your teaching this semester
on your annual review. Do you want to claim that your teaching
improved in a specific area, or the students' critical thinking
skills improved, or that they became more self-directed in their
learning? What every you want to say is much stronger with some
hard data from your students. What data do you need to support
your claim? Try to incorporate the data collection into a meaningful
activity for the students. For example, you might ask the students
to reflect on how they improved in a specific area that you emphasized
as a question on your final exam and count it as 5-10% of the
exam. Do you want to conduct a course-specific evaluation or collect
data on a survey about attitudes? Plan to collect these needed
data now before it becomes impossible to gather it after the semester
is over. Also if you are planning to change some aspect next year,
collect data from your students now to use as a base line to measure
change against for the future.
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End of the year time to reflect to improve
A graduation time, is a good time to reflect on your own teaching
strengths and weaknesses. You might want to classify your own
strengths and weaknesses into a 2x3 matrix. The 2 columns are
the strengths and weaknesses. The three rows would be 1) the context
of teaching, the content covered 2) your relationships with your
students and 3) insights into yourself as a teacher. Think about
making some changes in the weaknesses column. However, these changes
should be consistent with the other cells of the matrix.
The idea of the three categories came from Sandstrom as discussed
in an article in the April 2004 Teaching Professor newsletter.
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Helping students to interview well for
jobs
As this is the season for faculty recruitment, I have been part
of lots of interviews and observed many candidate presentation.
In my opinion a characteristic that distinguishes the better candidates
from the rest is enthusiasm and passion for what they are doing.
When you are working with students on their job interview skills,
try to get the students to be able to show their love for their
field in a professional manner. This love can be demonstrated
with enthusiasm and not in a reserved and understated manner while
still appearing quite professional.
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Maintaining good records of the materials
you produced or used for your courses
As the semester ends, be sure you have your records of all the
material you produced or used for each course. Make a file or
disk for every course and be sure everything from the course is
contained in the file. A print copy in a binder of everything
is also a good idea. You will want to refer to these materials
when you teach the course again or to modify them or other courses.
If you put materials on Blackboard, archive it on Blackboard and
save it on your own computer. Make sure you have a copy of all
materials you placed on ERes.
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Finding how what is working and why with
your teaching
Many of us are proud of what we do in our teaching, yet we may
not be able to explain why it is working. Some may have made innovations,
but are not sure if this has led to improved learning. In order
to explain how and why something is working or to see if an innovation
mattered, we need to collect specific information directed toward
determining the answer. As you plan courses think about the type
of data you would need to answer these types of questions. Then
think about how and when you can gather this information. You
may want to ask a reflective question on an exam, conduct a very
simple survey with the students or ask a peer to do an directed
observation. Once you have analyzed your data you will have a
better idea what is working and why.
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What do students want in lab instructors.
A survey of 538 students enrolled in an introductory, science,
lab course responded to the top things they want in a lab instructor
(a TA) are:
- grade labs correctly and fairly
- is well prepared for lab
- thoroughly understands what is going on in the lab
- is able to help the students understand what is going on
in the lab
- explains and demonstrates the necessary lab techniques
- shows respect for students
Most of these can be translated into all course instructors regardless
of the type of course. They all seem like common sense and certainly
something that is within our reach. Try to achieve each of these
characteristics in each encounter we have with our students
Data come from Herrington, DG & Nakleh, MB. What defines
effective chemistry laboratory instructor? JChemEd, Oct.
2003, 80 (10) 1197-1205.
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Increasing student satisfaction and
decreasing student anxiety in your course through knowledge of
dates for evaluation.
A recent study of domains that student like and those that cause
them anxiety found an inverse relationship between satisfaction
and anxiety on items that tell students what to expect and what
they will do. While this finding was true for all levels of students,
it was the truest for undergraduate students. Giving students
a course syllabus, dates for tests and deadlines for assignments
in advance, and having specific grading criteria outlined in advance
were the items valued the highest by students compared to domains
that were valued less including those that focused on content
of lectures and clear outlines of lectures. Further the result
of this study found that students are frequently less concerned
about the content of a course, what they will be tested on, or
how they will be tested, or how they will be tested than they
were about receiving advance information related to what to expect
and when in terms of evaluations. The study was conducted at a
school where the students carry a high number of credits per term
and often feel time pressured.
The study was reported by DeRoma and Slater, Student Preferences
for specific domains of course structure. Journal of Student-Centered
Learning, 2005, 2: 131-137.
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Reviewing how the courses went as you finish
the semester
As you hand in grades, take a little time to review how your
courses went and write some notes to yourself. Try to analyze
where the students had difficulty-identify the concepts they had
trouble learning, the assignments or activities they seemed to
have a hard time understanding or doing, etc. Look at the directions
you gave students for exams or assignments and check that they
were clear. Finally record what went especially well. As you revise
your courses for the next time you offer these courses, these
notes will help jog your memory.
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Getting your students to appreciate you
Some schools use a voluntary thank your professor activity where
students can write notes to their professors to thank them for
any number of things. It is a way to show appreciation for a professor.
When people analyze what students thank professors for the most,
the characteristic most frequently valued is that the professor
showed they cared about the student as a person and as a learner.
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Making sense of your teaching evaluations
Once you get your evaluations of your teaching from your students,
share the evaluations with a trusted colleague. Your colleague
will help you see the balance among the comments, help you gain
a different perspective and probably give you praise for the things
you did well. Together formulate a plan for improvement.
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Getting some worthwhile feedback from
your students on something you tried this semester
If you tried something new during the course, perhaps a new activity/assignment,
implemented a different type of policy or changed how you taught
something, you might want to gather some quick feedback from the
students. You might ask the students to list 3 things they learned
or 3 things they got out of the activity/content, etc. You can
also ask them for their opinion of the activity or the policy.
In general if you are seeking feedback, only ask about what you
want to know or are willing to change. For example, it is not
worth asking students if the time of the course or if the room
was acceptable because you cannot do anything about those 2 things.
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Helping students to have worthwhile learning
experience
The students who presented at the TableTalk, Amy Concilio (Biology),
Jill Smethurst (PharmD.), and Samera Merali (PharmD.), all agreed
that meaningful learning experiences derive from faculty who show
an interest in them as human beings, who show that they care about
them. Many of their learning experiences related to out of class
interactions they had with the faculty, when they interacted 1:1
as people.
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Learning names of students early in the
class
Draw a small box in front of the last name of your students on
the class list prior to class. During the first class, divide
the students into groups of threes and ask them to introduce themselves
to one another and share some information about themselves. Then
ask students within groups to introduce each other, e.g. a, introduces
b, b introduces c, c introduces a and talks about them.
As soon as the person is introduced, find his/her name on your
class roster. Write down any nicknames or how to pronounce the
name. Look directly at the student being introduced and silently
repeat his/her name. Once the introduction is over, address the
introduced person by name and ask a question to that person. Acknowledge
the student by name after the comment and use the name again asking
that person to introduce the next person. Try to use each person's
name at least 2-3 times. During the rest of the class make an
effort to call on each student by name whenever you can.
Place a dot in box relating to the location in the room where
the student is sitting, top-back, bottom-front, left, right. Most
students will sit the same place next class, especially since
they either were sitting with their friends or have now gotten
to know some students in the room better. Learning student names
helps students to think you regard them as individuals and with
respect. Students will know there is no hiding in your class.
This idea comes from David Howle (2005) The Best of the Teaching
Professor, p.32 Magna Publishers.
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What data from your courses to put into the
file for your annual review or for promotion/tenure
As you clean out your files from your teaching at then end of
a semester, make a copy of some of the materials and put them
in your annual review/promotion/tenure folder.
Good things to place in this folder include:
- An assignment. teaching/learning activity, examination that
you really worked on and improved as result of feedback you got
- A creative way of teaching or assessing that you feel worked
well
- A few student products that shows how much the student learned
- The summary of the student evaluation forms
Joan Tarloff suggested these ideas at the preparing for promotion
and tenure workshop she gave.
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How to compliment a student
When you are trying to compliment a student, don't tell him/her
that(s) he is really bright. Instead tell him/her that you see how
hard he/she is working really hard or achieving great results. Being
smart may encourage people to take the easy road without working
hard.
Todd Zakrajeck suggested this idea.
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Check out these new sites for information
for you and your students
In the last TableTalk, Jacquie Smith demonstrated new electronic
resources. One is called SciVee. It can be found at www.scivee.tv/
It is like the utube only for scientists. Anyone can post science
information onto it. Currently authors of published papers are doing
a little summary of their research on the sites. It is a great way
for scientists to share their ideas and join a virtual worldwide
community of like minded people.
The other one she demonstrated is the public library of science.
This is a referenced online, free journal for the biological sciences
and medicine. You might consult publishing there as well as reading
it.
For more information in these resources, contact Jacquie.
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A time to reflect on what you learned
If we are a learning community, then all participants, faculty
and students should be learning. At the end of the semester, it
is a good time to reflect on what you learned from your students;
about teaching; or about how you interact with students. How can
you use this new knowledge to improve what you do in the future?
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