Top Ten Tips for Teaching Undergraduates
Unless you are employed in a purely research job (and sometimes even
then) at some stage you will find yourself teaching a room full of
undergraduates. This can be quite daunting and, depending on your
institution, the training given to prepare for this might be minimal.
These top ten tips are the first in a three-part series of tips, and are
intended for new, inexperienced university teachers. The next two in
the series will be on teaching a course outside your area of specialism
and teaching a research-led module.
Some hourly paid postgraduate tutors are thrown into classroom
situations with barely a day's training, so it is important that you
take every opportunity you can to learn about the theory and practice of
post-compulsory education. It may sound obvious, but it is easy to get
so bogged down in your own subject area and teaching requirements that
these training courses are easily forgotten. Many universities demand
that their new permanent staff take a diploma in education, but if you
are offered the opportunity to do this before you get a permanent job,
do so. It will save time later and make you feel more confident going
into the classroom.
Teaching methods for a lecture are very different to a seminar,
tutorial, workshop or laboratory session. If you have an hour with your
students make sure you know what subject and what sort of teaching you
will be expected to provide. In some ways lecturing is a lot easier
because the teacher is in total control, but it is also unsatisfactory
because there is no way of knowing whether students are learning
anything in a lecture! Once you know what is required, try new things
too: you don't have to stick with what your lecturers taught you at
undergraduate level!
Knowing the layout of the room you are using is a great bonus to a
teacher. Can you move the chairs around to run different sorts of group
activities? What equipment is there at your disposal? Is there any
natural light? For example, breaking up into small groups is very
difficult in a tiered lecture theatre, so make sure you know what your
room will be like before planning your session.
Teachers in training are taught to write minute-by-minute lesson
plans for every session: try doing this as an exercise. Do not worry if
you don't stick to your plan exactly, but being well prepared with
materials and tasks will always work better than simply leaving it to
chance.
One of the factors that makes a good teacher is the personal touch.
An easy way to display this is by learning your students' names as soon
as possible. An obvious way to do this is to ask them to sit in the same
seats for a few weeks (they may do this without you asking them). This
will obviously be easier with a seminar group of 8 rather than a large
lecture room of 100 but still make an effort to learn as many names as
possible.
A nervous or inexperienced teacher will often find that he or she
ends up talking too much in seminar/workshop situations to avoid having
periods of silence in class. It is important to learn early on that
telling students the answer is not your role; you need facilitate
learning not force it. This is easier said than done of course, but with
every group the dynamic is different. Encouraging students to believe
that they are stakeholders in the learning process is an important part
of this.
When you are not the person who has designed a course it is difficult
to work out the overall intentions of its creator, but now that most
courses require official documentation it is possible to refer to the
learning outcomes. These are achievements that every student who passes
the course ought to have attained. But they can also help teachers frame
their lessons because they tell you what students need to get from
their time on the course. While it may feel like learning by ticking
boxes, it is important to provide students with this information and
skills base so they come away from the course with a strong sense of
achievement.
It is a common mistake made by new teachers to try to cram too much
into each session. You will find that 60 or 90 minutes goes incredibly
quickly and however much you have planned for your students to do, half
it! It is much better to allow time for digressions and student-led
learning rather than racing through an over-structured lesson desperate
to try to cover everything you have set. Flexibility is vital.
It can be difficult to gauge how well a session has gone especially
if your students are quite and unresponsive. Your department will want
you to collect student feedback in order to audit the overall student
satisfaction with their course. However, you can collect informal
feedback too; ask your students whether you pitched the session at the
right level, whether they learned anything, and if so what. Ask them
about practical matters such as whether you are speaking loudly and
slowly enough. But be prepared for them to be brutally honest!
Being observed by a more senior member of staff is really useful and
reassuring for a junior teacher. While it may seem nerve-wracking, the
feedback provided can help you to improve your teaching methods
considerably. And it is also useful to observe colleagues' classes. You
won't have attended an undergraduate class since your own undergraduate
days, and then of course were not observing the teacher's methods and
practice! So make the most of every opportunity to develop your own
teaching by taking on ideas from your colleagues.
With Best Wishes...........
Deepali Agravat
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