In Teaching Assistance, John Andrews proposes five questions that instructors should ask themselves to organize their thinking about preparing for a course:
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How should the students be changed by this course, what will they know or be able to do that they don’t know already?
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How will you know whether the changes you want have actually happened?
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What readings or experiences will help the students make these changes?
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What classroom activities will best support these changes?
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How should these goals be communicated to students?
Please help us expand this section by sending your own materials for consideration for inclusion.
Overview of this Section:
- Goals: ways to think about the changes in our students that might be expected in an intro course.
- Integrating goals: ideas for integrating course goals, syllabus, and measurement.
- From goals to outcomes to rubrics: ideally you should be able to translate your goals into measurable outcomes, possible defined in terms of rubrics.
- Selecting materials: suggestions for incorporating various types of print and electronic materials.
- Copyright issues: ground rules for reproducing and distributing materials.
- Creating a syllabus: checklist for contents of a syllabus.
- Sample syllabi: what some of your colleagues are using for their syllabi.
- Graphic Syllabi: adding graphics and content maps can help your students understand how your course is organized.
- Office Hours: we all hold office hours, but getting students to attend them can be a bit trickier.
- Rubrics are a way to make expectations for parts of the course clear to students, helping them to produce better work and also saving time for the instructor in giving feedback.
- First day of class: goals for the critical first meeting.
- Learning names: practical tips for those with less than perfect memories.
- Student evaluations: a frightening prospect for many new teachers, some tips for anticipating them from the beginning of the course.
- Anticipating problems: some problem areas that may come up, with suggestions for how to deal with them.
- Avoid a common mistake: fascinating social science research suggests that many faculty members send the wrong messages to their students, stressing problems rather than positive behavior.
Source:
Andrews, John. Teaching Assistance: A Handbook of Teaching Ideas, quoted in Teaching at the Ohio State University: A Handbook. Office of Faculty and TA Development. 29 January 2008 <http://ftad.osu.edu/Publications/TeachingHandbook/>
Update: June 1, 2010
Author: John Immerwahr