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Teaching Seminar:
Graduate Colloquia and Teaching Seminars for Fall 2008-Spring 2009
We offer a one credit hour teaching seminar during every fall semester, to help our graduate teaching assistants with their teaching duties. The seminar meets for 90 minutes every other week, and is mandatory for all incoming graduate students.
During each meeting we discuss a different topic that is relevant to teaching. Examples of past topics are listed below. The format involves much discussion: the topic of the day is introduced by the seminar leaders, possibly through a text that describes a sample scenario; the participants discuss the topic in small groups; the groups present results of their discussion; and we conclude with a summary of all points addressed.
The seminar is organized by 3 faculty members of the department, Professors
Adriana Aceves, Monika Nitsche and Kristin Umland, who lead the seminar with the help of more experienced TAs that have participated in the past. These TAs work with the faculty in determining the success of past seminars on a given topic and how to improve them. They share their ideas with the incoming students and form an important contact and support person for them.
As part of our goal to better train our students for what will most likely be a significant part of their future jobs the imcoming students are also required to observe senior instructors as well as fellow teaching assistants and think about how they can use the techniques of others to improve their own.
SAMPLE TEACHING SEMINAR TOPICS
What to do on the first day of class: first impressions, setting the tone
Grading: how and why do we assign, write and grade homeworks, quizzes and exams
Working in groups: establishing student communication and presentation skills
Policies: what are they, how to deal and prevent cheating, etc
A model lecture: students jointly prepare a lecture on a chosen topic, present it, videotape the presentation, determine a pre and post tes to evaluate the effectiveness, and discuss the presentation in a follow-up meeting
Motivation and teaching strategies: how do we motivate students to perform and learn their best?
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