Getting ready...

It's that time again! Summer grades have been posted, Fall syllabi have been copied (or preferably posted online - save a tree!), lesson plans are ready to go.

What? You mean you haven't done any of this?

Getting into the swing of things for Fall can be difficult, whether you're wrapping up from teaching a summer course or are coming back from vacation. But now is the time to get all of that work done, as a well-prepared course is sure to run much more smoothly than one you've jumped into on the first day back. (For you vacationers, think of the difference between a well-prepared dive and a belly flop!)

So here's your back-to-school checklist:

1) Prepare your syllabi. Use the handy syllabus guidelines found here. If you have questions, or just need another set of eyes to look things over, email your syllabus to us at info@ctle.utah.edu. A trained consultant will review your syllabus and send you feedback.

2) Check out your classroom. It's just awful to get stuck with a classroom that doesn't have what you need. Check out the rooms you will be teaching in and make sure they have the seating capacity, room arrangement, and technological support you need. Don't just look to be sure everything's there - play with the lights and the audiovisual equipment to make sure everything is in working order. Figure out who you need to call to fix things last minute or change the temperature in the room. If things are really bad, find out if there are any other rooms available that better fit your needs.

3) Prepare your lesson plans. I always like to go into the new semester with at least a few weeks of lesson plans ready to go. Lesson plans are important to get you off on the right foot, and keep everything running smoothly all semester. Don't know how to create a lesson plan? See our website for some helpful tips. Also, be sure to work in a couple of ice breakers so you can get to know your students early on in the semester.

4) Prepare your course website. Just about every course has some online materials, even if it's just a link to the syllabus and reading list. Get your website ready and ask a colleague or one of our staff members to review the site and make sure it's easy to use. If your course is fully online, make sure you have someone tour through it and give you feedback before it becomes available to students. Don't know how to put together a website? Check out the Technology Assisted Curriculum Center (TACC) - they offer beginner workshops and one-on-one help.

5) Send a welcome email to your students. Tell them a bit about yourself. Let them know if they need to prepare anything for the first day (e.g., buy the textbook and other materials, print the syllabus, visit the course website). Welcome them to thte course and let them know how excited you are to meet them all!

6) Breathe. The beginning of the semseter, especially Fall, can feel a bit overwhelming. But with a little preperation, you can actually walk into the first day of class calm, cool, and collected.

If you need more help getting ready for the first day, register for our workshop Preparing for the First Day (faculty only), or for the Annual TA Teaching Symposium (graduate students and undergraduate TAs only). All workshops are free for University of Utah faculty, students, and staff.

Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/52636849@N00/ / CC BY 2.0

Need some rejuvinating?

Doesn't this look refreshing?

Don't you wish there was a way to do this mentally? A way to have some fun and come back refreshed - but with no guilt and no catching up to do?

We at CTLE spent all day yesterday at an off-site retreat. We didn't spend a lot of money - one of our team members hosted us at his home. It wasn't all fun and games - we worked hard all day! But because we enjoy one another's company and what we do, we were able to have a really productive day that left us (I think I can speak for everyone here) refreshed and inspired. Although we always walk away with a lot of work to do, it's also with a renewed sense of purpose and excitement, as well as a greater appreciation of one another.

So how can you apply this to your teaching? Why not have a teaching retreat? I think it would be a great idea for folks who teach similar classes to get together, even if it's just once a year, and share new ideas, try out activities, and work together to find solutions to problems. It might be even more exciting to get together folks who teach in different disciplines - it would be a great chance to learn from one another, and you likely have more in common than you might think.

Can't get everyone together in the same location at the same time? Why not hold the meeting online, taking advantage of the online tools available to us, such as Wimba? This would allow everyone to join from wherever they happen to be (even if it's at home in pjs), and to try out new technologies. Although Wimba can be used with a phone or through text-based conversation, why not buy a webcam (they're fairly inexpensive these days) so you can see one another (although pjs are not recommended in this case).

Don't have a group to meet with? Why not hold your own personal teaching retreat? Clear a full day on your calendar to surround yourself with all of the notes and resources you've been meaning to review. Create an agenda so you don't find yourself tuning out and checking email, listening to the radio, etc. Set goals for the next semester or year (e.g., incorporate at least one new activity into each class, try a new technological teaching tool) and devise strategies to help you reach those goals. Take time to create a group of peers so next year you won't be all on your own (you can try searching the internet for chat rooms, listserves, existing groups in your area...)!

Remember, sometimes you have to take time out to set goals, reprioritize, and rejuvinate interest in order to be really effective at what you do. This is time well spent!

Photo courtesy of bbum.

In the spring, an instructor's fancy lightly turns to...

...thoughts of the next semester.

Although many of you probably won't be teaching again until the Fall, I am starting to think about preparing my class for this summer, in addition to the two classes (one a new prep) that I will be teaching in the Fall semester. Getting ready to teach a course to a new group of students, even if it is one I've been teaching for almost a decade (!), is both exciting and overwhelming. I start to madly make lists of all the things I want to change, what worked and what didn't, what students said in their evaluations of the course...

Then I take a breath and think - "Okay, what are the objectives of this course?"

Well-defined course objectives always help me make those tough decisions about what material to include and what to cut (which can be hard, because there's so much neat stuff I'd like to talk about! And shouldn't my students have the benefit of my many years of experience all wrapped up into one semester?!). Then I can move on to creating learning objectives for each lesson. This helps me decide between all the different, exciting new activities I've learned about over the past year and want to try. After all, I could use the latest, greatest new technology or the most clever approach to group work ever and have it fall completely flat because I didn't think carefully enough about the purpose it was supposed to be serving. What was the objective here? What were students supposed to get out of this, and did they understand how playing tiddly winks related to cognitive development in early childhood, or did they just have fun?

The one thing that I always try to keep in mind when creating learning objectives is that in the end they aren't really my goals, they are what I'd like my students to be able to do once they leave my classroom. They should be manageable, measurable, and action-oriented.

By manageable, I mean that I need to be careful to identify only a few objectives that can be reasonably met within the lesson or over the course of the semester. For the course as a whole, I aim for 3-5 broader objectives. Within each lesson, I try not to have any more than 3 objectives, and even then it can be hard to really feel like students have covered more than one by the end of a 50-minute session. If I've done my job right, the lesson objectives over the course of the semester should "add up" to the broader course objectives come the end.

By measurable, I mean that I should be able to assess when students have met the objectives through exams, assignments, class discussion, etc. Hopefully, students will also be able to assess their own learning, by at least being able to judge what they do and do not know about the subject at hand. So objectives worded as "The students will appreciate..", or "This course will help you understand..." don't really lend themselves to measurement. They're not specific enough. What does the student have to do to demonstrate his appreciation, or her understanding?

This is why learning objectives should be action-oriented. This means that the student knows what they should be able to DO once the lesson or course is over. For example, one of the objectives of my current course is "Students should be able to apply developmental concepts to real-world examples." To meet this course objective, in class I ask them to do things like watch a Nanny 911 video and identify the parenting style and likely long-term outcomes for the kids, or after learning about the invincibility fallacy in adolescence, generate examples of behaviors they participated in as teens that demonstrate this concept. So my lesson objectives in these examples include "You will be able to identify parenting styles and discuss their likely outcomes" and "You will be able to define "invincibility fallacy" and generate examples that illustrate your definition."

Thanks to the use of these types of learning objectives, my students feel better prepared because they know what is expected of them - they are able to focus their reading or attention in class. On my recent mid-term evaluation, they said things like: "The course is really easy to follow.", "She provides very informative lectures and also does a good job in explaining key aspects of the lecture.", and "I also think that the opening slides "by the end of this class you should..." really help to set clear objectives...I feel that I have a really good grasp on the information and material".

Did you know?

CTLE recently gave a workshop on creating lesson plans and learning objectives. If you weren't able to attend, the video of the workshop will be available soon on our website.

Efficient Teaching

As I wait to hear the final word on the latest round of budget cuts, it's become quite clear that no matter what happens, we're all going to have to find ways to teach more efficiently. Some of us will likely be teaching more classes per semester, with more students, but with less support and prep time. How can we manage this increased workload without sacrificing the quality of instruction - or our sanity?

One thing that I'll be doing more of now that time (and money) is tighter is taking advantage of online tools that speed up some of the more mundane teaching tasks. I'm already using WebCT/Blackboard Vista to have students submit written work and return it to them. This practice has helped me to avoid the time it takes to collect and return work in class, and has reduced the amount of paper wasted in the process. I'm likely going to begin administering exams this way as well, which will reduce the time it takes to scan response sheets for multiple choice questions, and will allow me to easily review and grade the answers to other types of questions. Plus, many types of questions can be set to auto-grade!

I also plan to take greater advantage of the teaching resources that are sent to me (for free!) by the publishers of the textbooks I use. I've found that the quality of these supplements has greatly improved over the past few years, and the multimedia packages that are often included have allowed me to not only cut the time it takes to prep material, but also provides an engaging way to present it. Students in my classes seem to love the videos, and it's certainly the only way I can get big name researchers to "guest lecture" in my classes.

I'm also making greater use of the teaching resources that are made available through the major associations in my discipline (for me, it's the APA). Most of these types of associations provide resources for instructors and ways for instructors to share materials with one another. Especially when prepping a new class, I find it helps to see how someone else has covered the same material - it can provide a great starting place for your own lesson.

What do you do to reduce prep time or otherwise make your teaching more efficient? Please share your ideas!

*The image used in this post was created by Hobvias Sudoneighm.