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Contents

Acknowledgements
Foreword
Using This Resource

I. Preparing to Teach
Planning a course
--Defining Instructional Objectives
--Teaching and Learning Styles: The   Academic Culture
--Choosing and Using Instructional   Materials
--Writing a Syllabus
--Syllabus Checklist
--Using the Syllabus in Class
--Summary of Course Planning
Addressing Students' Needs
--Importance of Knowing Your   Students
--Planning Considerations
--Getting to Know Your Students
--Students of Different Backgrounds
--Students with Disabilities
--Teaching Strategies: Non-Native   Speakers of English
--Creating a Learning Environment
--Dealing with Disruptive Behavior in   the Classroom
--Common Disruptive Student   Behaviors and Possible Responses
--Dealing with Apathetic Students
--Cultural Differences for International   Instructors
--Summary of Addressing Students’   Needs
Teaching Tips
--Organizing Class
--Ways to Be Accessible Outside the   Classroom
--Six Common Non-Facilitating   Teaching Behaviors
--Wireless in the Classroom: Advice   for Faculty
--Summary of Teaching Tips

II. Teaching Methods
The First Day of Class
--When the Class Meets You
--When You Meet the Class
--Diversity the Instructor Brings to the   Classroom
--Conversing with Students with   Disabilities
--Moving Forward
--Summary of the First Day of Class
Lecturing
--Strategies for Effective Learning
--Advantages and Disadvantages of   the Traditional Lecture Method
--Enhancing Learning in Large   Classes
--Chalkboard Technique
--Writing Assignments in the Lecture
--Engaging Women in Math and   Science Courses
--Formulating Effective Questions
--Summary of Lecturing
Discussion
--Brief Overview
--The “Nuts and Bolts” of Discussion
--Facilitating Discussion of Sensitive   Issues
--Encouraging Student Contributions
--Alternative Instructional Methods
--Potential Problems in Discussions
--Summary of Discussion
Expanding Teaching Strategies
--Practical Examples
--Show and Tell
--Case Studies
--Teaching with Case Studies
--Guided Design Projects
--Brainstorming
Group Work
--General Information about Using   Groups
--Group Work in an Introductory   Science Laboratory
Science Labs
--The Role of the Lab Instructor
--What Do the Students Need to   Know?
--The First Day
--Planning and Running a Laboratory
--Safety Procedures
--Summary of Science Labs
Teaching Outside the Classroom
--Tutoring
--Office Hours
--Teaching Students to Solve   Problems
--Advising and Extracurricular   Activities
--Summary of Teaching Outside the   Classroom
Overcoming Misconceptions
--Societal Attitudes and Science   Anxiety
--Misconceptions as Barriers to   Understanding Science
--Common Difficulties and   Misunderstandings

III. Teaching-as-Research
Assessing Student Performance
--Establishing Objectives for   Assessment
--Assessment Primer
--Formulating Effective Methods of   Assessment
--Helping Students Succeed on   Assignments and Exams
--The Why and How of Tests
--Grading Lab Reports, Problem Sets,   and Exam Questions
--Grading Checklist
--Grading Specific Activities
--Grading Writing
--Summary of Assessing Student   Performance
How to Evaluate Your Own Teaching
--Evaluating Your Own Teaching
--A Note on Teaching-as-Research

IV. Appendices
Inspirational Essays
--Mathematics: The Universal   Language of Science
--Transforming Quizzes into Teaching   and Learning Tools
--Teaching My Students to Fish
--Chemistry: The Other Foreign   Language
--Teaching to Different Modes of   Learning
--Notes from a Career in Teaching
Additional Resources
Websites
Graduate Assistant Handbook Outline
--Department- and Institution-Specific   Information
--18 Questions to Have Answered

Works Cited

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I taught my first college class in 1964, at College of the Holy Names, now Holy Names University, in Oakland, CA. I knew almost nothing about teaching, did a lousy job, and was not rehired for the next semester. My last teaching position was at Indiana University at Bloomington in 2004. After the spring semester, I retired as a professor amid much praise from students, colleagues, and teaching professionals.

Over those four decades, my teaching had clearly improved. What, specifically, had I learned? Here are some lessons that I’d like to share in hopes other college instructors might benefit from some or all of them.

Teach according to your personality.

Most students possess superb radar that quickly locates phoniness in professors. Thus, every teacher has to figure out who she or he is, how best to appear before a class, and what material to teach. And, in long teaching careers, every instructor should have three-to five-year checkups and revise their dress, approach, and material as their personal values and circumstances change. Teaching is a highly individual endeavor, and each instructor should work according to what personally feels most comfortable.
I went to graduate school at the University of California-Berkeley in the 1960s, and came out of that era and ethos believing that instructors should befriend students and dress like them. So I wore jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers. But most students were not very friendly, and my classes seemed to move at a slow, sometimes painful pace.

One day at Indiana University in the early 1970s, I was assigned to observe the class of a young teaching assistant. He met me at the classroom door dressed in a three-piece suit, tie, and polished dress shoes. I assumed that he could not relate to the students and that I would endure a long and tedious hour.

He asked the students to move the chairs from the discussion circle in which they rested to straight rows from front to back. I considered that a mistake, like his formal attire and stance in front of the class. But as he talked, with very proper diction, his excitement about the material became increasingly apparent. I looked around and saw that students were paying close attention and taking notes. When he paused and requested questions, many hands went up. The students asked good questions, he responded well, and then returned to his lecture. That format continued for about 20 minutes, after which he summarized his talk and told the students to write answers to some questions that he handed out.

As part of my job as observer, I asked the instructor, with about 15 minutes remaining in the period, to leave the room so I could discuss his teaching with the students. As soon as he left, the students spontaneously began to praise him. I was skeptical: “Wasn't he too formal? Do you really relate to someone like that in a three-piece suit?” But indeed they did – even though most of the men wore torn T-shirts and the women had on tie-dyed outfits. They truly liked and respected his enthusiasm for the material.

That experience overturned many of my prejudices about teaching. I decided to teach more in line with my personality. Although I wasn’t a suit-and-tie person, I wasn’t as laid back as my appearance implied. I felt most comfortable in front of a class in pressed slacks, collared shirts, and loafers. I also tried to teach material that I cared about deeply rather than literary works that the English department recommended. (Fortunately, my boss encouraged my excursions.)

My classes became livelier, and my student evaluations improved greatly. I had learned a crucial lesson.

Hand out complete syllabi and course instructions the first day.

From my Berkeley background in the 1960s, I also did not believe in elaborate syllabi and course instructions. Instead, during the first classes in a course, the students and I would agree on what we would do and how we would do it. Yet I came to see that such an approach resulted in much confusion among students and wasted time for me answering logistical questions like, “What's the policy on late papers?” I realized that the ideal was interfering with learning.

Over the years, my initial handouts increased in size but also provided a reference guide to all aspects of the course. During my last decade of teaching, I noticed that many students wrote on course evaluations comments like, “I always knew what was going on and what I had to do.” I took that as a compliment – and a reinforcement that I'd been right to abandon my original approach.

Vary your teaching methods. Nothing bores students – and teachers – as quickly as relentless lecturing. A close second is relentless, yet aimless, class discussions. After much trial and error in my early years of teaching (my errors and the students’ trials), I concluded that mini-lectures coupled with focused discussions worked best for me. In the process, however, I found that one of my key challenges was encouraging class participation.

Calling upon people with their hands raised usually produced comments from the same five or six highly verbal or chatterbox students and frequent hostility from the taciturn majority. But randomly calling on students did not work well either; some students felt that I was “picking on” them.

I decided one day to have every student bring a question on the reading assignment to the next class, but that produced many questions scribbled quickly, and without much thought, immediately before the class began. I then modified the format and asked students to write single-paragraph answers to their questions. That approach produced much better questions as well as coherent answers.

I then tweaked the format and asked students to make two copies of their questions and answers and to hand in one before class. I then ordered what they’d given me according to topics and used that order to guide classroom interactions. I asked each student not to give her or his answer until the class had discussed the question. On occasion, I also assembled students in groups of five or six to ask other members of the group their questions, or to make up new questions and answers and then ask the class.

The surprise element of the “Q-and-A papers” was that some students, particularly shy or reticent ones, participated in class discussion despite their inclination not to, and they seemed to enjoy the experience. I recall one young woman telling me at the end of a course, “I’m graduating this semester, and I talked more in this class than all my other classes at Indiana combined. Thank you.”

Don’t take attendance.

I’ve always assumed that universities are not high schools and that college students are adults, attending class as their choice. In my course handout, I wrote: “If you choose to use the time of the class meeting to do something else, that is your decision... You are responsible, however, for understanding the material done in class during your absence, and I will grade your work in the course under the assumption that you have mastered that material. However, if you miss class because of illness, I will help you make up the work.”

An equally important reason for my policy was that otherwise I’d have to deal with many students who, having no desire to be in the room, would shuffle papers, pop gum, snore loudly, and engage in other distracting behaviors. They changed the ambience of the classroom, and I decided that I much preferred to teach a smaller number of volunteers than a large army of conscripts.

In addition, not requiring attendance allowed students to vote with their feet on my teaching. If attendance dwindled, I realized that I needed to rethink the section of the course where students did not come – or, on several occasions, the whole course. But if they showed up in large numbers, I knew that I was doing a good job.

Take a hard line on late and incomplete work. I always believed that turning in late work or receiving an “Incomplete” grade are special privileges that should be reserved for extraordinary occasions – when students had serious physical or psychological problems. I also required any student in that situation to have a signed letter from his or her doctor, stipulating the nature of the student’s illness and when the physician thought the student would be well enough to finish the work.

I took a letter grade off for late work – including missed quizzes, exams, and Q-and-A assignments – without a medical excuse. I know the policy seemed punitive to some students, but I had to be fair to other class members who turned in their work when it was due.

Ironically, the people who complained most about the policy were not my students, but a number of my colleagues. They said that some of their students were asking them for “extensions” and even “Incompletes” in courses so that they could get their work for me in on time. I suggested to my colleagues that they switch to my policy.

Give students lots of options for major assignments and exams.

During my early years of teaching, I realized that the best student work came out of a student’s real interests. If I assigned a narrow essay on a specific topic, a few class members wrote it exceptionally well, others earned good grades on it, but many students did indifferent or poor work. If, instead, I encouraged students to identify their own topics connected to the course and to pursue them with my help, many more students wrote good papers. My assignments remained analytic approaches to the subject matter, however, and one group of students still underachieved on papers and exams – even though they had demonstrated in class and office discussions that they thoroughly understood the material.

At the time, in the 1970s, the research on left-brain and right-brain dominance became public knowledge. I decided to allow students to substitute some creative papers and take-home exams for analytic ones. For example, when we read John Dos Passos’ U.S.A. in a course, students could write a creative paper – equal in length and difficulty to the analytic ones – using one of Dos Passos’ techniques, like a biographical portrait of an historical figure in the style of Dos Passos, or a “Camera Eye” personal commentary on an American scene of the period. Or students could suggest another type of creative paper or take-home exam connected to the material. While only about a fifth of the students took the creative option, most of the results were excellent and continued to be so in subsequent years. Moreover, I could reward the right-brain-dominant students with the grades that they deserved.

Get out of the way.

The best teaching occurs when students take something that the instructor has set up and then develop it on their own. Sometimes that occurs in class discussion when students seize a topic that the instructor mentions and start to argue about it in a focused and productive manner. The instructor is often tempted to jump in, but the best thing is to shut up and get out of the way.

It took me many years to realize that less can be more in teaching – that, in the end, the instructor must disappear from the learning process, and students must learn on their own. I don’t know why it took me so long to realize that simple truth; as an undergraduate and even as a graduate student, I mainly learned on my own. Indeed, I came to believe that the main point of course work was to direct me to the library and show me how to use what I found there.

The single best course I taught in 40 years was the last one: an undergraduate class on Beat Generation writers. I finally understood that my job was to set up interesting classes in ways that encouraged students to explore the subject matter. Almost every student rose to the challenge: they built upon the assigned works that we discussed and then went off and studied the writers and topics that most interested them.

One student discovered that the papers of the Beat poet Diane DiPrima were in the University of Louisville library, and she traveled there to examine them. She subsequently used photocopies of some of DiPrima’s drafts as illustrations for her class presentation on this writer. Many other students ended up doing superb major projects and take-home final exams, and they earned high grades in the course.