A String of Pearls – What I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I Started Teaching

Dee U. Silverthorn, Ph.D.
University of Texas at Austin

• DO develop clear guidelines about what constitutes an excused absence for a class or exam and spell it out in the syllabus. DON’T be shy about requiring documentation for a death, illness, or other family crisis. This will help you avoid the “dead grandmother syndrome” that peaks right around exam time. (For a humorous description of this phenomenon, see Mike Adam’s essay at www.math.toronto.edu/mpugh/DeadGrandmother.pdf)

Decide in advance how you will handle makeup tests for excused absences. In my class, I give cumulative tests, so the final exam is optional for students with a B and required for students with a C or less. If someone has an excused absence for a test, they must take the comprehensive final exam, which then counts for 50% of their semester grade. (The final is 40% of the grade for other students.) This policy has almost eliminated the problem of absences for a test.

• DO write your tests sufficiently in advance that you (and ideally someone else) can proof them. Number each page and check the page and question numbers for duplicates and omissions. Write the key before giving the exam; it’s a good way to find your errors. For free-response questions, restrict the amount students can write by giving them an answer box.
• DO be consistent in your grading. The students talk to each other and you’ll have a rebellion on your hands if half the class gets credit for an answer that you counted wrong for the other half.
• DO develop a grading rubric before you start to grade. Then look at 5-10 random student answers to see how well the answers match your rubric. A revision of the rubric may be necessary. As you grade, make notes of which answers you give partial credit for and how much credit each partially correct answer gets. If you are grading a large number of tests, this step is essential to maintain consistency.
• DON’T post a test key until you have finished grading the tests. Early posting means early protests. If you are giving multiple-choice exams that are graded by computer, look at the item analysis to decide if you will throw out a question or allow multiple correct answers.
• DON’T hand tests back until you are ready to dismiss the class. No one will hear a word you say once they have their tests in their hands. If you want to talk about the correct answers, do it before you give the tests back.

• DO require written challenges to grading. This makes the students think through why they believe they should get credit. Often you will uncover their misconceptions in their written challenges.

An efficient and fair process for students to cite or challenge ambiguous or otherwise unanswerable questions (no, or more than one, correct answer) is to add a last page to an exam for this purpose, with instructions to explain the reason for the challenge.  You can tear off the pages and collate them, which is especially helpful if you have a team-taught or large class.

Cheating

• One way to prevent plagiarism if you are assigning the equivalent of a term paper is to require the students to do some type of oral presentation (a poster or brief talk) in which they can be questioned. It is also helpful to change the topics for these assignments from semester to semester. In my lab course, that means we rotate experiments from year to year.
• Another strategy is to require students to turn in the title page or first page of each article or book cited. I have students write annotated bibliographies for their projects as a way to force them to start their research early, and I had a serious problem with plagiarism of the article abstracts. Once I required students to turn in the title pages with the abstracts, the plagiarism all but disappeared. 
• How can you find the source if you suspect a paper is plagiarized? Many institutions subscribe to software or web sites that will help with this task. An easier way is to find a sentence or phrase that you suspect has been lifted from another source and copy it into a Google search box with quotes around it. You will then find any online resources that match the quote. I caught one student who made up a citation and “wrote” his bibliography annotation by lifting a paragraph from a professor’s website. Here are some helpful resources for educating students about plagiarism:

          Preventing plagiarism:
www.lib.utexas.edu/services/instruction/faculty/plagiarism/preventing.html

If you suspect cheating, you should do whatever you can to stop it (take away notes, move someone) but you should always let the suspect(s) finish the exam. If possible, have someone else in the room to help proctor the exam and ask the second person to witness any suspicious activity. You may not search a student’s personal belongings or person without their explicit permission.

DO Know the Rules and Ethics

Some of these will vary by institution but others are universal.

• Know your institution’s policies on handling students with disabilities, particularly those that require special classroom or testing accommodations. Some students are allowed double time for tests (unless speed is one of the skills being tested) or must have a low-distraction environment. You usually receive a written notification from the office for students with disabilities that spells out what special considerations a student needs, and you must meet those accommodations, even if it is inconvenient.
• The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) governs the privacy of student records and academic performance. If a student is over 18, you cannot talk to Mom and Dad about their child unless you have explicit permission from the child. If Mom and Dad get nasty, refer them to the Dean.
• Know your institution’s resources for students with emotional or psychological problems. Where can you send students who are depressed or suicidal? You should also know the institution’s recommendations or rules for handling in-class disturbances. Who do you call when a student who just failed your test puts his fist through the glass door to the classroom?
• Most schools have a sexual harassment policy. In general, you should not socialize with students until they are no longer your students. But sexual harassment works both ways, and students who become obsessed with you can be very creepy. Know who to contact if a student starts stalking you.
• We recommend to new faculty that they keep their home address and phone number unlisted. Many students are night owls and you may not appreciate a 1:00 am call from the study group who can’t agree on the right answer to a question. 

Watch What You Say to Students

If you want information to spread, tell a student. Their communication network is amazing. Unfortunately, the network also can work like the whisper game, where the original message is significantly altered after being filtered through many iterations. Use discretion and never talk about one student to another except in the most general, unidentifiable terms.

Working with Teaching Assistants

Many of you reading this are at institutions that do not use graduate teaching assistants (TA). But if you are at a school where graduate students teach the laboratory classes or extra sessions associated with a lecture class (called discussions, tutorials, or recitations, depending on the school), you will find that this adds another dimension to your teaching obligations. All too often faculty members do not think about the mechanics of working with a TA. Table 1 is a set of questions that can serve as a guideline to setting expectations for your TAs.

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TAs often:
__ Attend class. Distribute handouts, take attendance, take notes. Administer quizzes.
    Operate classroom technology.
__ Run discussion sections (professor not in attendance).
__ Hold weekly office hours or review sessions prior to tests or both.
__ Meet weekly with professor and/or other TAs for the class.
__ Proctor tests, both at scheduled times and for students who need to take them at other
    times. Help document cheating.
__ Type and/or photocopy quizzes, tests, handouts.
__ Grade homework, quizzes, exams. Maintain course grade records.
__ Proofread and comment on drafts of exams. Write some exam questions.
__ Advise students on the course, on other academic matters, and on non-academic personal
    problems.
__ Assist with class e-mail and class administration.
__ In lab courses, run a lab section without the instructor present. Participate in setup and
    cleanup.
__ Accompany field trips.
__ Run library errands and sometimes other errands.

Specific points to think about and discuss with your TA
__ The TA may need a copy or access to the class roster for grading purposes.
__ Do you plan to make old tests available for students to study from?
__ How are tests administered and who will be present? Any special procedures enforced to
    prevent cheating, such as alternate test forms, showing IDs, etc.?
__ Who will do the grading? Who writes the key to the tests?
__ How are tests handed back? Who handles student questions about grading? What is your
    policy on regrades and grade changes? How/where are grades posted?
__ How do you plan to tell students what their letter grade is during the semester?

FOR DISCUSSION SECTIONS:
__ Are discussions required or mandatory? Will discussion attendance be counted in the
    course grade?
__ Who sets the agenda for discussion section meetings?

FOR LABORATORIES:
__ In laboratories, who handles stocking materials if the labs run short in the middle of the
    week?
__ What special procedures do you need to know, such as safety and checking out
    equipment?

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Improving Your Teaching

• Find an on-campus mentor, ideally one who has taught in the same area.
• Connect with your school’s Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) or equivalent. They can be an invaluable resource. They usually have classes to teach you how to use the campus technology, such as course management software (e.g., Blackboard) and classroom response systems. Many CTEs will video your class, then sit down with you and give constructive feedback on how you might improve your teaching. (Aside: Our CTE professionals were appalled by how much vocabulary/jargon is used in the average biology class – more per session than in the typical foreign language class.)
• Consider giving your class an anonymous, informal mid-semester evaluation of the class and your teaching. It can be as simple as “What do you like best about the class? What do you like least? What can I do to improve the class this semester?” And if the students make constructive suggestions, try to implement them.

In Summary

This sounds like a lot to remember – and it is. The bottom line is that teaching should be fun and exciting, something you look forward to. Don’t worry when you make a mistake. We all do (even experienced teachers). Maintain your sense of humor, know your options, and establish a support system of colleagues.

Many thanks to the colleagues who contributed pearls to this article.

 

COMMENTS:

Clarification: Additional explanation of the triple roar
The "roar" is the amount of conversation noise in the classroom when students are talking to each other. It can get so loud that you sometimes need a mechanism for stopping it, like a police whistle, two-finger whistle, or cow bell. The roar subsides when students are thinking, writing/doing calculations, or have run out of something to talk about. By listening to the volume and what is being said, the instructor can tell when to interrupt and bring the class back together for whole-group discussion.
Dee Silverthorn
 

Don't assume that the students will read the course syllabus carefully; I would recommend specifically discussing the important information in the syllabus on the first day of class.

In introductory courses, I find it helpful to give the students a simple assignment, after approximately 2/3 of the semester has been completed, asking them to describe 3 concepts that they have learned so far in the course (e.g., approximately one paragraph per concept, with enough detail to demonstrate that they understand the concept). This is a very simple assignment for the students (hopefully!), and it can give the instructor an idea of the level of detail that the students are understanding. It also helps to remind the students that they actually have LEARNED something so far.
Angela Grippo
Northern Illinois University

Response: Too true! I've become so frustrated by students not reading the syllabus or listening to the discussion of it the first day that I now give a "syllabus quiz" (with clicker questions) after the 4th class meeting, when late-add students are all enrolled. THAT makes them read the syllabus.

Which brings up something else I didn't mention in the article: If you want students to do something, tack points onto it. Just like the panhandlers on the street corner with signs that say, "Will work for food," students should come with signs that say "Will work for points."
Dee Silverthorn
 

Although I have minimal teaching experience, I have already realized that I was going through my lectures WAY too fast! You have to give students time to absorb the information, because for many of them this is the first time they have been introduced to certain concepts. Abandon your fear of “awkward” silences…they may feel awkward to you but are valuable for the students to let the information sink in.
Sarah Hoffmann Lindsey
Wake Forest University School of Medicine

Response:  Excellent point. Studies have shown that most teachers do not wait long enough, especially when asking questions. Here's a link to a nice summary of this topic in the ERIC Digest: http://www.ericdigests.org/1995-1/think.htm
Dee Silverthorn

1) I, too, teach a large undergraduate human anatomy and physiology course that often enrolls up to 300 students, most of whom are sophomores. Many of my teaching classrooms do NOT have clocks on the wall, and while this is good for preventing "clock-watching" by the students, it makes it more difficult to budget my time during class, especially if I'm responding to student questions on particularly challenging topics. If my PowerPoint slides are projecting, the computer clock is obscured. I learned very quickly to bring a watch, timer or cell phone (on vibrate, as Dee suggests) for my own use.

2) Regarding classroom management, I often have students who arrive late and distract the entire room by walking down to one of the front rows before settling in and unpacking their materials. I am not one to lock the room at class time and prevent students from entering, but I do request that they respect their fellow students (and their professor) by coming in with as little noise and disruption as possible and sitting toward the back and/or near the aisles.

3) I post my PowerPoint slides online before the class period, but am very straightforward with my students about the fact that this is meant as a time-saver for them and they still need to come to class to learn how the information on the slides will be applied.

4) I am in full agreement with Dee on the point of technology being wonderful until it fails. I have managed to survive a dead microphone, but a complete power outage that leaves me in a dark room with 300 startled students or, worse, a partial failure that leaves me as the focal point of 300 stares with no slides, chalkboard or drawing pad, can instill panic. As Dee says, don't let the students see you flinch. Finish your thought and either move on with conceptual or integrative information - I sometimes "tell stories" about the clinical relevance of what we were discussing - or dismiss the class in an orderly fashion in the case of the blackout.

Kristin Gosselink
University of Texas at El Paso

Response: In cases of complete power failure in rooms with no windows, cell phones make good flashlights to see your way out!
Dee Silverthorn
 

Never underestimate the power of 'Show and Tell'. I've found that the students enjoy the items that I bring to class for 'show and tell'.

• I bring 2 boxes of Morton salt to indicate the amount of salt filtered per day at the glomerulus = 886 grams or 3.2 pounds.

• Also, 2 50-ml conical tubes represents the amount of sodium chloride in the entire extracellular fluid space = 140 g.

• The amount of salt excreted in the urine is approximately 5.8 grams which is two 1.5-ml Eppendorff tubes.

• To demonstrate the amount of glucose filtered at the glomerulus each day = 0.5 pounds, I bring a Ziploc bag filled with glucose.

• To demonstrate the volume of water filtered per day, I show pictures of nine 5-G spring water bottles in the PowerPoint presentation.

• To demonstrate the total glomerular capillary surface area, I bring to class 10 sheets of 8.5 X 11" banner paper = 6,000 cm².

• The filtration area is represented by the fenestrae, which is ~10% of the total surface area.

• Also, to demonstrate angiotensin II-induced vasoconstriction of the renal arterioles, I play a movie from my research laboratory.
  Lisa Harrison-Bernard
  Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine in New Orleans

I retired about 5 years ago. I always believed that experience was the best teacher. Since students could not gain a lifetime of experience, I interspersed my lectures with appropriate stories. The idea was to make them so real that they became a part of the student’s mind. For example, when talking about ventricles of the brain, I told of the origin of the Holter Co. John D. Holter was an engineer whose son developed hydrocephalus in 1956. He was told, according to the stories that I heard, his son was going to die. He asked why someone didn’t install a valve. He was told that such a valve did not exist. He went home and designed the valve that saved his son. The story provides the student with real life events that show the circulation of CSF and how it is drained.

Another teaching technique I used was in a course in nutrition. The last two lectures were dedicated to student presentations. I had them do about 15-20 minutes on a cuisine. The first thing that I was asked was. “I am Italian, can I do Italian food?” I told them that they could because they already were experts on that cuisine. But I told them that they had to go back to parents and grandparents to learn from them about customs and legends. They then asked if they could bring in samples of various foods for the class. I permitted it. Students really enjoyed it. However. the administration did not understand what I was trying to accomplish. First, I got students in front of a group talking about a subject with which they were completely comfortable. The students sharing samples of the food was “breaking bread” with the other students, sharing food.... very basic psychological stuff about food. The administration did not understand. I thought they did understand.... Anyway, it was one of the reasons they offered to buy out my contract.... In the long run, I miss the teaching...
but the caveats are that when using really innovative teaching techniques, make sure that the administration really understand what you are trying to accomplish.
Zalmon Pober

Response: Dr. Pober's point about making sure the administration understands what you are doing is an excellent one. When we looked at why faculty in our Integrative Themes in Physiology project were having so much trouble changing how they taught, resistance from peers and administration was a significant factor (see Adv Phsyiol Educ 30(4): 204-214, 2006).
Dee Silverthorn

I wish to express my pleasure for having the opportunity to contribute to this forum on teaching. I wish that this would continue and then we all learn from each other and be able to relate our own unique teaching experience.

Teaching of physiology courses in the medical curriculum in the US is unique and teachers can easily determine the student level of coverage of its topics. However, not all courses in biological sciences (including physiology) are taught in medical schools or in the US. Even at medical schools in Western Europe and North America that follow an integrated medical curriculum, a teacher needs to determine the level of coverage in these sciences at the beginning of a course. At other institutions of higher learning and with introductory level courses, this is a must. Apart from the adopted official/institutional evaluation of teaching by students, a simple course-specific feedback is very valuable to instructors in the long run.

The following are matters that pertain to my experience of teaching, which were developed over the years and per circumstances at different institutions at different geographical locations:

1- A thorough review of the course syllabus must be done with students in class at the beginning of the course.

2- Teachers ought to provide students with a course calendar that contains dates of significant activities and course events. Such should be provided by the end of the first week of the course, at the latest, or should be included in a separate sheet of the course syllabus.

3- An initial simple questionnaire that would be completed by each student is very helpful in determining the approximate level of coverage of what will be taught in the course. This is of extreme value in cases where students are having different educational backgrounds and/or at institutions that have a variety of elective courses. Students identify themselves by name for this questionnaire, which involves answers to:
student name, university I.D., related courses taken or being taken concurrently with the course being taught, why the student is taking this course? and what does the student expect from this course?

4- In regard to deadlines for major assignments and examinations, reminders should be made to students within ample time, even if such were provided with the course calendar or syllabus.

5- A student feedback form is distributed to all students in class - which contains questions such as: how did the content of this course affect your general and specific awareness about the subject matter?, what did you like the most about this course?, what did not you like about this course? Also included are requests to provide suggestions for any improvement(s) about the course and to make any comments about the course or about its instructor. This end-of-the-course survey requests students not to provide any of their personal information - i.e., anonymous.
Farouk El-Sabban
Kuwait University, Kuwait
 

When campus clocks and classroom clocks are inaccurate or conflicting, students may have a problem arriving at classroom on time. In order to avoid confusion about when class begins, I tell my students that we will start and end class according to “cell phone time”. On the first day of the course I ask everyone to get out their cell phones and confirm that all of us have essentially the same time. We then agree to use this time as the start and stop point for the class.

Some of my courses start at 8 or 9 am, so late arrivals are inevitable. This can be troublesome if late students want to sit in the front or must step over their classmates to get to an empty seat. I try to minimize the disruption by setting aside the last 1-2 rows in the classroom for latecomers. I explain this policy to the class on the first day of class and gently remind students throughout the course if necessary. One of the bonuses of this policy is that it moves the shy students, who like to hide in the back of the class, closer to the front or the room so that they are one step closer to becoming engaged in the course.

Jodie Krontiris-Litowitz
Youngstown State University
 

 

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