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Teaching Your First Course
Jodie Krontiris-Litowitz
Youngstown State University
Dr. Jodie Krontiris-Litowitz (r)
and her students (l to r): Sarah Siao, Ben Fulton, and Latisha Foster
Dr. Krontiris-Litowitz is a Professor in Biological Sciences at Youngstown State University where she teaches Neurobiology, Neuroanatomy and Anatomy & Physiology.
She mentors undergraduate and graduate students in her research laboratory as they investigate sex-based differences in the extracellular matrix of the hypertrophied rat heart.
Where Do I Start?
This is usually the thought that comes to mind when faced with that first course. The best place to start is with your colleagues. Sit down with them and ask a few questions. Find out if the course has been taught before or if it is a new course. If it has been taught before, talk to the other course instructors and ask them how the course was designed and managed in the past. Find out if you are supposed to teach "as it has always been taught" or if there some issues with previous courses necessitating a change in format. Either way, make your job easier and tap the experience and expertise of your colleagues. If it is a team taught course, meet with the other members of the teaching team ASAP and discuss content, format, course management etc.
If you are teaching a new course for the first time - lucky you. Course design, content, and format are in your capable hands. It can be scary at first but it will be a lot of fun. Be sure that you understand the department's expectations for the course, the preparedness of your student population, and the impact that your course will have on subsequent courses that your students will take. If there are prerequisites for your course, review the text to see what students will know when they enter your class. If there are no prerequisites for your course you may want to give a test of basic knowledge during the first week so that you understand the background and preparation of your students. With this information you can pitch your course at a level that will ensure success.
How Do You Prepare a Course?
Everyone has prepared at least one course by opening a textbook chapter, outlining the important points and then turning the outline in a lecture. What many discover at test time is that the students have a superficial knowledge of the material. They know the facts of the topic but primarily in the context of the text or course. They are slow to relate their knowledge to situations outside of the lecture context and may be unable to use it to predict outcomes or assess a problem.
Consequently, one of the first caveats for preparing a course is to clearly identify the course objectives. What do you want your students to know? Should they know content or facts? How should they be able to manipulate the information that they have learned? Will you expect them to be able to solve clinical problems, calculate results, predict outcomes? Will they need to acquire skills in the course? Think about questions like these and then format them into a list as your course objectives. Once the list is complete, match your objectives to one or more class sessions or topics. For example, if you want your students to acquire content knowledge, identify the class session in which you present the information or the homework reading assignment (textbook chapters, websites, etc) that addresses the topic. If you want students to learn to apply their knowledge to clinical problems, data analysis etc., identify class sessions where you give them examples in class or provide them with opportunities to practice working them out with their classmates or on their own. If these ideas won't work for you, there are many other ways to build your learning objectives into the course, such as incorporating them into student projects, homework assignments, study questions, web-based discussion, etc. For more ideas, search the “APS Archive of Teaching Resources” (www.apsarchive.org/main/ugradsearch.asp) and “Resources for Effective Pedagogy”(www.apsarchive.org/main/ugradpedagogy.asp) at the APS website.
Plan your course outline and your classroom presentations around these objectives. Some faculty build from small ideas to big concepts and some do the reverse starting with big concepts and working their way down to the small ideas. Do whatever works best for you but be sure to sketch out a logical progression of ideas before writing the presentation.
Collect as many resources for your course as time allows. Gather images from your textbook (many publishers supply image libraries and lecture slides), the internet and even create your own images using a drawing program. Search the web for graphs, animations, case studies, and examples that you can use. Again the APS website, www.apsarchive.org/main/ugradsearch.asp), is a great resource for many of these. Talk to colleagues about how they taught the course and what they did or used that really worked for them. You may not use all of the resources that you collect but they will give you another perspective of the topic and a toolkit for answering those unexpected questions.
Preparing the Syllabus
After you have finalized your course objectives, you are ready to prepare a syllabus. A syllabus is a contract between the student and the instructor and when a student registers for a course, they agree to comply with the terms of this contract. Within the syllabus the instructor lays out the expectations for the course with respect to learning goals, student behavior, and course grading policy. Typically, learning goals explain what the student should be able to do at the end of the course (e.g., identify 3 mechanisms of…, explain the process…, predict the change in…., determine the validity of the statement…). The syllabus section on student behavior deals with a range of instructor expectations, some as mundane as attendance or cell phones in class and others as crucial as class participation or plagiarism. While these may be unpleasant topics, some preemptive thought and action will make your job easier. Decide before class begins whether or not students can talk in class, eat in class, answer cell phones, leave early or walk in late. Refine your vision of class participation and define your idea of plagiarism. Once you have decided on these parameters, clarify them in your syllabus and talk to your students about them on the first day of class. If students understand that these issues influence the classroom environment and that your goal is to provide the best classroom environment possible, the majority of your students will support your efforts. Finally, the syllabus defines what the instructor will use as a grading scale and the assignments, quizzes, and exams that will be associated with the final course score.
It important to invest significant time and effort into your syllabus because you must live with it throughout the course. Often, first-time instructors or instructors teaching a course for the first time prepare the "perfect" syllabus only to discover midway through the course that either the students or the instructor cannot live with perfection. As a result, an instructor may consider altering the syllabus. However – a word of caution - if you must deviate from your syllabus, be judicious about it. Traditionally if an instructor deviates from the syllabus, it must benefit the student. For example, if you must reschedule an exam, it is appropriate to change the date (usually a later date) so that it provides the student with at least as much study time as the originally scheduled day. Also, if you must drop topics from the schedule and eliminate associated assignments, make sure that the lost points do not penalize student grades.
What Should I Teach in My Course?
What Should I Cover in Class?
These are actually 2 separate questions. You may expect students to know the material in 1000 pages of the text but it is unreasonable to expect that you will discuss all of this during class time. Decide what students need to know at the end of the course and then divide it up between what you can present in class and what you expect students to learn on their own. Don't allow your students become "dependent" learners (Weimer, Maryellen. 2002. Learner-Centered Teaching, Five Key Changes to Practice. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA) where they look upon their instructor as the source of all knowledge. Prod them into learning for themselves with challenging and relevant questions (Why don't birds have teeth?) that make them delve into their learning resources (texts, internet, etc.) for answers. Also encourage them to be selective about their learning. Help them recognize that learning everything in the 1000 pages of their textbook is unrealistic for the course and that they might be more successful if they were selective about their learning. Guide them to ask questions and make decisions about their studying. Help them ask themselves questions like, "Does this concept have broad applications outside of this chapter? If, so maybe I should focus on it rather that detailed content knowledge." Encourage them to learn information that will help derive other information by asking questions like "If I learn how the Na/K pump works, will I need to memorize the events associated with hyperkalemia or hypernatremia."
How Do Students Learn?
Many of us attended courses that were taught in a traditional lecture format.
By and large that worked. After all, we are successful scientists today. There is some question about the value of this technique. Studies show that classroom lectures are not the most effective way to teach or the most effective way for students to learn. Because of our own experience in the classroom however, most of us feel comfortable with this form of teaching, and might naturally want to use it for the first time in our own courses. If this works for you, use it but take some part of your first course and experiment with alternative teaching strategies like problems-based learning, think-pair-share exercises, etc. For examples of quick and easy ways to teach without lecture, look at the "APS Archive of Teaching Resources" at the APS website (www.apsarchive.org/main/ugradsearch.asp).
Large class sizes can be intimidating and often instructors feel that lecture is the only option in this situation. However, there are several effective alternative strategies that you could consider. One example is class discussion. While it is difficult to run a single discussion section in a large class, it is quite reasonable to generate productive discussion if you break up the class into groups of 3-5 neighboring students . These students can work as a team for 5 minutes answering a question that you pose. At the end of this time you can poll the groups for their responses to assess student understanding and misconceptions.
It is important to recognize that all students do not learn the same way; hence it might be wise to try multiple presentation formats in your class session. Some students learn better with pictures, some with written words, some with stories/lectures and some by talking about the topic. Vary your course presentation so that it incorporates all of these formats. You might try introducing a topic with a combination of verbal and written format by lecturing with slides and then follow this up with a discussion of a flow chart, diagram, or linkage map. As a summary you might ask students to explain the answer to a question to the person sitting next to them. In this way you can address multiple learning styles and enhance the successful learning in your classroom.
How Do I Know That My Students Are Learning? Testing and Assessment
Many instructors regard testing and assessment as an unpleasant but necessary task that makes some fraction of the class dissatisfied. However, if used appropriately, testing and assessment can provide valuable feedback for students, enabling them to identify their study targets and ultimately improve their learning and grades. Often an instructor relies on test scores only to tell them if students are learning course material. The problem with this method is that exams occur at the end of the curricular unit and by the time the instructor finds out that students have not learned the material, it is too late to remediate. An alternative to this is to quiz student knowledge frequently throughout the course. These assessments don't need to be labor intensive; simple questions with oral or written answers will do. For example, after a difficult topic in class an instructor can put a question up on the screen with 3-4 answers, one of which is correct and the others which address common confusions or misconceptions associated with the topic. Ask the question and have students raise their hand or write their answers on a card. Their replies should give you a sense of their understanding. If you want to know about their deep understanding of the topic, you could pose a question and ask them to write a short paragraph in response. Share these results with the class and ask students to explain why they chose right or wrong answers. This discussion will allow you to dispel the misconceptions that students might have. Also, use this time as an opportunity to guide students to study targets that promote depth understanding rather than superficial learning or memorization. Finally, evaluate student understanding early and often. It will promote learning and prevent those frustrated, confused students that appear in your office just before the exam.
Comments:
This is very pragmatic advice for developing course content, and it is far from restricted to junior faculty who are teaching for the first time. I have a couple of things to add.
First, a suggestion: As you develop figures, outlines, and other course material, please consider submitting them to the APS Archive of Teaching Resources. There may be many of your colleagues who can benefit from your efforts, just as you may benefit from theirs.
Second, a quick story: When I gave my first lecture nearly twenty years ago, it was the custom for all the faculty in the department to attend, and they would sit in the last two rows of seats in the large auditorium which we used at the time. It is perhaps needless to say that it was a bit intimidating. Adding to the stress was our practice of videotaping each lecture. At one point in the presentation, a student asked me a question for which I had no answer. The technician doing the taping zoomed in for a close-up of me swallowing hard as I realized that I was drawing a mental blank. That video tape became a source of amusement for weeks afterwards. Nevertheless, I survived and actually received compliments from the more senior faculty for my presentation. I tell this story to emphasize that like everything else about an academic career, you endure the first, very stressful experiences and move on, usually with more wisdom and maturity.
Thomas Pressley
Texas Tech University Health Science Center
Response:
Thanks Tom for sharing your story about “the question that stumped the professor”. I think everyone who has stood at a teaching podium has had this experience at least once. The key to this situation is recognizing that, as an instructor, you will not have the answer to every question posed. Also, sooner or later every instructor learns to say confidently, “I don’t know (the answer to your question) but I’ll check on it and get back to you in the next class.”
Jodie Litowitz
I like to have my students take the survey at http://www.vark-learn.com/ to evaluate their own learning preferences at the beginning of each course. This helps to justify my using visual, auditory, read/write, and kinesthetic modalities while I teach. The survey is free and has helpful hints for how to study with the various learning preferences.
Barb Goodman
University of South Dakota
Response:
I also believe that VARK helps students understand and value alternative teaching styles that are different from their previous classroom experiences.
Jodie Litowitz
All of Jodie's suggestions are great - I particularly liked her idea about quizzing the students frequently throughout the course. As a grad student, I had a professor who began each lecture with 3-4 multiple choice questions relating to the previous days lecture (she just asked for a show of hands for each choice). Not only did this help her gauge how well the class understood the material, it was a really helpful way for me, as a student, to make sure I had understood the previous lecture. I have used this technique when teaching, and it seems to get a favorable reaction - the students love seeing if they can get more answers right than their friends/labmates...
Jen Pluznick
Yale University
Thank you for the very helpful advice! I am curious about your philosophy on offering extra credit options for students. Do you think this can be beneficial for the students (for other reasons that just providing "free" points)?
Angela Grippo
University of Illinois at Chicago
Response:
If used appropriately, extra credit can really boost morale and motivation in a classroom. However, it should be clear to the students that the extra credit assignment is meant to promote learning and not meant to improve the final course grade.
One of the problems with extra credit is setting a valid point/grade value to the assignment. If the grade value is too low, students might not invest enough effort to learn from it. Conversely if the grade value of the assignment is too high, students may devalue previous assignments and assessments (exams, projects, etc.). My rule of thumb is that extra credit should be sufficient to boost a test grade by one letter but not so great as to change a course grade by a letter.
Jodie Litowitz
Jodie has provided steps for a very good start to developing a course in a traditional teacher centered learning environment where the primary job of the instructor is to disseminate information to students. However, if the goal is to create a learning environment in which meaningful learning takes place (using information that is being acquired), and in which the instructor's primary job is to help the learner to learn, the essay falls short.
Below, I have presented what I call "First Principles for Promoting Meaningful Learning." These are the first principles that govern the mindset that leads to what I do in the classroom. To learn more about it, consult our book, "Active Learning in Secondary and College Science Classrooms: A Working Model for Helping the Learner to Learn" Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, ISBN 0-8058-3948-8.
First Principles for Promoting Meaningful Learning
Harold Modell, Ph.D.
Physiology Educational Research Consortium
When meaningful learning or learning with understanding takes place, students are able to apply information that is being acquired to solve novel problems. Most teachers, regardless of what they do in the classroom, agree that their goal is not just to dispense information, but to have their students learn their discipline(s) in ways that will be beneficial to their students’ lives. To accomplish this goal, teachers must establish a learning environment in which students will engage in meaningful learning. Such an environment, of necessity, has certain characteristics related to student behavior, the learning process, and the role of the instructor in the process. The design of a successful environment in this regard is derived from a set of first principles of classroom practice. These first principles represent the assumptions and definitions on which all activities in the classroom are based. These first principles are presented below. The order of presentation is not intended to represent a hierarchy of importance.
Principle 1: We cannot learn for our students. They must do the learning, and, they must take responsibility for their own learning. This is easy to say but sometimes difficult to achieve. Students, for the most part, think that learning means memorizing a story and repeating the story or parts of the story on demand. Students also think that by learning the story, one becomes educated. Hence, students think they pay for their education. That education is a commodity, not unlike a bunch of bananas or a bottle of beer, and the teacher is just the clerk dispensing these commodities.
But, education is the result of what we call meaningful learning. Meaningful learning is applying information that is being acquired to solve real world problems. The process goes well beyond data acquisition. Students don’t pay for an education. They pay for an opportunity! An opportunity to be guided through a process. How well they take advantage of that opportunity and how much they learn as a result depends on them.
Principle 2: Our job is to help the learner to learn. Until we become capable of performing the Vulcan mind-meld or some similar method of ensuring that we can effectively put knowledge into our students brains, we must realize that we are limited by the student in how much knowledge we can impart, AND we most certainly can’t instill a thinking process into students’ heads. All we can do is help them learn to engage in the appropriate process and provide them with opportunities to practice that process. The challenge, then, is to determine what kind of help they need, do what we can to provide that help, and assess how successful we were as a result.
Principle 3: Students come to us with prior knowledge. Some of this knowledge helps students learn new ideas and processes, and some of this knowledge impedes incorporation of new ideas and processes. We must help students discover how well their ideas model the real world and help them refine these ideas or mental models so that they use them more effectively to solve real world problems.
Principle 4: Life is cumulative! What we learn in one discipline is generally applicable to other disciplines, and what we learn early in life is applicable to problems that we confront later in life. Life is an integrated experience that draws on past knowledge and skills to solve new problems. For the student, this means that we are not “done” with information after we turn to the next unit in the text or after we take the unit exam, midterm or final exam. Hence, it is important to make sense of knowledge as we acquire it so that we can incorporate it into appropriate mental models that we will use to face current and future problems.
Principle 5: We must help students make their current mental model visible. Meaningful learning involves the process of testing and revising mental models. Before students can test their mental models to determine where they do not make accurate predictions about real world events, they must acknowledge that they have a current model and make it visible so that it can be examined. We must facilitate this process.
Principle 6: We must create safe learning environments. The process of meaningful learning requires students to take intellectual risks. They must be willing to admit limitations of their current mental models and conceptual problems that they may be having with respect to refining their mental models. To be successful, the learning environment must be safe and supportive of this behavior.
A model of the learning environment
These six principles provide a rationale for what we will do in the classroom. However, it is necessary to have an implementation plan before we can transform the rationale into practice. Hence, the next step is to develop a model of the classroom that will provide the basis for implementation.
To develop the model, think about the steps that you would take when designing a course in your content area. Keeping these first principles in mind, the first step in the process is define the “output state.” A helpful way to define this state is to answer the question, “What do we want our students to be able to do when they complete the course?” Another way of saying this is, “What are the performance goals for the students?” After deciding what the performance goals are, you might consider what the student needs to know to accomplish the goals.
Principle 2 states that the instructor’s job is to help the learner to learn, and Principle 3 acknowledges that students have prior knowledge. The next step in the process, then is to decide what the “input state” of the student is. That is, what prior knowledge and skills does the student have that are related to the performance goals? Having assessed the input state and knowing the output state, one can design learning experiences for the student that will help him/her make the transition from the input to the output state. In our model, we will call this the “transition state.” In this discussion, we developed the model in the context of a whole course. However, the model just as easily applies to a section of a course, or even a short portion of a single day’s activities. In these cases, the model becomes iterative where the output state with its performance goals becomes the input state for the subsequent performance goal. In a course, the output state of one element (topic, course section, etc.) serves as the input state for the next element.
Harold Modell
Physiology Educational Research Consortium
I find our students have a very difficult time with plagiarism, as many of their high school assignments have involved copying from the text. They often are given the impression that this is acceptable in their own writing. Do you have any suggestions on how to reeducate the students on the issue of plagiarism?
Diana Fagan
Response:
I work with high school teachers on the same issue. They especially struggle with the issue of copying and pasting from web pages. One of the successful strategies I have used in helping students understand the transition from copying to interpreting source material in their writing is to encourage the use of a two-column system for note taking. In the left column they can copy or cut/paste original material. In the right hand column, they must write their own interpretation of what the material says without any cutting, pasting, or quotation. Then when they write their paper, they can only cut/paste from the right hand column and must cite anything they use from the table. If they use something from the left hand column, it's generally a quotation. I don't know if that would help with your students but we've had a lot of success with it, particularly with the whole web-source issue.
Marsha Matyas
APS Director of Education Programs