Welcome to EDCI 943: Principles of College Teaching
Principles of College Teaching is a graduate-level course offered both fall and spring semesters to graduate students and faculty through the College of Education.
The course is designed to help you think about teaching and learning at the college and university level. You will have the opportunity to develop or enhance teaching skills as a result of your work in the class, although the development of particular teaching skills is not the exclusive aim of the course. What you gain from the course will depend upon you, your focus and your effort.
Observation #1 – Fall 2014
Observation #1 – Spring 2015
Observation #1 – Fall 2015
Observation #1 – Spring 2016
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Observation #1 – Spring 2015
Here you and your partner can post your interview questions and the observed instructor’s responses to these questions. Please refrain from listing the instructor’s name in your post. We will discuss your observation and interview experiences during class.
The teacher interviewed has been teaching since ’98. The teacher truly tries to relate to the student’s experience and make the course relevant. Through reflection over the years he has improved these skills and tries to make everything interesting in the class. The learning objectives include activities such as reader articles, irb play act, in class discussions, and role playing to use critical thinking to apply to academic issues. His teaching philosophy includes two main items: choice to learn and trickle down engagement. This puts a lot of the power in the students’ hands because he believes they are ultimately responsible for their education. Advice for future teachers includes: create your teaching persona, you must want to be a good teacher, treat students like future colleagues, and believe it.
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–How long have you taught the course?
11 years, fall and spring
–How has the course plan (e.g., lesson plans, activities, syllabus etc.,) changed/remained the same since you began teaching the course?
Yes, I have added new things over the years. The Big 12 is a group of 10 students who are selected randomly each week. These students sit in the front two rows of class. They are the ones who are often called upon to answer questions. This has been in place for the last four semesters. Other things have been added such as the facebook page, using poll everywhere, and the Economics of the Office webpage.
–What are the student learning outcomes for the course? How do you accomplish these outcomes during class? How do you assess these outcomes?
For this lower level class that SLO are not very complicated (at lower levels of Bloom’s taxonomy).
–How do you get students engaged/interested in the class?
Big 12 group
“pass the ball”- whoever catches the ball comes up and helps solve the problem.
Course facebook page
6 minute interviews- the first 70 people to sign up receive extra credit. They meet with the professor in their office and discuss anything but economics.
Being available before and after class, as well as in office hours to answer questions
Question of the day posted when students come into class.
Group work
Using current events and real world applications. Even clips of The Office that demonstrate economic concepts http://economicsoftheoffice.com/
–What is your teaching philosophy?
“Economics is everywhere.” Show the students that economics is in everyone’s life. It is important to relate the topics in class to current events. Take a personal interest in the student and try to learn as many names as you can. Try to make students feel involved and not like they are just a number. Coming from a small town, I was afraid about being lost at a large university, so I want the students to have feeling of community in my class and have the opportunity to meet others.
–Any advice for current/future instructors?
Find your own way, and be comfortable in what you are doing. Go to teaching conferences and connect with others in your field who are doing innovative teaching techniques. Many of the neat things I have in my classroom I did not come up with individually.
–How do you find a balance between teaching and advising? A balance with your appointments in general?
It might sound bad but sometimes if someone is not prepared for their advising appointment you have to send them away until they have all the necessary materials/information gathered. Sometimes it also helps to work odd hours so that there are fewer distractions.
I observed an upper level agricultural economics class last Thursday. The lecturer has been teaching this class, through a variety of methods, for 25 years. He works a seemingly effortless class structure with carefully planned and executed style. The class content was lecture, rather than activity intensive, but he used several methods to keep students engaged and active in class. He started out the lecture with a story, something about current events, and then tied this into his outline for the day. The outline that he used summarized not only the day ahead, but where the class had been the lecture before. After outlining the day, he used a quiz to ask students to summarize what they had learned from the lecture previously delivered. After the quiz, the lecture itself was delivered via active note taking (the professor wrote his notes, examples, ect live during the class). Throughout the lecture, there were multiple pauses to facilitate stories that incorporated class content into something relevant and connected in the real world. In addition to class time, students complete math problems from an interactive computer module and turn in weekly homework.
The style is seemingly simple: quiz, lecture, homework, and then tests, but I think that the twists in the style of the class are what makes it work, makes it different. For example, by using daily quizzes, the professor cited that he can not only get students to be more accountable for the information they are learning before test time, he can understand what concepts are sticking, and what isn’t as the course goes on. Outlining the lecture ties in the previous content to what students will learn that day, and prepare them for what’s to come. By handwriting notes with somewhat unclear handwriting, students have to focus, using their brains actively during lecture time (as a side note: his effortless note writing on is practiced prior to the lecture by handwriting his notes and copying them a couple of times). All tests are handwritten, rather than multiple choices, and this asks students to know, rather than recognize, content that they are responsible to learn.
The professor himself advocates that his class constantly change within keeping similar concepts, which makes him nervous, and his teaching better. At one point, this class was a flipped classroom (when it was smaller). The format was that lectures were online and in class, there were team activities. All tests were team tests, which facilitated teamwork from strong students and a more engaging level of accountability for students who normally wouldn’t have put as much effort into the class. All exams were oral, and class time was totally interactive.
In addition to the class format, the class gets to know the professor throughout the term through examples of economics related to his family and personal life (he feels like this increases engagement of his class). Occasionally, when there is no class content to quiz (like after a test), quizzes are used to stimulate reflection (for example; what do you need to do to succeed in the class for the remainder of the term).
The whole thing seems like it works. During the class period, students seemed to interact, verbalize (somewhat) understanding of content, and in a class of 90 total students, most were in class and on time.
Myah: How has the course plan changed/remained the same since you began teaching the course?
Prof: I have been teaching this course for what now, 4 weeks, however far into this semester we are. I have taught intro to cultural anthropology, digital ethnography, and religion and culture. In this course, I think that it is important for me to speak to all anthropologies, so all types of anthropology and that makes it very difficult as well. It’s a lot different than when you have a room full of people and this is their expertise, but this is a situation where people have to be here so that makes it harder.
Lori: With the idea of modifying the course, since this is your first semester teaching this course and you teaching other courses, have you ever had to modify or change things within the syllabus?
Prof: Oh yeah.
Lori: How do you go about doing that even in the middle of the semester?
Prof: Typically you have to get buy in from the students, because some of them are really sold on, I mean they have already scheduled everything, and they have a sense of things get busy here, the class is a little slower here, so it can also create a lot of anxiety with grades and students think, I was supposed to be graded on this, and now your changing everything. So from the outset, it’s useful, in fact most people in the syllabi, I don’t even really think of them as syllabi, they are just like tentative plans and each syllabus has a disclaimer at the top stating that, like to contrast with this class my digital ethnography class has a syllabus but we pretty much only know what we are going to do for the next two weeks and then the rest of that could be generated through student discussion and where ever the class is going, we then generate the syllabus accordingly. In really large classes like over 400 students, it can become really important to have a solid syllabus, but even in a class like that, I have a changed things mid stream, thrown things out, I’ve changed everything actually in the middle of a class. And the way that I did that was I knew things needed to change, so I did a student survey to get a sense of where things were at. I took in all that feedback and I assessed what needed to be done to get students really excited about class. And I made some changes, and the changes were not exactly what the students wanted, because students may not initially know what the want and they aren’t the expert, but I could see what they needed so I crafted the syllabus, and then to help get student buy in, I actually, well you can lie, which I did and I said that (laughter) and I basically said well the majority of students wanted this, so this is what we are going to do. And even if it’s not what the majority wants, they are ready to all buy in, it works.
Lori: You talked about buy-in and engagement, how do you get your students engaged in class and how do you keep their attention?
Prof: So, that works a lot better as you get further into the semester I think, because the key things you need to know your students. Once you know your students you can really start talking to them, figuring out their needs, and draw out things from them as your are talking, you can imagine what they are thinking. This allows you to bring things back around to them. The real pay-off is when you get deeper into the semester you can help everybody know everybody else. Then you start to create an atmosphere where you feel like this is a special kind of place where everybody knows everybody and they can share more. So really I think that’s the best way to engage them is to get to know your students. To me it’s even deeper than that. It starts to sound kind of hokey, but I think it starts with loving your students. Its important to truly love them, not just have this blanket love for all students, but to actually know them and respect them. These are the things that are actually harder to come by in higher ed sometimes. There’s a lot of disrespect between students and faculty and so… (laughter)
Lori: I have a question, but it’s more of a personal question, have you ever had a student who has been disrespectful to you?
Prof: (Pause) I mean, I have (sigh)… I basically, so like from the outside looking in, you would probably say, oh yeah, my goodness people have been disrespectful, but I never put that on the students because I can’t control them or their feelings, I can only control me and the environment of the class. And so when a student is disrespectful I immediately look at the whole system I have created and I wonder, ok- how did this happen, what can I change so that this doesn’t happen again. I’ve been around enough that I have been right up against this boundary of, and maybe someday when you are teaching you will experience it too… At this point I would like to go off the record.
Time laps
Interview comes back on record
… I’m here at K-State because we accept 99%. I want to touch the people who don’t have a shot otherwise. The guy who just left here, he flunked out of Illinois, and now he’s here and K-State is the only place that would accept him, so he’s paying out of state tuition because this is the place that would take him and he’s doing well, he dropped out of Illinois and now he’s an A student. So I love that, I like to light people up who… and you don’t get to do that in the Ivy Leagues, you know everybody comes in, so. But on the other hand, we pay the price sometimes. One student can take up half your time. (Laughter)
Myah: Yes! Something that I really appreciated what the point you made about you want to light up their life, you want to love your students. Do you kind of put that into your personal teaching philosophy that you incorporate into your class is that who you are as a teacher?
Prof: Yeah, I mean that’s pretty much the core of it, um like we do these journals and they are the, we alternate every week so that I read some of them every week, but it’s my way of keeping up with them. It has their reflections in it, it also has like their life story, and then I have them put graphs in it, like happiness over time, insight over time, um stuff like that and they can make up their own. I have them list their passions, their memoirs pretending they are ten years into the future, so this is all me getting to know them so that I can connect everything back to who they are and who they think they are going to be.
Myah: I really like that!
Lori: Me too! I’m thinking WOW!!!!!
(Laughter)
Prof: I feel that this class right now still is like; well it’s not there yet. Part of it is, this room is hard, it’s a little bit of a shotgun room so you lose touch with the back, so I try to go to the middle, but it’s hard. Typically in half of the classes in here, we move the desks to the side and we just stand around in the middle, we make a circle and we have all our conversations standing up which is weird. Kind of leaning against the desks and what not. But even then this class still isn’t there yet and I have very high standards for a class. If they get to the last class and they are ready for the semester to be over, then I have failed. If they get to the last class and they say, I wish this class never ended and they are exchanging information and creating a Facebook group (Laughter), that’s a success.
Myah: What are your student learning outcomes for this particular course? What do you want them to achieve and how are you going to accomplish that?
Prof: The big one is to adopt the anthropological perspective, and that’s again really big and really hard to understand. Like today you got a little taste of it, where it is I want them to contemplate the limits of human connection and human freedom, and if I could get everybody, like that’s a big thing, right? It’s not a very typical outcome, like you will understand blank, or will be able to apply blank. I want you to contemplate this question for the rest of your life.
Lori: Since this is your first semester with this class, I’m guessing the prep time you put in is probably more intensive than what you put in for your other classes. What kind of prep goes into teaching this class and how long/frequent do you prep for your courses?
Prof: I’ll give you two answers. So one, when I first started teaching and was with a class of 450 I would put in, like this sounds crazy but this is a fact, I would put in 50 hours for every one hour of teaching. That set me up for many years and now you know I can reuse content. For this class I reuse content from my other courses and those 50 hours to one hour and I still spend five to ten hours per hour of teaching.
Lori: I totally get that. I’m teaching my first semester with undergrads so I understand.
Prof: Oh yeah, I think it would be hard not to put over 20 hours a week in with that.
Myah: What would be your key piece of advise for future instructors?
Prof: You better love it! (Laughter) You’ve really got to put your whole heart and soul into it. It’s highly rewarding but it’s also challenging, I feel like maybe it’s my own personality or whatever but when I’m up here I see, and I look at the eyes and I look at what’s happening and I’m devastated if people are tuning out. It hurts. I find it like psychological damaging some of the time, but still extremely rewarding. Here’s the advice my wife gave me and it changed everything. It comes back to judgment, but I started teaching ten years ago and at that time they were in the third season of American Idol (Laughter) and there was a contestant on there named Diana DeGarmo and she was really good in the auditions but then she was falling apart when they got to the final 12. She was always in the bottom two and she just barely escaped every time. And then she got to the fourth week and there were nine people left and she just started tearing the house down every time, people crying, it was just amazing; 16 year old girl, lighting up the stage. And she made it to the finals and she lost and the person she lost to be just off the charts and crazy good. So in the final they had a little segment and they asked Diana what happened in week four that changed everything. She said, well I was in with my stylist, which sounds superficial but, she was like I was with my hair stylist and he said love your audience and they will love you back. So she concentrated on loving them instead of… I’m about to cry, but she became more concerned with loving them instead of worrying about what they were thinking about her, and everything changed. She was part of this big event and it wasn’t all about her it was all about them and she realized that when you do that you don’t have to worry about all those stares and blank faces. You care about them because you want them to do better, but it’s not necessarily on you. That changed everything for me. Once you start focusing on loving your students and your prepping for class, you stop prepping in such a way, and a lot of times your prepping from a space that it’s just yourself. Your trying to make sure that people won’t think your stupid. So you might put in a bunch of really heavy theory or something just to point out hey I’m not stupid. But if you start from a place of love and you understand where they are at, you won’t care any more about how you look in their eyes but you will just want to create a great experience.
1. How long have you been teaching the observed course?
Since 1999
2. How has the course plan (e.g., lesson plans, activities, syllabus etc.,) changed/remained the same since you began teaching the course?
The course is part of the MBA program. It has gone through a lot of changes.
A few years ago changed to a “Flip classroom approach”. Students see lectures at home (20 videos in K-State and readings), and then come to apply in class and do practice.
They use Linx (a computer simulation program for business management).
3. What are the student learning outcomes for the course? How do you accomplish these outcomes during class? How do you assess these outcomes?
There are more general SL goals for the department. For this class are not fully articulated, but the main goals are to expose them to marketing concepts, managerial literature, and the development of public speaking skills, as it was exemplified in today class with student presentations.
In terms of assessment, several tools are used: Written feedback for presentations. Final exam, peer review, linx simulation. For the simulation they have to work in groups and develop a “firing memo”: a checklist of expectations that everybody in the group should meet in order to fullfil the expectations of the group and the work that needs to be done.
4. How do you get students engaged/interested in the class? How do you keep their attention?
Doing different activities in class.
5. How do you incorporate your teaching philosophy into your course design?
The idea is to incorporate theory-driven, real world activities, so the students can practice.
6. On average, how long would you say you “prep” for each day/lesson?
Usually a 1:1, although at the beginning of the semester it needs more time to revise the contents. Often dedicate time to review activities prepared for class and have some extra materials prepared in case there is additional time.
7. Any advice/best practices for future instructors?
Enthusiasm about the topic “what I love about this is…”
I had the opportunity to observe a history based class where the students were in their 2nd semester series out of 3 in their requirements. The professor has been teaching this course at K-State for 27 years however, he has been instructing a version of this course for over 40 years. As students entered the classroom, an upbeat song was playing (no words, only the instrumental piece). Honestly, I recognized the song but could not figure out what it was from. It was great to find out that the professor always plays a music number and has something to do with the lecture that day. His rationale was that music is an easier way to transition and settle students down prior to beginning his lecture. He also keeps a running list so that he doesn’t repeat songs. This particular lecture ended with him playing a video clip from Indian Jones (the musical count playing when the students first walked in was from Indiana Jones) that placed emphasis on the architectural structures that can be seen in this video clip. In response to whether or not he has students resist his teachings (this particular class was focused on Buddhism) he commented that he makes students aware that the class has a cultural, political and social connection. He stated that very few students have a disinterest and in actuality more tend to have a sense of fascination because they are learning something different from their own culture. The debates and strong opinions he said, usually appears when he is talking about living religions. He indicated that the dead religions (Egyptian, for example) tend not to have as much of a debate as does living religions (Islam, for example). When responding to how his class has changed/evolved over time, he indicated that he as added non-western culture and material to the course which in the long run was better because within the last 10 years, the criteria has changed to include the material he had already begun adding. In order to maintain student focus and engagement, he has included more question and answers into his course. He also noted that he uses a pool stick as opposed to a laser pointer when pointing out information in pictures on the screen because it makes it easier for students to quickly see and identify what he is talking about. He also made mention that in his location, its difficult to use the chalkboard because the chalk is not easily seen by all students unless he uses railroad chalk. He said that he also includes activities for students on quizlet.com which is a digital flash card sight; he loads for the students. He also mentioned that the material he provides on quizlet.com has a speaking function that helps English language learners with pronunciation. At this point, he still uses 33mm slides and his planning for the class consists of: reviewing the order of the slides and reading through his notes. He says he prepares for about 15-20 minutes prior to class. He did note that he sequences his images in a way where they serve as visual notes for himself. He said that each new image helps remind him what he needs to say. He then added, “every thought a new image and every new image a new thought.” He indicated that he likes take a story-telling approach. As far as his philosophy, he said he works as hard as the students but will not do the work for them. He will give a lot of feedback but he will not spoon feed them. He does have 2 GTAs that help grade exams. His primary assessments include online quizzes and 3 major exams (composed of 4 parts; 1. slide ID; 2. unknown slide ID; 3. terms to definition/jargon match; 4. multiple choice questions). He also indicated that he creates what he calls “quiz on the go” where students have to answer multiple choice questions based on the lecture that day; they just have to listen for the answer. He said this format of quiz on the go helps students maintain focus and provides an organization of information for them. Overall, I believe I would like to take a class with this Professor however, I am not all that interested in the topics of history and architecture.
The class my group observed was ECON 110: Principles of Macroeconomics, which is a large lecture style course. I would estimate there were over 100 students in the course, with a majority being freshmen or lower level students.
We observed the class on a Friday, which the instructor noted that the format might have been a little bit different from other class days because they were reviewing a lot of information, and they had a quiz at the end of the class.
I did notice that even though the class was mainly reviewing information, the instructor still managed to use a variety of teaching methods to engage with students during the class period. He began the class by writing important information on a giant notepad stuck to the wall at the front of the room. He used examples from articles that he had posted on KSOL and facebook for students to read. He also asked students to provide answers to part of the problems he was working. Sometimes he would call on students at random, or he would throw his hat around the room, and whoever caught the hat would have to answer.
After class, my group interviewed the faculty member as he was walking to lunch. I took note of some of the answers to questions that I thought were particularly relevant to me.
How long have you taught ECON 110?
He has taught the class for 11 years. He said the format of the course has remained largely the same, as it is difficult to change up a large lecture class a great deal. However, he has implemented new technologies into the course, and has found new ways of engaging the students.
For example, he posts many of the articles and video he refers to in class on Facebook and to K-State Online. He uses Poll Everywhere for some of his lectures so that his students can use their smart phones or lap top computers to answer questions in class. He also has a blog dedicated to “The Economics of The Office”, where he uses clips for The Office television show to illustrate topics from his lectures.
From what I observed of the class, it does seem like he tries to use a variety of teaching methods for the class. He doesn’t just stand up in the front of the room and lecture. He found different ways to get the students
What is your teaching philosophy?
He said that he doesn’t really have an over arching teaching philosophy, but something that he does try to incorporate into all of his classes is that “Economics is everywhere”. He really tries to connect economics with current events to help students see how relevant the subject is.
I saw online that you have served as an academic adviser. Do you still advise students? If so, how do you balance teaching and advising?
He said that he does still serve as an academic adviser for some of the economics majors. He is the associate director of the program, so he said that some students come to him with questions even if he is not their assigned adviser.
He tries to be available as much as possible for students to make appointments to meet with him. He said that sometimes he does have to turn students away if they do not come prepared for their appointment. It sounds like he often works very long hours in order to make around his other responsibilities to meet with students.
He said he also has 6 minute meetings during the semester for some of his classes where students in his class can sign up to meet with him for 6 minutes to ask whatever they would like. He said this is a great way for him to get to know some of the students he is teaching.
I have observed Dr. Mike Finnegan in the Leadership Studies. He and his students sat in a circle—this is a default structure. Depending on the class activity, he may ask the students to arrive early and move the desks into groups of four. He thinks through his lesson plan and considers “how the room can support the learning, rather than just being in rows.” The structure affects the engagement. He has a wide variety of majors in the class, not just leadership majors. He sees this as an advantage because the different interests of the students bring more to the class. He was very professional.
Do you have certain strategies that you use to reduce prejudices in the classroom?
“The big part is creating space to allow students to connect and share their story, because once the students have an opportunity to share their story, then we’re not afraid. We’re not afraid of the stories that we know.” “I have a great diversity in the classroom in terms of race, gender, and even sexual orientation…that’s a neat space to be in. To say, “Let the students connect and tell about their background, rather than driving the content.”
Why do you have the students put their names on cards?
He uses the name cards both to learn the students’ names and to take attendance. The name cards are also helpful for the students to connect with each other and for guests/visitors.
What strategy do you use to lead the students to develop or express their creativity?
I get them “in a space where they feel safe.” “Part of my job as an educator is not to just let them always go with what is comfortable in terms of the self, but to say, ‘How are you really connecting content?’ Then that triggers me to go back onto the board to have some elements of an adaptive culture. But then, to create a safe environment, those PowerPoint slides…those were all concepts in the book, and they hadn’t read those. So I wasn’t looking for the ‘right’ answer; I was looking for their answer. Not based on texts and definitions, but based on symbols and pictures.”
So the reading assignment that you assigned is the one that they already discussed today?
“Yes. So this is the four adaptive challenges: the gap between espoused values and behavior, then this is competing commitments, and then this is speaking the unspeakable…It is my belief that as students start to read through this, they just read words on paper and they are not connecting. But because we had an opportunity to put their personal lens on those four concepts, now when they go back and read this, they will further discover and dive into it: ‘Okay, wait. Competing commitments. That was when Mike had us do that activity when we just couldn’t think straight because of everything we had pulling us in different directions.’
“I think of a lesson plan as two-fold. Number one: How do you want to engage the students above the neck, so they can be critical thinkers? But then also, How do you engage them below the neck, so they can feel a concept? Because I think once we feel something, we tend to really learn something.”
Do you do lesson plans for each individual class session? Are lesson plans required by the university? Do you need to turn lesson plans in to someone else?
“My style, personally…I don’t do a lot of structure, but my structure I think happens in my mind, even though I don’t put it on paper. As I’m lesson planning, I try to think of the 4 C’s of lesson planning, and that’s the connection—as students walk in, how are we trying to connect them?—and then concept, concrete practice, and conclusion. Today, I made a fatal error by letting the class stop when…we ran out of time. Typically, I always want to stop at least five minutes before the class ends to allow them to debrief. So, What learning occurred today? What got you more excited about adaptive leadership? How did we work as a system? And that was my fault for not debriefing the lesson plan with the students.
Did you write the lesson plans and submit them to the dean?
No. They don’t require that. At the School of Leadership Studies, we have teaching teams. And so all of our faculty who teach ? 4 or 5 meet once a week. And we talk about concepts and ways to connect various concepts with the students to where it’s meaningful. And those conversations and dialogues help us think through what we bring into the class. Then we share. So like today…I’d say today was pretty successful. Students were engaged…I’ll share this with other faculty as a new way. I’ve never taught the four archetypes in this way before…
We observed a 800 level class in the Department of Marketing.
1.How long have you been teaching the observed course?
Since 1999.
2.How has the course plan (e.g., lesson plans, activities, syllabus etc.,) changed/remained the same since you began teaching the course?
This course is a graduate level course, it is part of the MBA program. Since he started in 1999, many things have changed. The most recent modifications were in the format of his class – he adopted the “flipped classroom”, so the students are able to see lectures on videos posted on K-State online, read recommended materials and come to apply and practice what they learned in class. The Professor also uses a program to simulate real business world.
3. What are the student learning outcomes for the course? How do you accomplish these outcomes during class? How do you assess these outcomes?
The department has some general goals, especially for undergraduate level. The Professor said that the SLOs for this class is to expose the students to market concepts and real world activities, give them some literature of the field, encourage public speaking skills and student accountability – which was demonstrated is the class today by a group presentation.
The assessment of the course’s SLOs are based on written feedback, final review, peer review. The students also have a “firing memo” that works like a checklist of expectations they have to address the group work.
4. How do you get students engaged/interested in the class? How do you keep their attention?
He tries to bring a diversity of activities to work in class, and tries to do not only being the one who speaks for one hour fifteen minutes, what he would consider a failure.
5. How do you incorporate your teaching philosophy into your course design?
In short, the professor emphasized that his teaching philosophy is provide real world activities based on theories so the students can practice and learn by doing.
6. On average, how long would you say you “prep” for each day/lesson?
The preparation for his class takes about the same amount of time of the class period. So if he teaches this course for 3 hours a week, he usually spend another 3 hours preparing the readings, activities and extra content to fill out the class period. The professor also mentioned that in the beginning of semester this preparation time can be larger since he needs to review and prepare the main materials.
7. Any advice/best practices for future instructors?
Always bring your enthusiasm for the topic to the class. He pointed out the use of “What I loved in these articles was…” to call students attention to main points in the recommended reading.
I observed undergraduate agricultural economics class. The lecturer has been teaching this class for 25 years. The class capacity is 90 students. The class content is a lecture and the syllabus remains the same. However, before 5 years ago the class was flipped classroom and the exams were team tests rather than individuals’ tests and there were team activities. The student learning outcomes for this class are learn and apply economic principles to current events and issues, and develop the ability to think broadly by applying economic principles to all issues, events, and situations in everyday life, school, and career.
The professor used different strategies to get students engaged in the class. He started the class with outline summarized the main points for the topic a head, after that he used a quiz to evaluate what the students learned from the previous class, throughout the class the professor used stories to simplify the economic principles and concepts in the real life to get students more involved. Also, he used figures and graphs to make the ideas more clearly.
Basically, he assesses the students learning outcomes through traditional tests, quizzes, homework’s, and reading articles. Also, the students are required to read the course-related materials and write personal reflections weekly on K-State Online message board. In addition, frequently encourage them to ask questions in class. The kind of question in the exams short essays rather than multiple choice to make sure that students understanding the main concepts of the course.
Regarding his teaching philosophy, relate the topics in class to current events and do something fun shortly in between the mini sessions. Finally, he recommends the new or current instructor prepared well and try to give students meaningful learning. Some students are frustrating and are going to challenge you so try to control over yourself. Also, show their passion into the classroom and it is always very important to be transparent and be honest with your students.
I attended Dr. Dan Kuester’s Macroeconomics course. The Macroeconomics class I took as an undergrad was the worst, most boring class I have ever taken so I was interested to see what Dr. Kuester did with that class to earn him a teaching award. The first thing I noticed was that the class was huge. The largest class I had been in before had 100 students and I thought that was too large. Dr. Kuester’s class had probably between 300 and 400 students in it. It seems like it would be much harder to keep a class that size interesting, so I was interested to see what he would do.
He did a pretty good job at keeping the class interesting. He kept the class engaged by having them do exercises and calling on random people form the class to help him answer the questions. The students he called on seemed to know the answers so I thought that must mean that he kept the students engaged in previous classes as well. He used examples from modern companies to help the students understand his concepts. That seemed to help his students. He also had posted news stories on his Facebook page so that his students could read up on some issues beforehand that he mentioned in class that day. After his class, he showed us a clip from the TV show “The Office” that he was planning to show in class but ran out of time for. Apparently he has a whole website devoted to clips from “The Office” that show different economic principles at work. That would definitely have helped me to better understand the topic if my previous economics teacher had done that.
At the end of his class, he gave a quiz but he didn’t collect them. He just used them as a way to help students prepare for future quizzes, though he didn’t tell the students this until after they had finished. He then let the students work together to figure out what they had done and where they needed improvement. Overall, it seemed like a good class. I wasn’t terribly interested in the topic, but I never got bored and I feel that if I had taken this class as an undergrad, I would have probably gotten a much better grade if Dr. Kuester had been my instructor.
After the class was over, we walked with Dr. Kuester while he went to get his lunch. Melissa McKendree was there with me and she had already done a good job of summarizing many of the questions that he answered for us, so I will add a few other things I learned from Dr. Kuester then. I was curious whether he had any different techniques that he used smaller classes. He said that in smaller classes, he prefers to get to know his student better so that he can make the class more personal for them, while in larger classes, he typically uses more types of technology to help keep the class engaging, such as the video clips we saw and some class polling tools he uses that make use of the student’s smartphones. I was also interested when he was talking about how he gets his ideas for how to make his class more engaging. He said that most of his ideas aren’t original but are borrowed from others in the economics education field. He likes to attend small conferences that focus on teaching economics because those usually are great for helping him find ideas to improve his classes.
For our paired interview with Dr. Wesch, Laurel and I utilized an audio recording which was later transcribed. The transcript of the interview, in its entirety, is shown in Laurel’s response, above. To avoid repeating the same information, I paraphrased the interview information to include key details from Dr. Wesch’s responses, as shown below:
1. How long have you been teaching the observed course?
This semester is Dr. Wesch’s first time teaching the Introduction to Anthropology course. He has taught the course only for the past four weeks of the semester. Additionally, he teaches the courses Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Digital ethnography, and Religion and Culture.
2. How has the course plan (e.g., lesson plans, activities, syllabus etc.,) changed/remained the same since you began teaching the course?
Since this is a new class, this has caused a change in curriculum. As you are thinking through the content of a class as a faculty member, there are many challenges because anthropology is a huge subject with many different subject fields. Trying to represent that into one class is very difficult. Trying to speak to all anthropologists can also be challenging. Zooming in on just one expertise is much easier. In other classes, for example, buy in from students is key in changing the syllabus/curriculum. Typically, only 2-3 weeks are planned at a time and the rest is generated by student discussion and content. Additionally, student feedback (i.e. student surveys) can gauge where things are at, and can also assess what needsto be done to get students excited about the class.
3. What are the student learning outcomes for the course? How do you accomplish these outcomes during class? How do you assess these outcomes?
Dr. Wesch has very high standards for his classes. His hope is that students get to the last class of the semester and wish that the course was never ending. He has seen students, in the past exchanging information and creating a Facebook page together, which really demonstrates a great connection with each other. He also hopes for students to adopt the anthropological perspective — and further, contemplate the limits of human connection and human freedom– and continue to contemplate this question for the rest of their lives.
4. How do you get students engaged/interested in the class? How do you keep their attention?
Dr. Wesch noted that as you get further into the semester, once you know your students, you can really start taking to their interests and needs and draw out things from them. You can imagine what they are thinking as you are talking. The real payoff is even deeper into the semester, because you can help everyone know everyone else. People then think this is a special kind of space where everyone knows everyone and they can share. The key to this connection starts with loving your students— one of the main ways that you truly love your students is to actually know them and respect them.
5. How do you incorporate your teaching philosophy into your course design?
Dr. Wesch’s teaching philosophy involved loving his students and bringing light to the subject matter. Within the course, he has students journal their experience, talking about their life story, moments of happiness and connecting the course content to who they are and who they want to be.
6. On average, how long would you say you “prep” for each day/lesson?
When Dr. Wesch first started teaching, and was teaching classes of 450 students, he would put in 50 hours for every 1 hour of teaching. He noted that the initial preparation that set him up for years, and allowed him to reuse content. For the class, Introduction to Anthropology, he can reuse content from those initial 50 hours; however, he still spends approximately 5-10 hours of preparation per one hour.
7. Any advice/best practices for future instructors?
One of our key take aways from our interview with Dr. Wesch was his response to this question. He told us: you better love it. You are going to put your whole soul into it. It’s a highly rewarding profession, but it’s internally troubling, constantly, because I’m devastated if people are tuning out or sleeping. Psychologically traumatic, but intensely rewarding.
He noted a quote from an American Idol contestant who had said, “love your audience, and they will love you back.” He applied this to his own philosophy of teaching in the sense of thinking about loving his students rather than worrying about what they are thinking about him. Just like the contestant on the American Idol stage, everything changed and she was part of this big event— it wasn’t all about her, it was about this event. That changed everything. Once you start focusing on that question— loving your students— and then you’re prepping for class— you stop prepping in such a way. If you start from a place of love, if you understand where they’re at, you don’t care whether or not you preserve their intelligence in their eyes, you just care about their experience.
I observed a Principle of Finance class, the class has around 400 students
1.How long have you been teaching the observed course?
14 years in K-state and 6 years in other universities
2.How has the course plan (e.g., lesson plans, activities, syllabus etc.,) changed/remained the same since you began teaching the course?
The main thing that has changed was technology as far as 20 years ago email was used for notes and lectures, but these days with technology using online quizzes and notes at Kstate online
3.How do you get students engaged/interested in the class? How do you keep their attention?
The one thing he’s been using where he gives a question up in the board and gets the students to take their phone out and text their answers which will give immediate feedback as far as their understanding. Also, give a problem in class and get the students to work with their neighbor to solve the problem which creates a social aspect for learning. Ask the students if they have questions and he will answer them.
4.How do you incorporate your teaching philosophy into your course design?
His teaching philosophy would be that student’s effort in the class should be rewarded. If student puts effort in the class, they will do well. Also, most of the problems that students worked on in class will usually be cut and paste into the exam. They also have access to old exams from years ago. There are some problems in the exam which distinguish the “A” students from the “B” students. He has an interesting philosophy where he wants the students to feel discomfort about their grades and about where they are in terms of a grade letter, because the students that do well in midterms and they know they are guaranteed an A, they will not work as hard, which he doesn’t want that for his classroom. He wants all students to work hard the whole semester. So what he does is, he doesn’t curve individual exams and always set the standard high. Then, at the end of the semester, he starts curving everything if needed. He also talked about TEVALS where he get the students talking about his grading philosophy. He also creates an excel sheet where he posts all 400 students grades under an anonymous code, and students will see how many students did well in the exam and they will start thinking about if they tried harder, they would have done better.
5.On average, how long would you say you “prep” for each day/lesson?
For a big class, back in the day will take him hours of preparation, 3 or 4 hours for each hour of class. These days is relatively shorts, just think about the main points, examples and funny things that he could say in class and he spends half an hour of preparation. For a small classroom and especially if it involves reading, he would still spends 3 hours of preparation either reading the book or looking for examples. Conclusion he had, he spends more time preparing for a small class than he does for a big class.
6.Any advice/best practices for future instructors?
A good advice that one of the faculty got was, be prepared and listen to your students. Always listen to your students and show them how much you care about them and be prepared and everything will fall in place.
I observed Dr. Finnegan of leadership in practice in the Leadership Studies. There were around 20 undergraduate students in the class and they came form different majors. All of them sat in a circle and the nametag was in front of each student. At first, he asked the students to have the brainstorm one by one and the next student should pick up the last idea from last student, in the end, he picked the last idea and gave students a lot of information based on the topic: community. During the whole class, he always applied brainstorm and facilitated students to think and share their personal ideas. In addition, all of PowerPoint slices were very easy to understand, usually within the picture and title rather than the long paragraph. In this way, students could grab the mean idea immediately. I like the examples of loyalty, he showed the map of US within the baseball team in each state and then leaded the topic: loyalty, after sharing the personal ideas about the loyalty in baseball team, he transferred this topic to the loyalty in the leadership. Besides, group discussion was another teaching strategy of him. In all, he was very professional and he knew how to organize the whole class very well.
Why do you collect the students’ nametag and ask them to put in front of themselves?
He applies the nametags in both ways: letting students know each other as soon as possible and connect each other; taking attendance of students.
Do you do lesson plans for each individual class session? Are lesson plans required by the university? Do you need to turn lesson plans in to someone else?
“My style, personally…I don’t do a lot of structure, but my structure I think happens in my mind, even though I don’t put it on paper. As I’m lesson planning, I try to think of the 4 C’s of lesson planning, and that’s the connection—as students walk in, how are we trying to connect them? —And then concept, concrete practice, and conclusion. Today, I made a fatal error by letting the class stop when…we ran out of time. Typically, I always want to stop at least five minutes before the class ends to allow them to debrief.
Did you write the lesson plans and submit them to the dean?
No. They don’t require that. At the School of Leadership Studies, we have teaching teams and we meet once a week and we talk about how to facilitate students to learn in the class and we pick some meaningful concepts, which are helpful for students to learn. Then we share. So like today…I’d say today was pretty successful. Students were engaged…I’ll share this with other faculty as a new way. I’ve never taught the four archetypes in this way before…
We had the privilege to interview a great instructor in the Finance department, Dr. Scott Hendrix, who has come to teach from a fellowship funding for high quality teaching. We have asked him the following questions and we had a great time interviewing him.
1. How long have you been teaching the observed course?
14 years at KSU but 20 years altogether.
2. How has the course plan (e.g., lesson plans, activities, syllabus etc.,) changed/remained the same since you began teaching the course?
Technology was the main thing where before, emailing was very essential. Now, there are online quizzes that students take prior coming to class. Alot more you can do.
3. What are the student learning outcomes for the course? How do you assess these outcomes?
5 learning outcomes:
A.How corportate financial managers make decision
B.Knowledge of time-valued money
C.Risk return
D.Setup of corporation
E.Agency issues, corporate and managers
From experience and past years, collectively only about 6-7% that fail. So various exams and most importantly exit interviews are great to know if the students have learned or not.
4. How do you get students engaged/interested in the class? How do you keep their attention?
This class is big, around 400 students so getting their attention can be hard. Dr. Scott uses the system, “pull everywhere system” , where a short question is tossed in the class, and they use their phones to text in their answer. Make the students work in groups. Students in that kind of class don’t want to talk. With a big group, its expected that they don’t want to talk, so making the class somewhat a social environment is the best solution for Dr. Scott.
How do you make the fundamental knowledge (equations, theories, models, etc..) that students need to know interesting?
it is fortunate that this class is in application of real life. Dr. Scott is trying to make the students rich.Who doesn’t want to be rich?!!!
5. How do you incorporate your teaching philosophy into your course design?
Dr. Scott’s philosophy is about challenging the students. He believes that students, even the weak want to be challenged.So to make this possible. he anonymously put the grades in an excel sheet without listing the names in grade orders, so even the best(A students) see that they want want to get even higher.
6. On average, how long would you say you “prep” for each day/lesson?
Dr. Scott mention a quote that graduate students have in common.“ Don’t prep til death”.
3-4 hours for every 1 hour of class
Half an hour for review things for a familiar class like this one.
7. Any advice/best practices for future instructors?
1. Be prepared,
2. Listen to the students; show them you care about them.
3. “they don’t care how much they know until they know how much you care”
4. Have high standards, best students want to be challenged. The secret is that weaker students also want to be challenged, show them that they are at school where the standards are high and to achieve it, they have to put in the effort
We observed a large undergraduate lecture class. The instructor has been teaching the class for 12 years. Their teaching approach involved frequent switches between drawing using an Elmo, PowerPoint, video, and working through word problems. The instructor said they preferred using the Elmo because it is more active, students can copy the instructor’s diagram as the instructor draws them and actively work through calculations and concepts related to the diagrams in class. The instructor showed two videos during the class, one was a real life news story related to the concepts discussed in the class, the second was a clip from a sitcom, also illustrating an problem discussed in the lecture material. The videos broke up the lecture and provided memorable and lighthearted examples of applications of the lecture material. At the end of the class, the instructor polled student on topics they would like to discuss in more detail using a polling application and promised to discuss those topics in the next class. The instructor stated that specific Student Learning Objectives (SLOs) are often given as word problems for students to answer at the beginning of the lecture. Students are given a few minutes to solve the problem, then a few minutes to discuss the problem with their neighbor. The instructor then asks students about the problem and then provides the answer. A longer list of questions pertaining to SLOs are posted on the course website and a small group of students may be asked these questions within the class. When asked how the instructor has changed the class over time, the instructor stressed keeping the concepts taught in the class up to date and related to current events. They stated they have incorporated more use of technology over the years and helped to develop a course website with extensive resources. When asked if they have any final advice for future teachers, the instructor replied it is important to remember you are there to do more than provide basic information, you are there to help guide a discussion-making future generation.