The Importance of Learning How to Teach

Training of graduate teaching assistants has always been a concern at UTEP. In the past the Center for Effective Teaching and Learning (CETaL) offered a series of workshops that helped TAs prepare for their teaching duties. Because of turnover in staff in the center and in the graduate school, TA training has recently not received the attention it deserves. In the spring of 2009 I decided to form a working group with the Dean of the Graduate School and her staff to develop a teaching seminar for Graduate Teaching Assistants because (1) we have an obligation to prepare graduate students, especially PhD students, for a career in higher education as teachers, and (2) we need to develop a learning-centered culture that focuses on teaching students and not solely delivering content.

The purpose of seminar is to further develop the basic skills, knowledge and attitudes of graduate teaching assistants in preparation for their role as teaching professionals in higher education. The seminar aims to help them gain the confidence needed to conquer the challenges they will face in teaching and research, with an emphasis on teaching. The seminar will also help students develop such skills as writing relevant, clear, and measurable learning outcomes; designing powerful, relevant, and authentic learning experiences for individuals and groups; assess different kinds of student learning; use assessment and reflection to continuously improve teaching; dealing with different personalities and difficult people in a positive and effective manner; and creating longer term teaching and research development plans, among others.

Times have changed and we cannot afford to continue the traditional approach of lecturing, i.e. distributing information, with little concern about how students process that information, and leaving them to their own devices in trying to make sense of it all. Teaching requires more than repeating what is already in the textbook or other materials for the class. We have an obligation to teach student how we think in our discipline and how to apply effective problem solving strategies that will lead to innovative solutions to the many challenges we face as a society. This will not happen if we keep asking students to simple memorize what we said or repeat procedures we showed them.

In this blog I will document the strategy I used, the work completed, and the time it took to develop this course. I do have to admit that I am reconstructing the sequence of events because I started this blog after the fact.