Tuesday, September 10, 12:00pm - 1:00pm

When you think of your favorite teacher, what images or words come to mind? How do you think your students might describe you in comparison? Good teachers exhibit a “teaching persona” that is a balance between their authentic self and professional self. Thinking about this facet of teaching is important for new instructors, as it helps them find a personal classroom management style that’s right for them while effectively promoting student learning; at the same time, it can be a helpful reflective exercise for more experienced instructors. This session will provide you with specific, interactive guidance and recommendations on developing specific aspects of your teaching persona and style, along with helpful advice for any who are still learning to become comfortable in front of a classroom.

Wednesday, September 18, 12:00pm - 1:00pm

While teaching laboratory sections may seem like a "piece of cake" to an outsider, in reality they are multiple-hour classes that require numerous instructional skills, including detailed planning, content mastery and presentation, implementation of experiments, classroom management, troubleshooting, and interactive student assessment. In this workshop, GTA/IAs will be given guidance in how to facilitate an engaging, learning-centered laboratory session, as well as tips on effective grading strategies for laboratory-style assessments. Discussions of particular issues with other laboratory GIA/TAs will be encouraged.

Thursday, September 19, 11:40am - 12:55pm

Graduate students must handle a myriad of responsibilities during the span of their graduate studies (e.g., teaching, research, coursework, etc.).  Meeting the high expectations of these academic demands is challenging at best, and for many students, stressful, overwhelming, and guilt-inducing due to the competing demands of their professional and personal life.  How to balance and find time for each of these facets is not a skill that graduate students automatically know!  Recognizing your stresses, defining both short-term tasks and long-term goals, and learning how to prioritize are key to beginning to 
find your balance.  

This workshop will help you learn to recognize different levels of stressors in your life by interactively applying the Covey Time Management Matrix and other reflective-thinking tools to your own situation. Advice for managing your workload, prioritizing your responsibilities, and identifying personal traits that may be contributing to this imbalance will be given, and discussion with other participants will be encouraged to help you begin to gain perspective on your graduate school experience. 

Tuesday, September 24, 12:00pm - 1:00pm

To new instructors, discussion sections, even informal classroom discussions within a lecture setting, may seem nerve-wracking and difficult to facilitate. Asking "good" questions that are thought-provoking and lead to robust, in-depth discussion and student engagement requires thoughtful planning and preparation, and is an often overlooked and underdeveloped skill of instructors. What you will find is that even discussion sessions take planning and preparation (and practice). Effective methodologies and best practices for leading classroom discussions, and techniques for directing student responses, will be addressed and modeled. GIAs, GTAs, and instructors at all levels of teaching and experience are welcomed.

Friday, September 24, 12:00pm - 1:00pm

The responsibility of a graduate TA/IA leading a recitation session is a bit different from instruction in other courses – what is expected of you, what is required of your students, and how do you effectively facilitate this unique classroom setting? How do you ensure that you cover everything you need to in the time allotted? How do you deal with student issues such as non-interaction or non-preparedness? These issues and more are discussed, along with the development and implementation of lesson plans, considered a “best practice” when leading recitations. All GTA/IAs are welcome to this discussion session even if your primary responsibility is not a Recitation Leader.

Wednesday, October 2, 11:50am - 1:00pm

Graduate students must handle a myriad of responsibilities during the span of their graduate studies (e.g., teaching, research, coursework, etc.).  Meeting the high expectations of these academic demands is challenging at best, and for many students, stressful, overwhelming, and guilt-inducing due to the competing demands of their professional and personal life.  How to balance and find time for each of these facets is not a skill that graduate students automatically know!  Recognizing your stresses, defining both short-term tasks and long-term goals, and learning how to prioritize are key to beginning to 
find your balance.  

This workshop will help you learn to recognize different levels of stressors in your life by interactively applying the Covey Time Management Matrix and other reflective-thinking tools to your own situation. Advice for managing your workload, prioritizing your responsibilities, and identifying personal traits that may be contributing to this imbalance will be given, and discussion with other participants will be encouraged to help you begin to gain perspective on your graduate school experience. 

Tuesday, October 8, 12:00pm - 1:00pm

The responsibilities of all GTA/IAs typically include grading student work.  Yet ensuring that grading is both objective and efficient involves specific strategies and reflection on important considerations in advance, both aspects of which TAs are often not aware.  When grading at any level, a TA needs to define what their “grading philosophy” is for the course, and use practices, strategies, and techniques best suited for the specifics of the course and the assessment itself. Grading should be viewed and valued as a method for providing constructive feedback to students, with feedback types differing 
depending on the assessment type. How to develop your grading philosophy, incorporate relevant techniques, provide effective feedback, along with grading different types of assessment styles and rubric use, will be discussed in this workshop. 

Monday, October 14, 12:00pm - 1:00pm

When you think of your favorite teacher, what images or words come to mind? How do you think your students might describe you in comparison? Good teachers exhibit a “teaching persona” that is a balance between their authentic self and professional self. Thinking about this facet of teaching is important for new instructors, as it helps them find a personal classroom management style that’s right for them while effectively promoting student learning; at the same time, it can be a helpful reflective exercise for more experienced instructors. This session will provide you with specific, interactive guidance and recommendations on developing specific aspects of your teaching persona and style, along with helpful advice for any who are still learning to become comfortable in front of a classroom.

Tuesday, October 15, 12:00pm - 1:00pm

Large classes and online tests often necessitate the need for using exams with multiple-choice questions (MCQs) to assess student learning and streamline the grading process. However, many problems exist with these types of questions, in particular the difficulty in assessing higher level learning or deeper understanding when giving students an answer choice. How do instructors write good MCQs that ask students to do more than simply regurgitate facts and content, and effectively assess the students’ learning of what was intended? In this workshop we will explore the structure of MCQs along with their strengths and inherent weaknesses. Participants will learn how to create effective questions based on learning outcomes, with practice constructing both a good question and appropriate (and fair) answer choices.

Thursday, October 24, 12:00pm - 1:00pm

The best way to get good teaching evaluations from your students is from the beginning, by being a good teacher. Good teaching involves developing your teaching persona, balancing content mastery and course rigor with student ability, and encouraging regular interpersonal rapport. Tips for developing these skills will be discussed, along with methods for encouraging student feedback on your instruction during the semester, in addition to end-of-semester course evaluations.

Monday, October 28, 12:00pm - 1:00pm

A concern of many new teaching assistants regards the level of appropriate interaction considered acceptable with respect to the instructor-student relationship. Should you “friend” your students on social networking websites? How do you maintain a professional, but helpful, boundary? What is considered inappropriate interaction? These questions and more will be discussed in this workshop, using scenarios in which participants will “act out” a situation and then discuss the proper professional response to these scenarios.

Friday, November 1, 12:00pm - 1:00pm

A student's cell phone buzzes while you are lecturing. The other students look at you expectantly as the student checks it and sends a text in front of you. In a classroom discussion, a student uses charged language and other students become visibly distressed. Grades have been posted, and an upset student sends you an email challenging his final project and class grade. What do you do in these situations? How do you handle other challenging classroom disruptions? This seminar will provide examples of scenarios that can (and will) happen, along with the best (and worst) ways for handling and defusing situations, and best practices for ensuring these scenarios do not occur during your teaching.

Monday, November 4, 12:00pm - 1:00pm

Active learning is a student-centered approach in which pre-planned activities are used to engage the student as an active participant in their learning. Techniques such as think-pair-share, one-minute paper, concept mapping, and others have been shown to improve student learning of material and enhance the presentation format of a course.  However, active learning strategies can be difficult for new GIA/TAs to implement because they require preparation and skills in guiding and moderating the activity.  

This workshop examines the three key student learning benchmarks integrated into active learning techniques and explores the planning system necessary to incorporate such activities.  To illustrate these, attendees will actively participate in several active learning techniques applicable to a wide range of classroom settings.  You will learn helpful tips on what you can do, how to do it, and why active learning in the classroom is important to student learning.

Thursday, November 7, 12:00pm - 1:00pm

You may have heard (or uttered) the comments, “My students don’t turn in assignments or don’t show up to class. How do I get my students to care about my class?” Today’s students seem to be disengaged, disinterested, and lacking motivation to do well in their classes, and lacking the resources, skills, and learning “toolkits” that college course instructors expect. It feels much more difficult to engage today’s students in the traditional classroom setting with the constant presence of distractions from technology. Fortunately, there are specific strategies you can use to enhance your teaching style and engage students from the first class and maintain that engagement throughout the semester. Learn different techniques to develop a personal connection with your students, encourage preparation for your class as well as student investment in their learning, and expect (and receive!) excellence from your students. These strategies to engage students can be applied in small classrooms as well as in large lecture-hall style courses.

Tuesday, November 19, 12:00pm - 1:00pm

While student learning is assessed in its most basic form via grades, those grades should only be the end product of a series of measures implemented in a class that assess what students are actually “learning with understanding”. Effective assessments that promote real, deep learning are formative, engaging students in the moment or helping them understand the relevance of their learning. This session will explore how well-designed assessments can improve student learning, specifically how instructors can ensure students achieve different levels of cognitive thinking and knowledge development through intentional assessment design. A variety of strategies and examples will be discussed along with other important considerations in assessment development.

Thursday, November 21, 1:15pm - 2:30pm

Many of our instructors tell us that they wish they had been provided guidance in developing a syllabus before they taught their first course. In this workshop, we will begin to develop a syllabus for a course you may teach in the future. We’ll discuss the importance and role of learning outcomes, and interactively explore how to craft them. Using the backwards design model, the development of a thoughtfully designed learning outcome will then guide participants in creating a quality learning activity or assignment, formulating the appropriate assessment, and finally, determining the most effective method for teaching that activity. Other tips and advice for syllabus development, along with examples of good and bad syllabus construction, will be discussed with other participants in a small group setting.  Register