Inside UNB
Teaching Essentials
Dawn MacIsaac, Coordinator of UNB's Teaching and Learning Services and Associate Professor of Computer Science and Electrical and Computing Engineering, is developing a series of Teaching Essentials workshops. As the workshops are conducted, materials used in them will be posted on this page.
Part 1: The Practicalities
The Practicalities overview. Build evidence of your teaching in a teaching dossier. Here are some tips.
This is a list of the Student Opinion Survey questions on which you, as instructor, will be evaluated at the end of your course.
Syllabus Essentials provides details on using your syllabus to convey course policies; general student non-academic conduct; plagiarism, cheating and academic offenses; and enticing students to get excited about your course.
Here is a sample syllabus from one of Dawn's courses.
Here is the wording pertaining to academic integrity and plagiarism to add to your syllabus.
Some things that help you develop a teaching philosophy:
- Being Prepared to Make Tough Decisions - as you resolve issues raised by students over time and reflect on your experiences, you develop some overall practice principles that help you formulate your teaching philosophy.
- Think about your teaching traits to find something you can do well and do that. Make it your own. Compensate for teaching traits that may work against you.
Counter balance challenge with support in your classes, so that students feel in control. Make your own version of this "2-way expectations" document. Share tips for success with students.
Part 2: Rapport
Understanding your students and developing a rapport: overview.
Here is a sample "learning contract" between instructor and students. It sets the tone of the class by being explicit about what you expect of students and what they can expect of you in return.
Something to consider distributing to your students (especially first year students) is "25 Success Rules for University Students," as a way of helping them adjust successfully to university-level expectations.
Answer these questions about yourself and reflect on how your answers might affect the way in which you relate to students.
Part 3: Course Structure
Structuring course content and providing effective instructions: overview.
See this example of the first page of assignment instructions where instructions are given in separate handouts, to reduce information overload.
- Yellow - highlights how instruction sheets can be broken up into multiple components. Legend:
This example of assignment instructions gives all the specifics that instructions should contain. Legend for the colour coding:
- Yellow - instructions detailing expectations for content
- Red - instructions detailing submission guidelines
- Green - instructions detailing expectation for structure/format
- Blue - instructions detailing extraneous grading considerations
Use Bloom's Taxonomy for the Cognitive Domain to help craft learning objectives or learning outcomes statements for your assignments, as well as to think through the details of what you want students to actually demonstrate and do.
View this sample of a grading rubric for an assignment. The dotted line in the table indicates the threshold level of achievement.
Part 4: Assessment and Feedback
Assessment and feedback overview.
A list of what to assess.
An example answer key for the writing aspect of assignments, so you can focus your written feedback on student-specific items and refer them to the key for standard comments on common errors.
A method of setting performance expectations for students on the writing aspect of assignments using rubrics.
A sample class presentation assignment description for students.
An example practice test for a midterm. We saw examples of midterms and finals in the presentation on this topic, but they are not posted here.
An example marking scheme form that offers students flexibility in course mark weighting. There are two possible options and they pick the one that best suits their situation.
