by Professor Kenneth Hanson, Florida State University
Part 6 of the
“Keep Your Job, Ken!” series is dedicated to
teaching. While we regularly serve as teachers in the lab, this section is
focused on the traditional, classroom meaning of teaching. If you are at a
research focused institution and not a PUI, the reality is that teaching is not
a high priority. We are not hired for our ability to teach nor do we have
formal training as teachers. It is, however, a necessary part of the job that,
according to the effort statement I sign every semester, takes up ~25% of my
effort. Unfortunately, it is one of those things that many of us enjoy doing
but is not a priority. Doing it really well does not necessarily help but doing
it poorly can definitely hurt. With that in mind, most of the advice below
focuses on maximizing your efficiency and effectiveness in teaching without
compromising your research.
1) Find the class
that no one wants to teach and teach it. Teaching a class for the first time
is difficult and time consuming, but each subsequent round becomes easier and
easier. With that in mind, your ideal scenario is to minimize the number of
different classes you teach. My strategy has been to find a class that nobody
wants to teach and/or a class with several sections each semester. Regarding
the former, there are certain, upper level courses that are taught once a year
by someone who has been teaching it for the past 20 years. They and/or the
department might let you teach it when you first arrive but you can pretty much
guarantee that you are going to have to fight to teach it repeatedly. Alternatively,
there may be a class no one likes, that falls out of current expertise, or where
there are enough sections to accommodate everyone who’s interested. Regardless
of the cause, this is the class you can claim and teach several times before
tenure. For me this ended up being General Chemistry 2. Sure, it is a 250-person
class but there are consistently several sections available as most of my
colleagues don’t like teaching large classes. The large class can be a shock to
the system but after teaching it a few times I can largely operate on cruise
control. I did also end up teaching a few different graduate courses but my
fallback was always Gen Chem 2.
2)
Don’t reinvent the
wheel. When I learned which class I’d be teaching, the first thing I did
was walk around with a USB stick, visit every faculty member who had taught it
previously, and ask them for their course content. Everyone I spoke with was
willing to share. While I did not use all or even most of the content, it was
an extremely helpful foundation for generating lecture slides, test questions,
homework, etc. Most of the standard text books also offer a collection of lecture
slides, images, and questions to choose from. Likewise, most classes have been
taught countless times by thousands of different people, many of whom are good
at it. Many useful lectures, questions, and other things are just one internet
query away. To give back to the community I have made all of my class
PowerPoints available on
my group website.
3) In terms of
lecture notes and/or PowerPoint slides, do them well the first time. Just
like supplementary grant materials, your semester to semester course content
will largely be the same. As such, it is worthwhile to generate quality content
the first time around. It takes more time up front but will save a lot of time
in the long run.
4) If you can, use a
separate email account for teaching. Even if your syllabus, timeline,
lectures, etc. are perfectly clear, you will inevitably get lots of emails. This
is one of the most difficult things when teaching a large class. It’s important
to respond in a timely manner since one of the biggest complaints sent to the
chair and that appear in semester-end evaluations is that “the professor doesn’t
reply to emails.” You also don’t want to lose important research emails (e.g.
speaking invitations, invitations to review, grant acceptance/rejections, etc.)
in the bombardment. The best way I found to deal with the volume is to use two
separate email accounts, one for teaching and another for everything else. Since
both are university business you won’t be able to just set up a @yahoo.com or
@gmail.com account. This was easy for me because I have separate departmental
and university email accounts. For others though you might have to ask to set
up a separate email address but presumably your institution will be able to
accommodate you. Once established, you can use the time management strategies
mentioned previously and block out time to exclusively address teaching emails.
You will also want to start setting up an email reply archive that allows you
to quickly copy and paste most of your responses (see next post in the series).
5) Clearly define
course content, expectations, grade criteria, and timelines. Students will
put up with a lot (i.e. poor lectures, difficult tests, hard work, etc.) as
long as they know exactly what to expect. The biggest complaint that students
send the dean or department chairs, even more so than poor email response
practices, is frustration over a lack of course organization and clarity. For
example, instructors changing their grading criteria is the primary cause for
students challenging grades. And rightfully so. For example, we had one
instructor change their grading policy mid-semester from dropping the lowest-test score to
replacing the lowest score with a percent of the final. For most this had very
little effect on their grade or position in the class but by changing the rules
mid-stream they lost their students’ trust. Dealing with grade challenges can
take a lot of time and effort so it is not worth it. Just make a plan and stick
with it.
6) Write your first undergraduate
exams much ‘easier’ than you think they should be. Our lens for teaching,
exams, homework, etc. is largely shaped by our own experience as students. The
problem is that individuals who become chemistry professors were most likely exemplary
and highly motivated students that thrived in a traditional classroom setting.
However, the other 99% of the students in your classes are not you. Not only
that, writing a quality exam and quality questions is a learned skill. Are you
assessing what you think you’re assessing? How long will the test take the
average student? Are there alternative ways to interpret the wording of a test
question? These questions are difficult to answer prior to giving the exam and
even more difficult if you have never written an exam before. Not only that but
even changing a single word in the question can sway the outcome by 5-10%.
Since a low first test score can be devastating to the students moral, your evaluations,
and your drop/ withdrawal/ fail rates, it is much better to default on giving
an ‘easier’ exam. I suspect you’ll find the class average will be much lower
than you thought it would be. Worst case scenario the test is too easy and you
can compensate later with more difficult exams.
7) Use teaching
release wisely. Most research-focused chemistry programs will give one or
two semesters of teaching release to new faculty. With two semesters of release
time available to me the most common advice I received was to use one early to
get the lab up and running. Then, use the second later for the tenure tour (see
my previous post). If only one semester release is available, I strongly feel
that the former is more important than the latter. Even while teaching it is
possible to squeeze in several trips without missing much class time. However,
getting research up and running while simultaneously teaching a class for the
first time can be very challenging. If contemplating between the fall versus the
spring of the first year, I recommend waiting until the Spring too because most
of the first Fall semester will be spent purchasing and waiting for delivery.
This is especially true for major equipment that must go through weeks (or
months) of the sole-source/bidding process. And even after purchasing, equipment
can take several months to arrive and be installed. Also, depending on the
graduate student rotation/ decision timeline, you likely won’t officially have
group members until the end of the first semester. Taking release in the spring
then becomes ideal for setting everything up and starting to train your
students. It also segues directly into the summer where there’s no teaching and
you can direct all of your attention to research.