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Current Teaching Responsibilities
I am presently employed by the University of California, Irvine, as one of two Instructional Development Associates (IDA) with the Instructional Resources Center (IRC). I have three main areas of responsibility: to assist the director of the IRC with the design and implementation of the Teaching Assistant Consultant (TAC) program; to design and implement a series of workshops preparing graduate students for the academic job market; and ongoing consultation and teaching development work with faculty and graduate students. A more comprehensive description of each of these areas follows.
The Teaching Assistant Consultant (TAC) Program
TACs are experienced graduate teaching assistants who are selected following a competitive campus-wide search. Over the summer they undergo a rigorous training program—over 300 hours—preparing them to conduct a series of workshops training new TAs from their discipline. In late spring the TACs begin intensive training on workshop development and delivery skills, and continue to work collaboratively with one another and with the IDAs and the director to polish their workshop drafts. In early September they participate in six days of "pre-service," a highly participant-centered program during which various training techniques are modeled and the TACs practice portions of their workshops for their peers while at the same time honing their observation and feedback skills. TAC training is highly interactive, and models the kind of training they should provide for the TAs. Similarly, the pedagogy that the TAC program advocates is emphasizes teaching and learning as dynamic, complex and interrelated processes. Once they have completed the two days of training for the TAs in their discipline, TACs are trained to conduct teaching consultations with TAs based around mid-term evaluations or videotaped teaching sessions; they also conduct workshops on issues of special interest to the TAs within their academic units. TACs receive ongoing teaching development in the form of monthly seminars, and help to design and conduct the job search for the next year’s TACs.Instructional Development Associates are usually former TACs, and so have gone through the same extensive training in teaching methods. As an IDA, my role in the TAC program initially involves providing TACs with the tools and information—model workshops, articles, guidelines—they will need to begin work on their workshops. TACs prepare two drafts of their workshops before they ever arrive at pre-service, and another draft between pre-service and the two day TA Development Program. This year we designed an interactive website that would enable the TACs—geographically dispersed over the summer—to submit their entire workshop series via the web, to view other TACs’ workshops, and to provide one another with feedback. We also provided them with extensive feedback designed to both encourage them and challenge them to go beyond what they initially think is possible in a given teaching/learning situation. Once the first draft has been received, I work with the director and the other IDA to design the six days of pre-service. Because we think it is important to base the needs of the training around the individual strengths and weaknesses of those being trained, pre-service is designed from scratch every year. Based on our assessment of the needs of the TACs we weave opportunities for them to present portions of their workshops, together with training in important skills necessary for effective training: observation, conflict resolution, providing facilitative feedback, defining learning objectives, setting evaluative criteria, etc. Once training has been completed I work to design monthly teaching development seminars for the TACs that focus on such topics as mentoring and service learning, and facilitate their organization of the job search for the next year’s TACs.
Workshop Series: Preparing for the Academic Job Market
While the TAC program emphasizes the importance of teaching in the professional development of graduate students, the IRC is equally committed to other aspects of graduates’ professional training. This series of workshops designed familiarizes graduate students from a variety of disciplines with the processes of the academic job search and also serves to teach them important presentation and communication skills. The workshops therefore focus on preparing a CV (both paper and on-line versions), preparing a teaching portfolio (paper and on-line), preparing a job talk, working at different types of academic institutions, and even exploring career options outside the academy. In addition, we offer a mock-interview service for those wanting to practice their interview skills.Teaching Development Activities
In addition to my other duties I am engaged in ongoing teaching development work, mainly with graduate TAs but also with faculty as the occasion demands. Like the TACs I conduct teaching consultations where I use mid-term evaluations and/or videotape of the consultee’s classes to provide a supportive environment for teachers who wish to develop particular aspects of their teaching performance. I act as an impartial but trained observer; I point out what is working well for them as a teacher as well as what needs improvement, prioritize areas for improvement, and offer informed suggestions for improvement. The focus is always on the needs of the teacher, and I constantly emphasize teaching as a series of behaviors (as opposed to essential attributes of a particular teacher), and behaviors that can be changed.A key area of my teaching development efforts has been encouraging sound pedagogical and professional uses of information technology. This summer, for example, I was involved in the first ever Faculty Summer Institute run by the Instructional Resources Center and designed not only to train faculty in some basic information technology applications (design of web pages, use of presentation software, image manipulation techniques, etc.) but also to encourage them to explore using these technologies in responsible ways to enhance the creativity and effectiveness of their teaching. Responsible use of information technology also has been a key component of workshops I have designed for graduate TAs, ranging from preparing an on-line CV to establishing criteria for good teaching web page design.