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POIR 593: Practicum in Teaching the Liberal Arts: Politics and International Relations (POIR)
Fall Semester 2013 VKC 108 Friday 12-2:00PM
INSTRUCTOR
Steven L. Lamy
Office: ADM 304 and VKC 315
Office hours: By appointment
Introduction
This is a required seminar for graduate students in the POIR graduate program. It is a two-unit credit/no credit course. The main principles behind the course are three: 1) It is to be taught before the TA’s first teaching semester or concurrently. 2) It is to be a practicum, focused more on advice and practical principles for effective teaching rather than on any kind of theoretical discussion about education or teaching strategies. 3) One of the main goals of the course is to make students into thoughtful teachers, encouraging not just their immediate success in the classroom, but their long-term development as teachers.
This course is a practicum designed for graduate students in POIR and affiliated departments. It will help prepare you to be a Teaching Assistant at USC but more importantly it probably be the only time that you ever think about teaching and explore some practical literature on teaching. Our discussions and activities should help you develop a teaching portfolio. This might help you land a job at a top tier liberal arts college or a larger university that cares about teaching. Unfortunately, few research universities actually do.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
By the end of the semester, enrolled students will 1) be comfortable with basic techniques for relating successfully to undergraduate students, 2) have learned basic principles of lecture and discussion sessions design and execution with an emphasis on active rather than passive learning, 3) be familiar with basic principles of assignment design and grading techniques, 4) develop a repertoire of techniques for leading and advancing classroom discussion and student learning, and 5) formulate and adopt a strategy for further development as an effective teacher and scholar and begin to assemble a portfolio of teaching materials.
Course Grade
This course will be taught Credit/No Credit. To pass the course, you must successfully complete every assignment and participate fully in class. You must make-up every session missed and if you miss more than one session you will receive a no pass and you will not be able to be a teaching assistant at USC.
Reading Materials
Ken Bain, What the Best College Teachers Do (Harvard, 2004)
Additional readings, both required and optional, will be distributed or placed on Blackboard.
Assignments
Most of our classes will be devoted to making presentations and receiving feedback from your peers and from the instructor. There will be assignments for each session These include: presentation of two lesson plans, one for a large introductory lecture class and the second for a smaller seminar in any subject area in your field of study; a 20 minute lecture presentation; a 20 minute discussion session; a sample final examination; a course syllabus; and a case teaching exercise.
Schedule of Topics and Readings
August 30th: Introduction: Active versus Passive Learning
Basic Teaching Assistant Information
Your professional plans and your expectations for teaching
Undergraduate expectations today
Nash, Seven Questions for Testing My Teaching
Select a teaching article from the Journal of Political Science Education or some other source
Share its lessons next week
Teaching Case: The French Lesson
September 6th: The Problems with our Academic Community
Derek Bok, Our Underachieving Colleges. Chapters 2,3 4, 5, 7, 9 and 12
How Learning Works and Leading Discussion
Assignment 1 due: First Lesson Plan
Lang, First Days of Class, 21-42
Dewey, Thinking In Education
Teaching Case: Case of the Dethroned Section Leader
Bob Thompson
September 13th: Preparing and Presenting a Lecture: Loaded or Naked
To help us here, please visit two lectures in any subject matter. The class in which you are a TA does not count! You should ask permission but sometime you can just sit quietly in the back. Do your homework and try to find the best professors at USC. What makes for a great lecture? What practices would you want to emulate? What did you see as a bad or less useful practice?
Ken Bain, What the Best College Teachers Do (For next week)
Elements of a great lecture
Lecture topics selected-we will begin hearing your lectures the next class.
Palmer, Good Teaching: A Matter of Living the Mystery
Cooper, Louis Agassiz as a Teacher
Watch Professor Sandel’s lecture on justice: justiceharvard.org
Consider the best lectures that you have ever heard? What made these lectures so great?
Visit a lecture here on campus and identify the positives and negatives of the lecture
September 20th: What makes that great teacher: practices and strategies: a discussion of Ken Bain
What do we learn about teaching from Bain’s work?
Lecture Outlines shared and schedule established
Dealing with Students: Part One
In class behavior
Mentoring and advising
Academic integrity
Personal relationships
Teaching cases: The Puzzling Student
Bob Lunt
September 27th : Dealing with Students Part II
Grading and evaluation of student work
Developing Active Learning lesson plans
Lantis , Kuzma and Boehrer, The New International Studies Classroom, Chapters 1, 2 and 15
First lesson Plan Discussion
Two Practice lectures
October 4th: Other Tools for Teaching: Case teaching
Capt. Rockwood Case
Suggestions for case teaching
Leading a Discussion
Lesson Plans: Teaching about (you select the topic.) Include a plan for discussion and a writing exercise (One exercise for a lecture class and one for a smaller a seminar)
Practice Lectures
October 11 and 18: I may be in Iceland and Norway so this may be fieldwork time.
Select a film that may fit with your teaching interests. Watch it again and develop two assignments. The first would be a lecture or discussion using only parts of films and the second would be a series of post film discussion questions that link it to concepts in your field of study.
This would also be a time to go visit a lecture or two.
October 25th: Active Learning: Simulation and Gaming and Research Exercises
Report on the use of film
Practice Lectures
November 1: CET visit and using university resources
Final Draft of two lesson plans due
November 8: Lecture Presentations and Review of Lesson Plans
November 15th: Syllabi, Exams and selecting readings
Lecture Presentations
Elements of Teaching portfolio
December 6th: Final discussions or simply some refreshments and evaluations
(Some important information from Professor Mark Schroeder)
Teaching Portfolio ( CET and Other Sources)
OVERVIEW
The best way to document your teaching experiences and accomplishments is with a teaching portfolio. Your teaching portfolio will contain all of the best evidence of your experience and accomplishments, and you will eventually draw selectively from your portfolio when you put together a dossier of teaching materials to apply for jobs.
WHAT BELONGS
These are the kinds of thing that you should be keeping in your teaching portfolio:
1. Teaching Resume
This is like a version of your CV that focuses exclusively on teaching-related matters and goes into greater depth than your CV. It might contain a list of courses you’re prepared to teach, descriptions of your responsibilities for each of your teaching experiences, and numerical evaluations for each course, as well as teaching awards and teaching-specific references. You might even include this teacher development workshop or a sampling of CET events you’ve attended.
2. Teaching Statement
As described in the Teaching Statement Handout. Keep it to 1-1/2 pages single-spaced at most. You may also include or focus on your teaching-related goals or objectives.
3. Student Evaluations – numerical
You should have a summary sheet which summarizes all of your numerical student evaluations, and also copies of the original separate sheets for each course, organized chronologically.
4. Student Evaluations – written
Keep all of your written student evaluations, and as you get more, keep a summary sheet with some of the best in one place, possibly organized topically.
5. Faculty evaluations
Keep any written evaluation or feedback from faculty or others.
6. Course Materials
You should also include a range of course materials, both for courses for which you’ve already taught, and for courses you plan to teach. These may include:
Syllabi for courses you’ve taught or TA’d for
Syllabi for courses you plan to teach
Model lesson plans for past or future courses
Model assignments for past or future courses
Model examinations for past or future courses
Handouts or slides for past or future courses
Other auxiliary materials for past or future courses
There are lots of different ways to keep this material organized, but by keeping all of it in one place, you create a great resource for yourself, and you have a pool to draw on in assembling your teaching dossier for job applications at a later date.
Annotated List of Suggested Readings (Professor Mark Schroeder)
I. GENERAL RESOURCES
General Resources: Recommended Buys
McKeachie, Wilbert, and Marilla Svinicki. McKeachie’s Teaching Tips, Twelfth Edition. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
This is an up-to-date but well-tested highly general resource on college teaching, covering a wide range of topics with brief and helpful treatments that can be taken one-by-one and found by consulting the table of contents. Definitely worth having on hand as a general resource.
Gross Davis, Barbara. Tools for Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1993.
This textbook-style volume is divided into 49 bite-size treatments of practically any issue related to teaching, each including bullet-point general strategies and its own list of further references. It’s a great reference, with ideas and warnings about virtually every topic. Highly encouraged to have on hand as a reference.
Gullette, Margaret Morganroth, ed. The Art and Craft of Teaching. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.
This is a collection of seven essays, with an introduction, on some of the most important practical issues raised in teaching. The essays look particularly good.
Tice, Stacey Lane, et al, eds. University Teaching: A Reference Guide for Graduate Students and Faculty, Second Edition. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2005.
This is another collection of essays – 25 contributions in all from different authors – covering all aspects of teaching, including preparation of a teaching portfolio and dealing with nontraditional students. It’s a good resource to have on hand to consult about particular topics.
Advice for TAs
Curzan, Anne, and Lisa Damour. First Day to Final Grade: A Graduate Student’s Guide to Teaching. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2000.
This is a highly practical guide written by two successful former TAs at Michigan. It contains detailed coverage from a TA’s point of view of how to prepare for one’s first class, how to get discussion going, how to approach grading, and even a chapter on how to balance teaching with other priorities you have as a student. Highly recommended reading.
Allen, R.R., and Theodore Rueter. Teaching Assistant Strategies: An Introduction to College Teaching. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1990.
This is a textbook-style resource for beginning teaching assistants. The most useful chapters appear to be on leading class discussions and assessing student learning, but many of the other chapters may be useful to consult.
Race, Phil, and Sally Brown. 500 Tips for Tutors, Second Edition. New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2005.
This book consists of about 500 bullet-point ideas, reminders, and warnings, classified hierarchically into about 50 groups split up into six chapters. Helpful groups of topics include “What not to do with Powerpoint!”, “Helping students to make notes – not just take notes”, and others on a wide range of topics. There are a lot of ideas in this book; it’s well worth skimming at least once.
Resources for Preparing Your Own Course
Dominowski, Roger. Teaching Undergraduates. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2002.
This 11-chapter introduction covers the most important issues raised in researching, designing, and planning your own course. It has chapters on course planning, the psychological basis for working memory, learning, and long-term memory, selecting textbooks, constructing tests, grading, and other topics. A definite recommendation for students planning their first course.
Carbone, Elisa. Teaching Large Classes: Tools and Strategies. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1998.
This is the only resource I’ve found which specifically addresses the issues specific to teaching courses of 100 students or more, and it’s full of good advice.
II. METHODS AND PROBLEMS OF TEACHING PHILOSOPHY
Reading Assignments
Conceptión, David. ‘Reading Philosophy with Background Knowledge and Metacognition.’ Teaching Philosophy 27(4): 351-368.
Great discussion of obstacles students face in reading philosophy, along with over-the-top, detailed example handout for students explaining how to read philosophy and providing useful general background knowledge to make it easier.
Grading and Evaluation
Farmer, Linda. ‘Grading Argumentative Essays.’ Teaching Philosophy 26(2): 125-130.
Great worked-out example of a grading grid for philosophy papers along with a complete explanation of how it works and its virtues in a very short (six-page) article.
Harrell, Maralee. ‘Grading According to a Rubric.’ Teaching Philosophy 28(1): 3-15.
Great supplement to Farmer’s piece on grading grids. Harrell supplements the idea of the grid with a grounding in a rubric that is justified by learning objectives, and most importantly, includes her specifications of exactly what she is looking for under each category. Whereas Farmer admits that part of making the grid successful is careful explicit written expectations but does not include them, Harrell includes them. Also very short.
Writing Assignments
Richardson, Mark. ‘Student Papers and Professional Papers: Writing to Learn and Writing to Teach in Undergraduate Philosophy Courses.’ Teaching Philosophy 25(4): 291-309.
Interesting piece by writing instructor about the possible pitfalls of traditional argumentative writing assignments and the virtues of expositional writing assignments. A good piece for challenging you to think about why we do the kinds of assignments that we do in philosophy classes and to either justify this or think about how it might be done differently.
Freimiller, Jane. ‘The One Page Philosopher: Short Writing Assignments for Introductory Classes.’ Teaching Philosophy 20(3): 269-276.
Discussion of author’s use of short writing assignments. More interesting for discussion of teaching situation at UMass-Lowell than for discussion of actual writing assignments, but there are a few ideas about ways to approach and grade such assignments.