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U N I V E R S I T Y O F P I T T S B U R G H |
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A newsletter devoted to the support of teaching and learning at the University of Pittsburgh |
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U N I V E R S I T Y O F P I T T S B U R G H |
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A newsletter devoted to the support of teaching and learning at the University of Pittsburgh |
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Striving for Organization, Clarity and Explicit ExpectationsBy Janice Gordon, Statistics
When I returned to school to get my PhD, it was with the ultimate goal of teaching at a university. Because of this, I paid close attention to the teaching styles of my instructors. I found that I learned best from professors who organized their courses with care and expressed what they wanted their students to learn with great clarity. I found it to be both stressful and unsatisfying when either course expectations or explanations of the material were unclear. When I started to teach in 1997, I knew that I would need help to achieve these qualities. I found the help that I needed when I made an appointment with an experienced instructional designer with CIDDE who helped me to develop a structure for my first course, Research Methods in Psychology, that would make sense to my students. Her approach required me to match up the expectations for learning with what was actually being taught. This method of putting together a course formed a foundation for how I created courses in the future. Being organized and clear so that I would not inadvertently confuse my students became my mantra. I wanted the material that I was teaching to unfold for them in a logical way. As I gained experience, I began to naturally develop my own techniques to help the students. For example, I now write on the board, “End of Chapter 7, beginning of Chapter 8” so that they will have a clear delineation of this transition in their notes. Or, if I’m introducing a particularly complex topic, I will suggest to them that they put a specific title in their notes so that they will understand what they are looking at when they go back to review them. I think that these issues are important in any classroom, but perhaps even more critical in large classes where students may feel inhibited about raising their hands and asking for clarification during a lecture.
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A newsletter devoted to the support of teaching and learning at the University of Pittsburgh |
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