First impressions are important. Have you thought about how you will make a good one? This year the Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) asked University of Alberta's 2018 Teaching Award Winners to share tips for an engaging first day of class. For instructors, their top suggestions were about engaging with your students as a person. In other words about being: open, authentic, passionate, and present.
Open
- Tell your students a bit about yourself and let students know they can approach you anytime.
- Introduce yourself in a way that shows you are not just a "talking head" in front of the class, but rather that you have hobbies, family, friends, or pets.
- If you want your students to have compassion for you, show compassion to them. Believe, trust, and appreciate that they will try their best to meet your expectations despite second jobs, family issues, and health concerns.
Authentic
- Be yourself. Don't pretend. Be authentic, honest, and transparent. Explain to your students why you have made the decisions you have in the course.
- Build trust with students by treating them as thinking, imaginative, and disciplined adults who can develop a respect, or even love, of a subject.
Passionate
- Be contagiously passionate about your subject matter. Let them see you love what you do and what you teach.
- Give them examples which illustrate how you "live your discipline" on a daily basis. How does your discipline impact your life in real ways, such as how you make decisions or interact with others?
Present
- Use the first class to share a broad overview of some of the most interesting content in the course to pique their interest.
- Be present, not only physically, but intellectually, interpersonally, and emotionally. Students know when you don't want to be in class, when you feel like teaching is a chore, or when you are not interested in them.
#TalkAboutTeaching #FocusOnLearning
This post is the first of a new series of blog posts about Inspiring Teaching at the University of Alberta. They are a collaboration between the Centre for Teaching and Learning and University Relations. These posts will be archived on both The Quad and the new Inspiring Teaching website.Inspiring Teaching at the University of Alberta. They are a collaboration between the Centre for Teaching and Learning and University Relations. These posts will be archived on both The Quad and the new Inspiring Teaching website.
Cosette Lemelin, MEd., PhD - Educational Developer, Centre for Teaching and Learning
Cosette Lemelin is an Educational Developer for the Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at the University of Alberta where her role is to help university instructors learn how to be better teachers. Cosette is available to assist instructors with course planning, teaching strategies, assessment, and blended or online delivery. This native of Winnipeg has 14 years of teaching experience in a 19 year career in adult education.
Janice Miller-Young - Director, Centre for Teaching and Learning
Janice is Academic Director of the Centre for Teaching and Learning and a co-chair of the 2018 Festival of Teaching and Learning steering committee. She has over 15 years' experience as a teacher of both large and small classes in engineering and general education. Her research interests focus on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), specifically, the development of SoTL as a practice, and helping students increase their learning by making certain concepts and thinking processes explicit and narrowing the gap between novice and expert thinking.
Many thanks to our contributors, including some of the 2018 Teaching Award Winners:
- Jana Grekul, Faculty of Arts, Rutherford Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching
- Ashwin Iyer, Faculty of Engineering, Rutherford Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching
- Vincent Bouchard, Faculty of Science, Rutherford Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching
- Carlos Cruz Noguez, Faculty of Engineering, Provost's Award for Early Achievement of Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching
- Nathalie van Deusen, Faculty of Arts, Provost's Award for Early Achievement of Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching
- David Vergote, Campus St. Jean, William Hardy Alexander Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching
- Rene Belland, Faculty of Agriculture, Life, and Environmental Sciences, William Hardy Alexander Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching