Advice for Graduate Instructors

Introduction

This document contains a few suggestions for your transition from being a teaching assistant to being a course instructor. In many cases, you will be working with or parallel to an experienced instructor and/or using materials developed by such an instructor, in which case some of the following is not relevant, but you can still pay attention to how the instructor handles the following aspects, so you can copy them whenever you have your own class, perhaps after you graduate. If you are ever uncertain about what to do, please ask the faculty instructor with whom you are working (or who developed your course), or if such does not exist then ask the Director of Doctoral Studies. Generally, it is much easier to avoid problems than to deal with problems after they happen.

Other resources: please review Section 5.5 of our PhD Handbook ("TA/RA/GI Responsibilities"), and take advantage of our Director of Undergraduate Studies, who has a wealth of knowledge about teaching (and can also provide you a syllabus template).

Customer Service

Your students are your customers. We want happy customers: happy because they gain new useful understanding of the world, and happy because they enjoyed the learning process. More practically, your customers fill out evaluations toward the end of the semester, and those evaluations later help determine whether you get the job you want, or not. So, be nice to your customers.

Communication

The goal of communication is not simply to provide accurate information to students; the goal is that they understand the information you provide. Communication also means listening to students and understanding their perspectives, and showing them that you understand. If you understand but the student thinks you don't, then the student will still feel frustrated. Here are some specific suggestions regarding communication.

1. Syllabus: be explicit about grading, policies, and contingency plans. Use simple language. Title sections clearly. If you really need to change something mid-semester, you can, but ideally stay with your original syllabus. Our Director of Undergraduate Studies can provide you with a syllabus template (if you don't already have one from a previous instructor of your course).
2. Listening: practice reflective listening. If a student asks you a question (in class or in office hours), first repeat the question in your own words to make sure you understand the student. Or if the student makes a comment (or criticism!), repeat it in your own words to show that you understand them before you reply. If (especially in class) a student says something 90% wrong, focus on repeating the 10% correct part before explaining the rest (without explicitly saying the student was 90% wrong, which is usually unnecessary).
3. Speaking: find the student farthest away from you, and talk loudly enough for that person to hear you easily. Depending on the room and layout, this may feel like you're yelling, but I have only heard of student complaints about an instructor speaking too quietly, not too loudly.
4. Lecturing: your goal is not to give good lectures but to help students learn. Some students learn a lot from simply a clear explanation of a concept, and others don't. Most people learn better with some active learning (like iClicker or in-class discussions) incorporated into class time, instead of only passive learning (like listening to a lecture, or reading). Practice is also helpful.
5. Hand writing: if you have any hand-written notes, make sure the writing is legible, or else type them up.
6. Announcements: if you have an important announcement, it's good to put in on Canvas (in writing) as well as announce it in class. It's ok to be redundant.
7. Canvas: more generally, your Canvas course site is the primary information source for students in your class. Besides announcements, it is important for you to keep your Canvas grade book updated, accurate, and consistent with your syllabus.
8. Expectations: college students in the US may have different expectations than undergraduates in other countries; if you were not an undergraduate in the US, then you may benefit from talking with an experienced instructor about expectations for classroom interactions, level of rigor, frequency of communication, etc.

Assessments

The two main types of assessment are "formative" and "summative." Formative assessments (like iClicker questions or discussion board posts graded on participation) primarily help you and/or your students see where they are doing well and where they are struggling, in order to more efficiently address the weaknesses. Summative assessments (like midterm and final exams/projects) primarily evaluate a student's proficiency.

Assessments should be aligned with the learning materials (readings, videos, lectures, practice/iClicker/discussion questions, etc.). One way to help achieve this is to create learning objectives for students: what do you want them to learn in a particular lecture or video or week, or in the course as a whole? You may want to have multiple opportunities for students to achieve each learning objective: reading, lecture/video, real-world examples, practice questions, iClicker/discussion questions, etc. Then when you create assessments, you can (publicly or privately) note which learning objective corresponds to each question on your assessment. For some examples, see the Textbook Learning Objectives (after the Preface) and the Unit Learning Objectives (at the beginning of each chapter) in my intro econometrics textbook. Students may appreciate seeing your course/semester learning objectives at the beginning of the semester on your syllabus.

You can avoid some problems and reduce the severity of others by limiting the weight on the final exam in students' overall semester grade. Having a large weight on the final exam not only puts a lot of pressure on students (which may also increase cheating), but it puts a lot of pressure on you, especially given that grades are due very soon after; you don't have much time to fix any grading errors, give make-up exams in case of illness, etc.

Try to avoid having evening exams. Students generally don't like them (for the obvious reasons), and you want happy customers (see above).

Feedback helps students learn, especially feedback that is specific and timely. Only seeing an overall exam score is not particularly helpful; seeing that the part 3(b) response was wrong (and ideally why) can help a student learn. Getting an exam back 3 weeks after taking it is not as helpful for learning as getting it back after 3 days. Of course, more specific and timely feedback takes more effort on your part, and you only have a finite time/effort budget to spend on teaching, but just remember these aspects of feedback. You may also want to think about specific, timely feedback when you are creating assessments; given the number of students in your class, are you creating assessments that will make it easy or difficult for you to give students specific, timely feedback?