MIAMI UNIVERSITY

HISTORY 840

GRADUATE TEACHING WORKSHOP

August 16-18, 2000

Workshop Meeting Place: Upham 269

Course Coordinators:
P. Renée Baernstein and Allan M. Winkler

INTRODUCTION

The course aims to enable graduate students holding assistantships in History to become acquainted with and to share views on some of the major issues relating to their teaching this year. The coordinators, together with other faculty members and senior graduate students, will introduce you to some of the general pedagogical themes and techniques pertinent to college teaching. Topics will include encouraging active student learning; writing, grading, and assessing student performance; using new classroom equipment; teaching large classes (with discussion sections as part of the format); and finding teaching resources and teaching development opportunities. The coordinators wish to stress that we do not have all the answers, though we do have considerable experience, and that we expect to get ideas in the class, too.

The goals of the course are:

  1. To provide you with information about where things are, whom to consult, and how to get what you need related to teaching, inside and outside the department.
  2. To encourage you to think actively about your goals in the classroom and various ways you can go about realizing them.
  3. To help you become more aware of approaches to encouraging active learning among students.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

You are required to attend all sessions and expected to participate actively in them. There is one oral assignment: prepare, in a small group, a specific plan for one discussion section, based on a real syllabus for the course developed by a real professor, and present your plan to the class. There is one written assignment, due by Friday at 2:00 p.m.: a syllabus or semester-long plan for your discussion sections, to be coordinated with the syllabus for the relevant course prepared by the professor with whom you will teach. We do not want you to repeat reading assignments for the lectures on this syllabus; rather, the goal is to be as specific as possible at this point about concrete ideas and supplementary materials you can use in discussions. If you are a grader for a course, your assignment is to prepare a semester-long plan for helping students to learn the skills and content necessary for the class. This might include, for example, plans for review sessions, sessions on essay or exam writing, or handouts.

COURSE EVALUATION

Credit/No Credit.

SCHEDULE

Wednesday, August 16

MORNING SESSION: ORIENTATION AND DISCUSSION
8:30Coffee, juice, and doughnuts ( McNiff Room)
9:00Introductions, orientation, and equipment in Upham & Laws 100
10:15 Break
10:30Panel on the classroom experience (with Charlotte Goldy, David Fahey, Bob Meckley)

AFTERNOON SESSION: GUIDELINES AND TECHNIQUES
  1:00 Classroom cautions: Robin Parker, University Attorney
1:30 Helping students read and understand original sources
2:45 Break
3:00 Productivity exercise for working individually and in groups (with Tom Naylor)
5:00 Conclude

Thursday, August 17

MORNING SESSION: WEB PAGE DESIGN & DISCUSSION SECTIONS
9:00 Web Page Design
10:00 Preparing for your discussion sections; Break into groups with Drew Cayton, Renée Baernstein, and Yihong Pan

AFTERNOON SESSION: WEB USE & EVALUATION
1:00 Using the Web
2:00Grading and commenting on papers in a standardized way
4:00 Conclude

Friday, August 18

NO MORNING SESSION: WORK ON YOUR PRESENTATIONS

AFTERNOON SESSION: PRESENTATIONS

12:00 Presentations by groups of TAs on how they would run a specific discussion class.
Presentations by graders on how they would run a specific class or review.
2:00 Conclude

Written assignments are due this Friday at 2:00 PM, with one copy to Renée Baernstein and Allan Winkler, and another copy to the faculty member with whom you will work this semester, by 2:00 PM.

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Allan M. Winkler
Department of History
Miami University		 P. Renée Baernstein
Department of History
Miami University
Last updated: September 1, 2000
URL http://miavx1.muohio.edu/~winkleam/hst840.htm