- You sometimes have to teach out of your comfort zone. Perhaps something that you took as an undergraduate student.
- You might be expected to teach the course at short notice and there might be high expectations for the delivery.
- To do this professionally, you will need a strategy and a support team. If you do not want to be professional, it will be easy, a walk in the park.
You want me to teach WHAT?????
There is a point in almost every academic's career where they are asked to teach a course in which they do not have real, extensive skill and expertise. They might have had the course or similar course as an undergradate, but it was not crucial to their graduate work or any other activity. In some cases, they have not had a course that is close. What to do?
General thoughts...
- Go online and find 3-5 offerings of the course, pick one that you like and actually go through the slides and material. Do some of the assignments, think through any assessments. Do this before you talk to the current instructor or look at the current notes. You need context and some domain knowledge.
- Obviously get hold of the most recent offering and discuss the course with the instructor.
- If possible, find several students who have taken the course and discuss the course with them.
- Look up and find out where the material is used in the program, other courses. This will help you explain and understand the context of any threshold concepts.
- Find a follow on course that uses the material and go through that course. You should know the course you are teaching, and have some expertise and knowledge at the next level.
- In theory, the department should give you a teaching relief to do the above. It will be the equivalent to a new course prep. If they are already giving you a course credit to prepare a course, you should get a second. The first one is needed when you are an expert in the field. You will need more time when you are not.
- Doing less than this is not being fair to the students. They are expecting, as is society, for courses at the university level to be taught by 'experts' in the field. Expert does not simply mean that you have taken the equivalent undergraduate course and never used the concepts or methods again.
- Make sure that you have bench strength. This is a great, not just good, TA. A mentor. Help from someone who has taught the course before.
- But, seriously, you should cram the existing course plus one; as a minimum. You need to know the material, be confident in it, be able to teach without creating a risk to the students. You need to be able to do the assignments and projects you assign. You need to be able to write the tests you set. This is all before the first lecture. You should know the path and journey before the students start theirs.
- In some senses, this is similar to what you have to do on a grant proposal; scanning the field, understanding the landscape of where you wish to play. See the grantcraft document noted below. When scanning the field, you are looking for many of the same things. This will help you explain the topic, put things in context.
Further reading
- Grantcraft, (2012). Scanning the Landscape 2.0: Finding Out What's Going on in Your Field. Grantcraft.org.