My Teaching Best Practices
These are the strategies I've developed for myself to guide my teaching practice.
For any new faculty member, these are best practices that I've identified, tried, and chosen to incorporate long-term into how I teach in post-secondary education. There are many other strategies one may use in teaching. One should chose those that fit best with their personal learning goals as a teacher and educator, while also meeting the larger goals of the course, program, and institution.
If you should try these best practices out, I think you will find that they work well to facilitate the success of your students and of yourself.
Best of luck and let me know how it goes!
Laurie's Teaching Best Practices (listed in the order of addition)
- Teaching is not all on me and learning is not all on the students. Everything is 50/50 and together we create teaching and learning success.
- Welcome student complaints and questions because it is from this dialogue that the best improvements are found and developed together.
- Get back at least 10% of the marks before the Add/Drop date for the semester.
- Get marks back within 7 business days.
But, if that is not possible, communicate with the students so they have an opportunity to learn from me how I manage work/life challenges. - Get back 50% of the marks before or at the midway point of the semester.
- The Learning Outcomes of the course are what shapes all decisions (not the textbook or assessment tools!).
- Organize teaching to scaffold students through a clearly understandable and communicated progression of learning.
- Distribute copies of the assignment evaluation tools (e.g. rubrics, marking sheets) as soon as possible, and no later than a week before the assignment is due.
- To make curriculum flexible to meet any semester structure, design curriculum around Learning Units instead of daily or weekly schedules.
- Whenever possible, design assignments that have a value for the next 5 years in the students' professional lives.
- When required to deliver midterms and exams, design tools that use a timed situation to assess the learning progress made by students instead of tools that assess memorization skills.