What did you enjoy most about your Collaborative Teaching Fellowship at Goucher?
I really enjoyed interacting one-on-one with students. The course that I taught was designed around the discussion of research articles so I was able to help teach students what academic and real-world research is like. I also guest lectured for a Psychology course. I don’t have a psychology background but was able to share the neuroscience perspective on topics that they were studying. I created an activity where the students sketched comic strips of some of the concepts from the lesson material, and they responded positively to the exercise. The teacher was pleased with the activity and plans to incorporate it into the course.
Was your mentor helpful?
My mentor sat in on the lectures I led and provided useful feedback. She noticed that I was standing in one place throughout the duration of the lecture and suggested moving around the room and other such techniques for capturing students’ attention. She also walked me through student evaluation feedback forms and gave advice on improving my teaching skills. Also, before leading the guest lecture for the psychology course, I attended some of the professor’s lectures and she shared some books on teaching skills (‘Make It Stick’ – http://makeitstick.net/ & ‘Teaching Naked’ – http://teachingnaked.com/ ). She, too, was very open to providing feedback on my performance and agreed to provide a letter of support in the future.
Do you want to pursue a career in teaching? If so, do you feel more prepared after your Collaborative Teaching fellowship?
Although I had previous teaching experience (primarily through mentoring and training high school and undergraduate students in the lab), I think this fellowship was a great opportunity to gain experience teaching in higher education. I envision a career that emphasizes teaching and research equally. I definitely feel more prepared to pursue a teaching career in higher education after my Collaborative Teaching Fellowship. I was also able to take advantage of the Teaching Academy ‘Teaching Topics and Tapas course’ and found Ann Riley’s talk on Teaching Styles very useful. I highly recommend her course at the Bloomberg SPH, ‘Teaching at the University Level’ for students interested in teaching careers since you learn about syllabus development, writing a teaching philosophy and eventually develop a teaching portfolio.
Any advice for future Collaborative Teaching Fellows?
I would advise other Collaborative Teaching Fellows to keep in mind that teaching is quite different from presenting a talk at a scientific seminar. The pace at which you talk is key. It is crucial to pause and give students some time to digest the information, take notes and ask questions. Unlike with seminar talks, repeating yourself frequently and using different words may be necessary. In other words, even if you have presented talks frequently as a scientist, your experience as a Collaborative Teaching Fellow will be helpful. It may be a good idea to record your lectures so that you can go back to them to learn how you could improve your teaching skills. I also found it important to set my own deadlines and not to rely solely on deadlines set by my mentor. It helped me manage time so I could be better prepared for lectures. I would also advise fellows to discuss the fellowship responsibilities beforehand with their mentor and to try to set a schedule for receiving assignments, grading assignments and other expected duties. I had to juggle postdoc responsibilities with teaching and planning helped a lot. Luckily, I have a supportive advisor at Hopkins who was open to my pursuing opportunities to gain teaching skills, which helped a lot with juggling my research and the Collaborative Teaching Fellowship.