Teaching Efficiently
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HideStudents in Carol Ormand's Geology of the National Parks class work on a lab about the Grand Canyon. Photo courtesy of Carol Ormand.
Robert Boice, in his research on new faculty members, found that those who were most successful worked moderately on all aspects of their new careers (Boice, 2000) . He went further, investigating the day-to-day practices of these exemplary new faculty members, discovering their methods for getting work done, well, without overworking themselves. The resources below can help you to learn and implement these methods.
Resources
Boice's writings:
- Boice described the work habits of exemplary new faculty members in his book, Advice For New Faculty Members: Nihil Nimus . The subtitle is the Latin phrase meaning "everything in moderation." The book also includes exercises you can do to practice those work habits, until you internalize them.
- Advice for New Faculty: Everything in Moderation is a set of excerpts from Boice's book, posted on Rick Reis' "Tomorrow's Professor" Mailing List. The excerpts describe how to work "moderately" at teaching and how to say "no" to unnecessary commitments.
On preparing a new course:
- How to Prepare New Courses While Keeping Your Sanity describes a few simple strategies for preventing your new course preparation from taking over your life. Fortunately, they dovetail nicely with best practices in teaching. From Rick Reis' Tomorrow's Professor Mailing List
On preparing for a class period:
- Class Preparation Time: How Much Is Enough? is another posting from Rick Reis' "Tomorrow's Professor" Mailing List. It explains how to prepare for class in about two hours, in small increments of time spread out over a few days.
- How to plan a class period walks you through the steps of planning a single class period, from setting learning goals to choosing teaching methods to finding (or creating) activities to meet your goals, using effective active learning methods. It includes a link to a lesson planning worksheet.
- What is the Most Difficult Step We Must Take to Become Great Teachers? is yet another posting from Rick Reis' "Tomorrow's Professor" Mailing List. It proposes that less is more; that is, that exemplary science teachers concentrate on teaching the process of doing science, rather than overwhelming their students with science content. When you give up trying to pack information into every second of class, you have less content to prepare.
