One of the best ways to make your students at Caltech better scientific research peers in the future is to teach them well. As you work towards improving your teaching skills, evaluations and feedback from the Ombuds system, the CLUE, and TQFRs are good ways of identifying your strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, the TA Handbook has useful suggestions, some of which have been summarized below. A group that can help teaching assistants is CPET, which improves teaching skills in members of the Caltech community through practical training and individual feedback.
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Evaluations and Feedback
- Appoint or ask the students to designate one or more ombuds students for your class. Core math and physics classes should have one from each house, while advanced courses in your department may have only one. Make sure that the the ombuds students know how they will be providing you feedback.
- A resource for faculty to view the statistics on the grading curves of classes and student comments can be found on the CLUE guide section of the student government website.
A more formal evaluation are the teaching surveys (TQFR), which are known for their high response rate (around 70%).
Tips from the TA Handbook published by Caltech
As a teacher, you will develop your own style that depends on your intellectual approach, your “stage presence,” and your personal interactions with students. By imitating strategies of great teachers you have known, you’ll learn what does and doesn’t work for you. While the exact style you develop will be all your own, there are a few do’s and don’ts that can help you shape a classroom persona:
- show enthusiasm for the subject matter by being energetic, giving examples you find interesting, and having fun. Your enthusiasm for the course helps motivate your students.
- provide a larger context for the material you are teaching. Reminding your students of a broader perspective can enhance their learning.
- show respect for your students, intellectually and personally. For more discussion of this subject, see Diversity in the Classroom.
- engage students in the material by encouraging them to interact with you and with each other. Collaboration is an integral part of most students’ learning experience at Caltech.
- be a mean and uncaring instructor. When students come to office hours, don’t grumble about the other work you were doing when they interrupted. When students come to you with special circumstances, try to deal with them fairly and within the context of the Honor Code. The American university experience involves more explicit teaching and guidance than is the norm in many countries, so if you were educated outside the U.S. you will need to be aware of this difference and open to adapting to it.
- insult your students, either by telling them how easy the material is or by being condescending. Be very wary whenever the words “clearly,” “obviously,” or “trivial” creep into your vocabulary. Students find these words offensive and infuriating! Even if you find some students less than respectful, do not retaliate but instead model the behavior you would like them to learn from you.
- bore your students and yourself. If you are not engaged, chances are nobody else is either. Find a way to shake things up a bit.
- confuse students by teaching at your level instead of theirs. Sometimes it takes a bit of extra work to recall what connections and subtleties your students are and are not prepared to appreciate.
- oversimplify the material until your students feel great but have not learned enough. While this route is tempting when you want happy students, it means you are ultimately shirking your responsibility to help them through the course.