Evaluation and Assessment | Teaching Practices |Teaching with Technology| Sample Course Evaluation Forms
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2. Teaching Practices
2.4. Knowing Your Students
Calibrating Your Expectations
Many University of Florida faculty claim that it takes more time to teach first-year undergraduate courses than any other type or level of course. With students coming from a variety of academic backgrounds, you can expect a broad range of knowledge and skills which may require adaptation on your part. Since the students are new to college workloads, they often need more explicit instruction than you are accustomed to giving in other courses. Experienced faculty stress the importance of patience and understanding of the unique difficulties these students may encounter. The practices here provide some ways of adapting to make your expectations explicit and guiding students' learning strategies in order to help students to develop the habits of mature learners more quickly.
Check your assumptions about what these students know or can do. An ungraded assignment or diagnostic quiz can show you if a majority of students are weak in the same area so that you can adapt, for example, by holding a review session or asking TAs to hold one.
Remember that most of these students are 18 year olds. They are excited about and overwhelmed by their new environment. They are bright and ambitious, but may lack the self-discipline of more experienced students. Some are naive and some are immature, but almost all are very enthusiastic about learning.
If you are teaching a small class with a lot of contact hours, such as a studio course, students may come to lean on you very heavily. Be prepared to set clear boundaries with students who may want you to give of yourself as generously as a parent.
If you will be teaching a first-year undergraduate course for the first time, it may be helpful to observe someone else doing it the previous semester so that, for example, you can begin to calibrate to the appropriate pace and level of these students and the types of issues which arise in these classes, particularly the large lectures. Some departments have used team-teaching or "buddy systems" effectively to assist faculty in preparing to teach large introductory courses. If it is not possible to observe a colleague, borrowing their notes and assignments can also be useful.
Adapted from the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence at Carnegie Mellon University
