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2. Teaching Practices
2.4. Knowing Your Students
Best Practices for Teaching First-year Undergraduates
First-year undergraduate students' experience includes tremendous intellectual, social, emotional and cultural adaptation and development, and that faculty and TAs play an important role in these processes. Because each of these dimensions impact the others, members of the university community need to work more closely with each other and recognize that our collected expertise and wisdom is necessary to improve the acculturation of our first-year students.
In the first section of this booklet, we describe who first year students are and why they have special needs. These students often show tremendous excitement about learning but most faculty, unlike many of our colleagues in Student Affairs, have not been formally prepared to deal with the complexities of working with eighteen year olds who have many challenges to face in becoming mature, accomplished college students. Also, generalizing from past experiences as students may be misleading for faculty members who often were not typical students themselves.
In the middle section, we have compiled many faculty strategies for teaching which have been successful with first-year undergraduates at the University of Florida. All of these strategies are also supported by research on learning and motivation. Whether or not you are new to teaching first-year students, we believe that you will find this compilation useful as you prepare your next course. Some of the best practices from experienced UF faculty may fit well with your current course plans, while others may provide interesting launching points for planning or updating your courses.
In the last section, we list indicators to help you identify students who may be having difficulties and where you and they can turn for help. However, you will also find ideas throughout this booklet to strengthen the working relationship between faculty, TAs and students and to help students begin to develop the skills for academic success.
When faculty members and TAs discuss teaching first-year undergraduates, they often discover common goals and concerns across disciplines. Many report the realization that they are "teaching students, not statistics, biology or architecture." This shift from content-centered to student-centered thinking can have a broad impact on teaching strategies and interactions with individual students.
Adapted from the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence at Carnegie Mellon University
