The Center for Excellence in Teaching and learning at GSU hosts free workshops to all staff, faculty, and graduate students. Each workshop has a main topic where attendees engage, discuss, and learn about it. I had the opportunity to attend to a few of these workshops. In my opinion, these workshops have helped me be to be more aware of the problems that we as instructor face as well as students’ issues and how we can overcome them.
The very first one I attended had the tittle of “Teaching Assistants’ Challenges in the Classroom: Motivating Inattentive/Uninterested Students” presented by Dr. Viviana Cortes. This topic is by far one of the most challenging experiences that we as graduate students have to face because we are young instructors that don’t have enough teaching experience; therefore, I wanted to attend to get some tips from people who has been in this field longer than me. As we know, many students don’t pay attention in class for many different reasons but in this workshop, I became aware of the different variables that may cause this. Some of the variables are that students have a bad attitude toward a topic, they are thinking about other academic concerns, they are concern about their peers’ acceptance, etc. In order to tackle these distractions, we first need to know the conditions for motivation: help our students relate previous experiences with the material, expose them to a new model of teaching, show our enthusiasm and passion for the material we are sharing with them, show them our expectations and promote inclusion. By knowing these variables and by practicing the conditions for motivation, our students will be able to see the value in what they are being taught as well as understanding better the material.
Another workshop I attended had the title of “Commenting on Student Work” and it was presented by Dr. Jennifer Hall. As a graduate teaching assistant in the Biology department, I am required to assign and grade scientific lab reports; therefore, I wanted to get some insight on how I could approach commenting on students work. What I liked about this workshop is that we could apply this approach in any writing field, a scientific or English paper. What I learned from this discussion is that my students should be able to learn from my comments/feedback. The comments shouldn’t justify why my student got this wrong, instead we should challenge them by asking questions and encourage them to make connections on their own. This will help them maintain the ownership of their work. In addition, depersonalizing criticism can also help students not feel that they are being criticized personally, instead we should always refer to the piece of work and always comment on things that the students actually got right this time. This way we are reaffirming that they are going on the right path.
The workshops mentioned, were two of the ones I really enjoyed and helped me try new things in my class to improve my instruction practices.
The following list shows the CETL workshops I attended as a GTA:
Perception and Tendencies in Non-Native Speakers of English- how your students see you and what can help for breaking that cultural barrier
Teaching Assistants’ Challenges in the Classroom: How to explain content clearly
Gamification- technology can play a major role in introducing gaming elements into the classroom
The Ins and Outs of the Hybrid/Blended Class
Motivating inattentive/uninterested students
Commenting on Student Writing
Creating Instructor immediacy
Documenting your Teaching Effectiveness
Developing a Portfolio of Student Work
