One of academia’s dirty little secrets is that few professors any receive any kind of educational training. The assumption is that since most professors have PhDs, and are experts in their topics, they are fully equipped to teach this information to others. I’m not entirely sure how this is supposed to work. This harkens back to older models of education where students went to university to hear scholars spout their wisdom. But as countless studies and articles have shown, “telling isn’t teaching.”
If you’re lucky, and you have extra time on your hands (HA!) you might want to take a workshop or a class taught by your institution’s learning and teaching centre. Most universities have them these days, and they provide services to professors (and sometimes to students) who wish to improve upon their teaching. Unfortunately, this isn’t an option for everyone because: workshops are often only offered at certain times of the year; you might not be able to find one that suits your needs; when you’re teaching four courses a semester while trying to finish your doctorate, your “free time” consists of sleep; you simply don’t have the time. Some of us also want to have much more comprehensive training than a workshop can offer, but don’t have the time or the resources to do a certificate in education.
Thankfully, there are options available for such individuals. While I did benefit from the learning and teaching centre at UVic, most of what I’ve learned since I’ve started teaching has come from research that I’ve conducted myself online. Since I’m doing a series of blog posts this month all about going back to school, I thought that it would be well worth the effort to put all of that research together into one convenient package. So in this blog post, I’m going to provide you with a guide to online pedagogical resources. This list is in no way comprehensive, since there are literally thousands of websites and blogs these days devoted to teaching and learning in higher education. Instead, these are some of the resources that I’ve come back to over and over again, and that I believe have helped me to become a better teacher.
Historians seem to something of an unofficial motto: Death to Trees! Obviously most historians don’t actually have a death wish for trees, but many don’t see how it’s possible to avoid using so much paper. Thankfully, there is a solution: going paperless. The benefits to going paperless are endless, but while there is a great deal of advice on how to do this when it comes to research materials or in elementary and high schools, there just isn’t a lot of material on how to go paperless in a university classroom. In this first post in a series on going paperless in the classroom, I will be addressing one of the biggest paper producers: student assignments. With some preparation and good organization, every professor can make the switch to electronic assignment submissions. Here are some of my suggestions on making this work.