Sociology 5615 Teaching Sociology Spring, 2012 Email address: steen@colorado.edu Office phone: 303-735-6658 Home phone: 303-449-3817 Professor Sara Steen Ketchum 205 Office hours: Wednesday 12-2 pm, or by appointment Course objectives 1. Promote a high standard for college teaching. 2. Increase skills in a number of specific teaching activities (e.g., organizing content, lecturing, leading discussions, managing classroom dynamics, and evaluating). 3. Provide an opportunity for you to formulate personal values, approaches, and styles of classroom instruction that can grow and be refined over your teaching careers. 4. Create a community in which teaching is actively discussed. Promote the idea that teaching can be a collective enterprise. 5. Help you to develop a teaching portfolio that you can use when you go on the job market.
Course meetings The class is scheduled to meet Mondays from 3 5:45. We will have a short break (15 minutes) at approximately 4:15. Because this is a practicum course, rather than a typical academic course, you will often be expected to complete exercises (both active and written) outside of class, and weekly writing assignments will often be shared and discussed in class. Course readings The following books are required for the course, and can be purchased online: Bean, John C. 1996. Engaging Ideas. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Tools for Teaching. Palmer, Parker. The Courage to Teach. Weimer, MaryEllen. 2002. Learner-Centered Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. The following books are optional: Creating Significant Learning Experiences Educating Citizens Discussion as a Way of Teaching I have desk copies of all of the books. If they are beyond your means, please let me know and we can make some arrangement for you to borrow a copy or make photocopies. All are outstanding books that should serve as useful references in the future, so I highly recommend purchasing them if you are able. There will also be several articles and book chapters required throughout the semester. They will be available at the course website for you to download (through the new Desire2Learn platform). Finally, each of you will also be responsible for perusing one issue of Teaching Sociology, which I will provide to you during the first week of class. 2
Course requirements The primary goal of this course is to provide you with a forum to think seriously about how you want to teach. Once you become a faculty member, you may find that you are not able (or perhaps not encouraged) to spend a lot of time reflecting on teaching or enhancing your teaching techniques. Because of this, I hope that you will take this opportunity very seriously and make full use of the resources of the course, including the readings, class assignments, myself and guest speakers, and your classmates. Attendance and participation: Given the course goals, it is absolutely essential that you be present and actively engaged. If you must miss a session, please contact me ahead of time to let me know why you won t be there. If you miss more than two sessions during the course of the semester, I recommend that you drop the course and take it during a later semester. Readings: The readings should be completed by class time on the day they are assigned. The purpose of the weekly reading assignments is to introduce you to other people s ideas about teaching. Some readings will provide very practical advice about particular techniques, while others will focus more generally on the purposes of teaching. If you are looking for more information on a particular topic, I have many other resources, including several bibliographies on teaching (some are available on the course website), that I would be happy to share with you. One of the best resources is the journal Teaching Sociology, which is available through Norlin Library (it is an ASA publication, so if you are a member, you can choose to subscribe for a minimal fee). Developing your teaching style: To teach with purpose, it is essential that you enter the classroom with clear ideas about what kind of a teacher you are and what kind of a teacher you would like to be. Peer reviews: Part of the process of developing a teaching style involves identifying elements of others teaching that you find particularly appealing. To work toward this goal, I will ask you to complete at least two peer reviews during the course of the semester. Peer reviews involve attending someone else s class and watching for teaching techniques (rather than listening for substance, which is what we generally do). For one of these peer reviews, you should team up with other students in the class so that you teach one class in front of a classmate during the semester, and also visit one class taught by a classmate. For the other peer review, you will attend a class taught by someone else at the university. This can be someone in the department who you have heard good things about but never witnessed in the classroom, or someone outside the department with a reputation for good teaching. You will do a writeup for each review, based on guidelines I will hand out early in the semester. 3
Videotaping: A second part of developing your teaching style involves taking inventory of the particular talents and skills that you bring to the classroom. To accomplish this, I will also require each of you to videotape one of your classes in consultation with the Graduate Teacher Program (this can be the same session you use for the previous exercise, though that is not preferable). After filming, you will watch the tape with a consultant, discuss your teaching, and write a reflection paper on the experience (more details to come). If you are not teaching this semester, you will either need to find someone else s class in which you can guest lecture (both for the videotaping and for the peer review), or work with me to identify another way we might accomplish these learning goals. Developing a course plan: By the end of the semester, each of you will have a syllabus and course materials for a sociology course that you anticipate teaching in the future. For those of you who are already teaching your own courses, you should choose a new course to design. The required work for your course design includes weekly writing assignments and a final project. Weekly writing assignments: Most weeks there will be a short writing assignment in which I will ask you to think about various pedagogical issues and/or aspects of course design and organization. These papers will frequently serve as the basis for our seminar discussions, and are due at the end of the seminar period. On occasion, I may ask you to post your assignments on the class website and to comment on others posted assignments (more on this later). These papers and the feedback you receive on them from me and classmates should help in the preparation of your final project. I will collect writing assignments at the end of the class period on the day they are assigned. While I strongly recommend that you complete all of the exercises, you may miss two without penalty (your grade will be based on ten out of twelve total assignments). Because the assignments will often be the basis for our seminar discussions, I will not accept any late assignments. Final project: The final project for the course will be your course design. What you hand in will be structured as a mini teaching portfolio. Your syllabus should include statements of course objectives, themes, topics, assignments, and evaluation techniques. In addition, I will ask you to provide me with materials that tell the story of your course. Specifically, I would ask that you explain your reasons for making the choices you did in designing your course, along with some of your reflections about the benefits and drawbacks of your choices. I will provide you with more information about this assignment as the semester evolves. 4
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Course Evaluation Your grade for the course will be based on the following elements. You can keep track of your running total in Desire2Learn (I hope!). Points Percentage Weekly writing assignments (10 of 12) 150 (15 each) 37.5 Peer reviews (2) 30 (15 each) 7.5 Attendance and participation in seminar 50 12.5 Final project (teaching portfolio) 100 25 Video assignment (and reflection) 70 17.5 400 points 100% Grading Rubric: A 93 100% Consistently performs well above expectations. A- 90 92% Performs above expectations. B+ 88-89% Meets expectations. B 83-87% Occasionally performs below expectations. B- 80-82% Consistently performs below expectations. C Below 80% Unsatisfactory work. When the Semester is over When you are ready to go on the job market this class can serve you in two concrete ways. First, your final project for the class can serve as a basis for a teaching portfolio that you can send out with job applications. I would be happy to work with any of you in revising and reworking your portfolios when the time arrives. Second, when you teach the class that you design in this seminar, I would be willing to observe you teaching, talk with you about your experiences in the classroom, and write a recommendation letter for you reviewing the training you received in the teaching seminar and summarizing your performance and promise as a teacher. 6
Schedule of weekly topics, readings, and writing assignments This should be considered a working draft. I reserve the right to make minor adjustments to readings and assignments as we go along. If you miss a class, be sure to check with a fellow student for any announcements. Who are we as teachers and who are our students? Week one (1/23): Course introduction; What kind of teachers do we want to be?; Introduction to backward course design Book reading: Palmer chs. 1-3 Writing assignment due: Teaching self Week two (1/30): Identiying classroom dynamics and rethinking classroom roles Book reading: Weimer (Chs. 1, 2, 4) Online readings: Finkel and Monk, Tompkins, Fink (Ch. 3, pp. 60-73 only) Writing assignment due: Assumptions about students Week three (2/6): Who are we teaching? Characteristics of learners Book readings: Weimer (Ch. 5), Gross Davis (Ch. 5-8, 29, 30) Online readings: Green and Dorn, Vasquez and Weinstein, hooks (Chs. 1-3, 12), Bain (Ch. 4) Writing assignment due: How you learn and how that affects how you teach What do we want students to learn? Week four (2/13): Identifying learning goals and starting to think about course content Book readings: Palmer (Chs. 4, 5), Weimer Ch. 3 Online readings: Fink (Ch. 3, pp. 73-81), Newman, Colby et al. (Ch. 1) Writing assignment due: Developing learning goals Week five (2/20): Teaching critical thinking Book readings: Bean (Chs. 2, 7), Weimer (Chs. 7-9) Online reading: Nelson Writing assignment due: TBA How do we evaluate student learning and provide feedback for improvement? Week six (2/27): Tools for evaluation Book readings: Bean Ch. 11, Gross-Davis (Chs. 39-42), Weimer Ch. 6 Online readings: Ebel Writing assignment: Structuring course evaluation 7
Week seven (3/5): Providing feedback: Responding to writing Book readings: Bean (Chs. 13, 14), Gross-Davis Ch. 36 Writing assignment: Respond to sample paper, reflect What teaching and learning activities can we use to achieve our learning goals? Week eight (3/12): Choosing readings and helping students to read critically Book readings: Bean ch. 8 Online readings: Westhues, Additional TBA Writing assignment due: Thinking about course content, starting a syllabus Week nine (3/19): Lecturing Book readings: Gross-Davis (Chs. 15-18), Online readings: Frederick, Bain (Ch. 5) Writing assignment: Draft of lecture March 26 No Seminar (Spring Break) Week ten (4/2): Discussions Book readings: Gross-Davis (Chs. 9-13) Online readings: Welty, Frederick, Additional TBA Writing assignment: Designing a discussion Week eleven (4/9): Writing Book readings: Bean (Chs. 5, 6), Gross-Davis (Chs. 34, 35) Online readings: Gottschalk Writing assignment: Designing a writing assignment Week twelve (4/16): Cooperative learning and moving beyond the classroom Book readings: Bean Ch. 9, Gross-Davis (Chs. 21-26) Online readings: Rau and Heyl, Nyquist and Wulff, Colby et al. (Ch. 5) Writing assignment: Using small groups How can we assess how well students are learning and how well we are teaching? Week thirteen (4/16): Assigning grades Book readings: Bean Ch. 15, Gross-Davis (Chs. 43, 44) Online readings: Ory and Ryan Writing assignment: Developing a grading rubric 8
Week fourteen (4/23): Evaluating our teaching Book readings: Gross-Davis (Chs. 52-54, 60), Palmer (Chs. 6, 7) Online readings: TBA Writing assignment: Evaluating your own teaching Week fifteen (4/30): Back to the beginning No assignments this week. We will meet at my house for an end-of-semester gathering, and will return to our discussions at the beginning of the semester about who we are and want to be as teachers. Final Course Project Due on Scheduled Exam Date 9