Associate Instructor Preparation at IU: 2009 Reflections and Proposals
The annual Breakfast and Discussion about Associate Instructor Preparation is an opportunity for faculty members to discuss and reflect on their successes and challenges in preparing IU's graduate students for their teaching responsibilities. On Friday, April 10, 2009, approximately 60 faculty members who supervise associate instructors (AIs) met at the third annual breakfast to share their best practices and to brainstorm ideas for enhancing AI preparation programs. In addition, the two new vice provosts who oversee the employment and preparation of associate instructors were introduced; respectively, Tom Gieryn (Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs) and Sonya Stephens (Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education). Also participating in the discussion were David Daleke (Associate Dean of the University Graduate School) and Yolanda Trevino (Assistant Dean of the University Graduate School).
At the breakfast, the faculty shared several examples of their successful department-based AI activities programs. These programs are designed on a professionalization model, preparing graduate students for both their teaching roles and their future careers. Specifically, these programs provide a variety of opportunities beyond orientation week for graduate students to interact with peers and supervisors as they discuss, document, analyze, and transform their teaching. Examples of the successes shared at the breakfast include:
- A series of pedagogy courses that encourage graduate students' development as teacher-scholars. The entry-level classes in the series focus more on practical, technical, and administrative aspects of teaching while advanced classes provide opportunities for graduate students to explore disciplinary pedagogical theory, course design, classroom assessment, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. The Departments of Sociology and Communication and Culture each offer a series of courses leading to a departmental teaching certificate.
- Regular brown bag lunches about teaching. Successful session topics include: new faculty members and recent graduates discussing their teaching experiences; a mid-semester check-in with new AIs; resource-sharing among faculty and AIs; and workshops about relevant teaching topics tailored to the discipline's needs.
- Formal and informal mentorships between new and experienced AIs and/or between new AIs and faculty members. These mentorships provide opportunities for new AIs to receive day-to-day guidance and feedback about their teaching.
- Several mechanisms for providing feedback to AIs about teaching. Successful programs incorporate microteaching, role-playing and case studies, mid-semester evaluations with feedback, and classroom observation and feedback into their toolbox of teaching feedback activities. Mentors within the discipline and/or consultants from Campus Instructional Consulting are involved in these feedback processes.
- A blend of department, campus, and cross-institutional teaching activities to encourage graduate students to interact with each other within and across disciplines while enhancing their disciplinary teaching skills and knowledge of pedagogical theory.
Faculty at the breakfast also offered several suggestions for improving the preparation of associate instructors for teaching at the campus level. A checklist of best practices in associate instructor preparation would provide guidance for faculty mentors as they develop new programs and activities. Master classes would give graduate students opportunities to observe teaching by peers outside the discipline. Small instructional grants available to graduate students would allow them to work under the mentorship of a faculty member to develop, assess, document, and share a course innovation. Modified institutional structures would make it easier for faculty to offer pedagogy courses and for graduate students to enroll in pedagogy courses, especially courses outside the department and/or school.
In the upcoming year, OVPUE, OVPFAA and the University Graduate School will discuss these suggestions and develop strategies to enhance campus support for associate instructor professionalization programs. Faculty members interested in creating and/or modifying their programs are encouraged to:
- adapt the best practices in AI preparation to their own disciplinary context;
- develop collaborations with related disciplines;
- connect with campus resources:
- Teaching and Learning Gateway,
- the campus summary, Associate Instructor Preparation for Teaching 2008, available online at (http://www.aiprep.indiana.edu/) or in hard copy from Campus Instructional Consulting (teaching@indiana.edu),
- Campus Instructional Consulting (http://www.indiana.edu/~teaching/allabout/prepare/), and
- Campus Writing Program (http://www.iub.edu/~cwp/); and
- apply for internal course/program development grants (http://teaching.iub.edu/awards_faculty.php).
