Teaching Consultation

A couple weeks back I substituted as the TA for a discussion section. I was recorded on video, which was reviewed by the Teaching, Learning, & Technology Center. Here are some notes about educational techniques that I took during the consultation session:

1. Hand out small whiteboards to the students, and ask relatively easy questions, with short answers. They can work out the problem on the board and hold it up like an Olympic judge rating a performance. Responding this way cuts down the embarrassment factor of raising a hand and being the only one speaking.
2. When you pause for a question during lecture, do so dramatically, and don’t show any nervousness. Maintain eye contact with the audience! and wait patiently (until you feel that the lighting is going to burn through your skull). You are more nervous than anyone in the audience, and you let the ominous silence stir someone into speaking up.
3. If nobody is responsive to a question, then it’s ok to eventually aks for a show of hands or a thumbs-up/thumbs-down “How do you feel about this?” “Do you think there’s something overlooked?”.
4. In discussion, I was stepping through some code given in a handout. Instead of lecturing, I could have identified lines of code in different functions which were actually acting in concert and place them either on the whiteboard or on posters around them room. Then have students break up into groups and answer “Why is this line here? What is it doing for us?”. I had actually already identified these lines because I wanted to point them out during my walkthrough of the code. But, isn’t it better if you can get the students to do that identification themselves?
5. Hold in-promptu ungraded evaluations at the end of class. Students don’t put their name on the paper, nor are they required to turn it in. The reward for finishing the problem is leaving class early. The answers actually collected can be used as an assessment for student understanding, and used to adjust what material is presented in the next session.

So, I did none of these things. Actually, I didn’t even think of doing these things. Without brainstorming and consultation of what I could have done, I’d remain trapped doing the same boring routine. So, doing this consultation is remarkably valuable.