Like most aspects of graduate school, preparing to teach your first course as a graduate student can be overwhelming. It is common to feel unprepared to pass on knowledge that you are still learning yourself, and choosing which
information students learn and how they learn it feels like a big responsibility. However, you will have many resources to support and guide you, and your instructional skills and content knowledge will grow quickly. You will
come to find that teaching is an incredibly rewarding experience unlike any other, as you get to re-experience the joy of learning your favorite subjects through new eyes. In this article, we aim to present practical advice
for the first-time graduate instructor.
Seek Inspiration
Although you may be a novice instructor, at this point in your education, you are also a professional student with countless hours in the classroom. Spend some time reflecting on the courses, assignments, and professors you have
had in the past that you connected with and learned from most. Ask yourself, “Why did I enjoy that course so much?” “Why did I learn so much from that assignment?” and “Was there something about the instructor’s teaching style
that kept me engaged with the course content?” For a wider range of perspectives, ask other graduate students to share their experiences with you. You can find out which professors in your department receive excellent teaching
reviews and ask to observe their class and/or talk with them about their approach to teaching. Drawing inspiration from past assignments and instructing styles that you and others have found effective is a good starting place,
and you can adjust accordingly when you get more experience.
Don’t Start From Scratch
For regularly taught courses in your department, search for existing materials developed for your course by previous instructors. It is common for departments to have a syllabi archive containing the more recent versions for each
class. If your department does not have an archive, you can instead search for your course in the university’s course registry to find instructors who have taught it recently and request to review their syllabus. You will likely
want to edit this document catering to how you want to teach your course, but it will feel much less overwhelming if you have a starting place. In the rare chance that your class has not been taught before, you should inquire
about whether your department or university has a syllabus “template” that will provide a standardized format and language for university-wide policies. You can also search for syllabi from other universities on your course
for further inspiration.
Beyond the syllabus, you can reach out to professors or graduate students who have taught the course before and request their materials (e.g., assignments, lecture slides). Many textbooks have lecture slides and test question banks
that you can use as a starting point. Again, you can aim to personalize these materials over time, but having somewhere to start will make the process less overwhelming and ensure that you teach what other instructors in your
department and the authors of your textbook consider to be the most important information.
As you develop your course content and materials, set yourself a limited amount of time to work on them. If you let yourself, you can spend all of your time making small changes to lecture content. You can (and will) make these
changes over time. The first version of a lecture will never be the best version, and that is okay. The practice of delivering your lectures, fielding questions from students, and reviewing their assessments will provide invaluable
information on what changes are needed.
Develop Clear Learning Expectations
One of the first and most foundational asks you will undertake when teaching a course is creating a syllabus. The syllabus is a contract between you and the students that covers what they can expect to learn about in your course
and how they will be assessed on their knowledge. Your syllabus should include a description of the course and assignments, learning outcomes, grading criteria, and estimations of how much time students should spend on assignments.
Students will reference this document throughout the course to manage their time, judge the value of each assignment, and understand what exactly you expect of them, so it is important to be clear and give opportunities (e.g.,
in class or “preclass survey”) for students to ask questions.
Along with clarity, prioritize simplicity when devising your syllabus. Your class is likely one of many that your students are taking, so complex course plans can be overwhelming and cause confusion and missed deadlines. For example,
you can make deadlines easy to remember (e.g., set each deadline to Sunday at 11:59 p.m.) or condense the 20 assignments in your course into a few categories (e.g., “content quizzes,” “writing reflections,” and “final project”).
These simplifications will make course requirements easier to digest at first glance and will reduce the information students need to remember in order to perform well in your class.
Establish a Safe, Productive Environment
If your course will include discussions about sensitive topics, it will be especially important to include a class climate policy. Learning requires an environment where each person feels comfortable to speak about their experiences
and beliefs, and to challenge each other’s ideas. Thus, to facilitate productive discussions, it is imperative to establish that students are part of a learning community where individuals have different backgrounds, experiences,
and identities. We recommend setting specific class guidelines, providing an opportunity (i.e., in a “preclass survey”) for students to add to them, and reviewing them if they are broken. For instance, your guidelines could
be to:
- treat others with respect,
- be conscious of how much you speak to allow time for the class to learn from many perspectives, and
- allow others (and yourself) to make mistakes and learn from them.
Your syllabus is also a valuable tool to set boundaries that can help to protect your time (and sanity). Clearly state when you will respond to emails and how long it will take you. For instance, you can state that, unless otherwise
stated in class or via course announcement, you will respond within 24 hours Monday through Friday, and within 48 hours on the weekend. Set expectations about what requests are reasonable, and when you would prefer to meet
in person over email. In a large class, you may be able to review outlines or help brainstorm for big writing assignments, but it would be too cumbersome to review entire drafts before final submission. Or, you may want to
state that you prefer to answer any quick questions via email, but would prefer to meet in person to go over an entire exam or to brainstorm for a writing assignment. Meeting with students can take up a lot of your time, so
it is important to set office hours that are convenient for you and fall outside your protected time for research and writing. For instance, setting your office hours 30 minutes before class and 30 minutes after class will
typically be convenient and work for you and your students. If you do need to meet outside of your stated office hours, try to find a time that works for the student and does not disrupt your research or writing time.
Use Varied, Purposeful Activities and Assessments
Although developing prepared lecture content and assigning chapters from textbooks or books are important to build foundational knowledge, consider breaking up lectures with tools that encourage engagement, such as discussion questions,
short videos, and class activities (e.g., demonstrations of psychological phenomena). You can facilitate in-class debates by assigning videos, podcasts, or opinion articles that frame two sides of an issue. In small, higher
level, discussion-based courses, it may be appropriate to have students lead a discussion on a reading or topic. All students have different strengths and weaknesses, so an accurate assessment of their learning will require
giving a variety of assessments (e.g., multiple choice, essay, oral presentations). This variety can also help you protect your own time by striking a balance between utilizing “easy to grade” assessments (e.g., multiple choice
assessments, presentations that can be graded in class, and pass/fail assignments) and assessments that require significant time and effort to grade (e.g., research paper assignments or short answer exam questions).
Develop each assignment with a specific purpose in mind. You should be able to clearly explain to students (on the syllabus and the assignment) the purpose and value of any assessment you assign, and how it connects to a learning
outcome(s) stated on your syllabus. The purpose of some assessments may be to review and master the material before the course moves on to different topics that require mastery of the first unit. Or, the purpose may be to apply
the course topics to “the real world,” so that students can be prepared to use the knowledge they gain in the classroom to deepen their understanding of their experiences and observations outside of it. Identifying the purpose
of your assignments is an important exercise as an instructor and will help you evaluate whether you need to adjust or drop any assignments to ensure that all requirements of a course align with its stated learning outcomes.
Trust Yourself and Your Strengths
It is common to be given a teaching assignment in graduate school before you feel like an expert on the topic. However, being a successful instructor does not require you to be a content expert; you only need to know more than
the students to teach them, and they are just beginning to learn psychology. Because of your background in the field, you will be able to learn the material faster than they will, and teaching others will help you become an
expert on the topic. In fact, learning a topic alongside your students can be advantageous. You just taught the material to yourself, so you are in a strong position to teach it to someone else. You are not a seasoned pro (yet),
but you also won’t overcomplicate the material. Someone who has taught the subject countless times (and in many cases, has a teaching assistant who does most of the grading and student interaction) may make the mistake of using
terminology that is too technical, or brush past difficult concepts too quickly, while someone who just learned the material has a better grasp on what concepts are easy to confuse, or most difficult to learn. Inevitably, there
will be some gaps in your knowledge, especially at this stage. If a student asks you a question that you don’t know the answer to, this can be framed as a learning opportunity for yourself as well as your students. You can
always say, “Let me follow up with you on that at a later time,” or, if the question is not sufficiently relevant to the topic at hand, “That’s beyond the scope of the course.”
In general, there is no one way to be a good teacher. It will be important to find your individual strengths, rather than solely attempting to imitate what you have seen. You may be naturally extroverted or introverted, serious
or funny, deliberate or spontaneous. Focus on identifying your strengths, and learn to work within them. Your main objectives as an instructor are to provide students with the information and tools they need to succeed in your
course (and, more broadly, in their educational career) and to do your best to cultivate a safe, inclusive, and fair environment in which they can learn. By learning how to reach those objectives with your natural personality
traits, you are giving yourself the best chance of improving as an instructor.
Solicit Feedback From a Variety of Sources
Receiving constructive criticism can be uncomfortable but is necessary when learning any new skill. As someone who is new to teaching, you should seek feedback whenever possible. Don’t wait until the end of the course to ask students
what they think of it and whether the course needs any adjustments. Take your course reviews seriously, and tell students that you appreciate their feedback. Ask a seasoned professor or instructor (e.g., your advisor, your
teaching appointment supervisor) to sit in on a class and provide you with feedback. Not all feedback will be helpful, and a lot of it will be contradictory. For instance, some of the students might have loved the writing assessments,
while a small minority thought that they weren’t worth their time. Some might have wished you lectured more, while others stated that they learn the best from opportunities to discuss the content with others. Although you will
never be able to please everyone, you will be able to detect patterns that reveal your strengths as an instructor and the assignments that resonate the most.
Sarah Dimakis, PhD, is a PhD candidate and Graduate Teaching Fellow at the University of Oregon, who studies how people think about the morality of others. In the last five years as a graduate student, she has taught, co-taught, led labs, and developed materials for several psychology courses, including Moral Psychology, Social Psychology, Research Methods in Psychology, and Statistical Methods in Psychology.
Raleigh Goodwin, PhD, is a PhD candidate at the University of Oregon and an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. She studies how people evaluate scientific and political information and how individuals form judgments and decisions, especially those involving risk, based on that information. During her undergraduate education, Raleigh worked as a supplemental instructor for Introduction to Psychology and Statistics for Behavioral Sciences at Louisiana State University.
Copyright 2024 (Vol. 28, Iss. 3) Psi Chi, the International Honor Society in Psychology
