This year, 146 students joined us for our Fall Teaching Conference, revamped for the fourth time in four years! The conference is an important part of our mission to help PhD students learn and develop as teachers, build community around teaching, and promote the role of teaching in professional development.
Born out of the need to help instructors teach remotely in the fall of 2020, we have continued to offer our 3-session Fundamentals training on Zoom to help new TFs prepare for their first section, design a lesson plan, and foster inclusive learning environments. Approximately 85 TFs from across disciplines took the opportunity to delve deeper into the modules on our Hit the Ground Running Canvas site, share and explore ideas for teaching, and connect with a cohort of their peers. Participants shared what they found most helpful:
- I so appreciate the Hit the Ground Running pages and the forms and templates there. So practical and helpful for new TFs who aren't sure how to approach teaching for the first time!
- Being linked to resources and asked to talk to other TFs from different disciplines than my own gave me some great ideas about how to approach teaching.
- The concrete strategies and tools – activities and words – that I can implement. It is so refreshing to have actual examples of things to do and say in scenarios rather than just pedagogical principles (which are certainly helpful in their own way too).
This year we also offered opportunities for TFs to connect in-person and discuss resources and ideas for section teaching facilitated by our Pedagogy Fellows, experienced TFs from across the FAS who work as liaisons between their departments and the Bok Center to support fellow TFs. Sessions were focused on leading discussion-based sections and problem-based sections and proved popular!
- It is so great to have a conversation about teaching with a cohort of peers!
- Listening to the thoughts and ideas of others… the advice was very helpful!
Pedagogy Fellows also facilitated practice teaching sessions, in which participants presented a short lesson to a small group of peers to practice, get feedback, and build confidence with teaching.
- Getting to actually practice teaching in a low stakes environment instead of thinking about hypotheticals. It was so helpful to see how I actually felt under eyes and to get feedback about what worked and what could be improved. This was the most helpful session!
During the first week of classes we offered four days of workshops for both new and experienced TFs. Each day’s sessions were organized around a theme: 1) learning and equitable and inclusive teaching, 2) skills helpful for teaching in the humanities and social sciences (like teaching reading and discussion), 3) teaching in STEM, 4) teaching with artificial intelligence and developing materials for the job market. We were excited to host the conference at our offices on the 3rd floor of 125 Mt. Auburn Street, which encouraged students to find us so they know where to go when they want to learn more about teaching in the future!
We invite our PhD student community to continue the conversations we started at the conference, by engaging with conference resources on the Hit the Ground Running Canvas site, taking a fall Bok Seminar, having your class observed or recorded, or signing up to meet with us about student feedback or other teaching topics.