{"id":1691,"date":"2019-08-13T21:56:12","date_gmt":"2019-08-14T04:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/catherinerawn\/?p=1691"},"modified":"2019-08-13T21:56:12","modified_gmt":"2019-08-14T04:56:12","slug":"pilot-seminar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/catherinerawn\/2019\/08\/13\/pilot-seminar\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflecting on the first Seminar in Applied Psychology of Teaching and Learning"},"content":{"rendered":"

In May-June 2019 (Summer Term 1) I taught a pilot course:\u00a0Seminar in Applied Psychology of Teaching and Learning.\u00a0<\/strong>Please see the first syllabus for details on this pilot offering: Syllabus.PSYC417.S2019.Rawn.SeminarApplPsychTeachLearn.V2<\/a><\/p>\n

Course Overview<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

This course is designed as an intensive, active seminar to help you apply your understanding of psychological science to help other people learn, while developing professional skills relevant to teaching. You may begin to shift your identity from a student to a member of a teaching team.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you enjoy this course, you might consider applying to become an Undergraduate Teaching Assistant in the Psychology Department or elsewhere. This course will help you strengthen that application. Yet this course is designed as a springboard for many future work or study endeavours (e.g., course\/curriculum design, instructional design, management, teaching at any level, human resources\/training, graduate school, group facilitation, academic<\/span><\/p>\n

What did Students say?<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

All 10 students from the Pilot course in Summer 2019 provided rich feedback throughout the course as well as in the Student Evaluations of Teaching at the end of the term.\u00a0Thank you!<\/em><\/p>\n

Quantitative results are reported here<\/a>. The qualitative comments, as usual, help to contextualize the numbers. Students reported feeling challenged, in a positive way. The highlights:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cDr. Rawn’s high expectations of us and bid to push us out of our comfort zones made certain parts challenging but it was welcome, given the standing of the course and the objectives it sets out towards. Really well designed for students who might be considering become TAs or instructors themselves in the future<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI really loved the sand\u2013box elements of the course in which we were given the opportunity to help build elements of the class and muddle through behind\u2013the\u2013scenes challenges<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe discussions, peer reviews, hands-on activities and presentations (even though I dislike those) are the most effective parts of the course at promoting learning<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGreat course! One of my takeaways that was not an explicit part of the curriculum was actually the structure and planning of a graduate\u2013type seminar (which i will need for my later teaching)<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOverall, this course was interesting and there isn’t anything like it at UBC right now so I think many students would like it and benefit from taking it.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

In planning the next offering (coming Summer 2020 Term 2), I made two key changes in response to problems fairly identified by students<\/strong> (plus one more key change). First, I will not be counting marks for the first Reading Reflection (#0). A couple of students reasonably pointed out that it was difficult to know how to write that first Reading Reflection, especially without a rubric (which I hadn\u2019t created yet). So although I\u2019ll still expect a best effort and will \u201cgrade it\u201d accordingly, I won\u2019t count those points. This year, I\u2019ll also be able to give more concrete tips in advance because the rubric exists already. These concrete tips will help address a request by a couple of other students for more clarity on assignments.<\/p>\n

Second, I have moved the course material on peer review and using rubrics earlier in the term. A couple of students noted that their peer reviews were not as reliable or helpful as they\u2019d hoped, especially early on in the term. Hopefully this earlier discussion will help improve the usefulness and reliability peer reviews. (Note that peer review scores ultimately contribute very little % to each grade, and they are all checked and adjusted if needed by our TA or by me.)<\/p>\n

A third change came from my own reflections on the assignments and grading them, along with feedback from my TA Kyle Gooderham (thanks Kyle!). In hindsight, the major project was over-complicated. Asking students to invent a study strategy or learning resource, pilot it, and anchor it in the literature was just too much (especially in a 6 week course). Thus, I have revised the major project to clarify its purpose. In a nutshell, the task is to take an existing strategy or resource, ground it in research evidence, and use that evidence to convince others to use it (or not<\/em> to use it, if the evidence is weak\/contradictory).<\/p>\n

In an unprecedented move for me, I actually have next summer’s syllabus prepared<\/em>. Of course, it’s subject to change at this point. But I wanted to do it now while the course was reasonably fresh, and so I can bring it to the Psychology Department to propose its own course code. If you’re interested, here is next year’s draft: Syllabus.SeminarApplPsychTeachLearn.2020.V1.TOPOST.August.2019<\/a>. Feedback is welcome!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In May-June 2019 (Summer Term 1) I taught a pilot course:\u00a0Seminar in Applied Psychology of Teaching and Learning.\u00a0Please see the first syllabus for details on this pilot offering: Syllabus.PSYC417.S2019.Rawn.SeminarApplPsychTeachLearn.V2 Course Overview This course is designed as an intensive, active seminar Continue reading Reflecting on the first Seminar in Applied Psychology of Teaching and Learning<\/span>→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4281,4282],"tags":[296934,8856,6176,8405,89,4881],"class_list":["post-1691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections-from-professional-development-activities","category-reflections-from-the-classroom","tag-course-design","tag-high-expectations","tag-my-wonderful-students","tag-student-evaluations-of-teaching","tag-summer","tag-syllabus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/catherinerawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/catherinerawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/catherinerawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/catherinerawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/catherinerawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1691"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/catherinerawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1695,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/catherinerawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1691\/revisions\/1695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/catherinerawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/catherinerawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/catherinerawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}