Teaching as Instructor of Record Requirement

As the culmination of the teaching training for the CCUT program, teaching a course as the instructor of record required me to draw on many of my earlier experiences in the program. While acting as a teaching assistant allows you to hone your skills as a teacher, being the instructor of record entails at true "trial by fire." You are now in charge of what information and skills will be passed on to your students, but also how you will present this information. While the mentoring of a ladder faculty member makes the process easier, you are putting yourself out in front of the class as the primary source of information and point of contact when problems arise.

To satisfy this requirement I taught as the co-instructor of record for the senior level invertebrate zoology course offered through the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology (EEMB 116) in Spring 2005. I co-taught this course with Dr. Armand Kuris and he acted as my faculty mentor during the quarter. I received permission from Dr. Mackie to use this experience to satisfy this CCUT requirement, because this course has historically been team taught by faculty members since its inception in the 1980's. Both instructors are fully involved in all aspects of the development, instruction, and evaluation during the course as well as the oversight and direction of a staff of teaching assistants.

The greatest lessons I learned during the teaching of this course were the importance of organization, preparation, and flexibility. With a clear organization in the course, the students know what direction the course is going and what to expect next. Without this, students may find themselves spending valuable time or energy attempting to put the course in context by themselves and not focusing on how the information and skills fit together in the context and organization laid out by the instructor. Preparedness is absolutely crucial to effective teaching. As teachers, I we have not properly prepared for a lecture or designed a well thought out exam, it is unreasonable to expect our students to be able to fully integrate the information we present or perform well on our evaluations of their learning. In the worst case, when not prepared, you leave yourself open to embarrassment and loss of legitimacy in the eyes of your students if they can tell that you yourself are not competent to teach the information. Finally, flexibility is a trait that is important in any teaching, but becomes even more important as the lead teacher, since there is no one else to fall back on when students are not understanding the material. Since we all learn differently, you must be ready to attack a concept from any number of directions or modes of learning to meet the needs of the range of students we experience in the classroom.

This requirement has given me the greater preparation to begin teaching courses on my own this summer at UCSB and in fall at Pacific Lutheran University than any other CCUT requirement. The experience of teaching a course for the first time, with a mentor for external guidance, is one that I think I will draw on for years to come.