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Paul - My Blog
Paul - My Blog


End of semester drain
Related to country: Australia

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Another semester has just finished for one of my subjects I teach. It feels like a long deflating sigh, but in a good way. Certainly it feels good now that all the pressure to teach is gone, but I also miss it already. Only the exam to go, and some marking. Already ideas are flowing for improvements for the next time I teach, and I'm already looking forward to the next semester.

In the next six months I'll be learning too. I've finilised the courses that I'll be taking so that I can rise from "head tutor" status so something approaching a lecture in an official capacity. The titles of the courses are:
- Mod #5.Innovations in Teachg & Learng Practice (B)
- Writing Assessment Criteria & Standards
- Mod #1 Principles of Scholarly University Teaching
- Building English Language Support into Curriculum
- Assessing Group Tasks
- Strategies for Teaching & Learning in Diverse Class
- Mod #2. Designing the Learning Experience
- Mod #3. Evaluating the Learning Experience
- Ten Ways to Design Out Plagiarism
- Assessment for Inclusive Teaching & Learning
- Mod #4.Innovations in Teachg & Learng Practice (A)
- Mod #6. Excellence & Scholarship in Univ Teaching

And maybe I'll do one on course co-ordination too.

What I'd like to know is, if anyone has any experiences dealing with a diverse class of students with different language backgrounds. I chose a course in it to hopefully find out what the universities official opinion is on this touchy topic.
It's been quite an interesting semester, in that although the course I'm teaching is in engineering and medicine, the biggest stumbling block for the semester is the students skill level in English. What was surprising was that almost half of the problems I was finding were connected with students who's first and only language was English. While in most cases it was international students who were struggling with writing and reading, it was not uncommon for some so local students to have such a poor level of writing skills as to make there work unreadable. Has anyone else encountered this?

June 2, 2009 | 11:04 PM Comments  0 comments



Opening post: A small sizzle about me.
Related to country: Australia

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

This is just a little something to introduce myself. I am a relatively young tertiary teacher at a Queensland university. Initially I started teaching as a secondary source of income while I'm doing my PhD. Over time my motives for wanting to teach changed, it came as a revelation at first, but now I'm only doing a PhD so I have the opportunity to teach. The exchange of priorities came about when I when I realised how much personal satisfaction I get from teaching, something that was missing in my experiences in research.

I tell you this so you know my motives. And as a kind of caveat, because I'm only very new in this position, I'm still finding my style and trying to pick up the tricks of the trade. Since I'm only starting out, I want to use this blog as a somewhat personal reference to me, about my experiences learning the art of teaching at the intersection of science, engineering and medicine.

My most recent realisation is that lecturing is actually a type of performance art that can be and probably should be highly entertaining. This fact is completely alien to me with my experiences of woefully dull, uncharismatic and simply uncaring lectures I've had in the past. I'm exploring some ideas about this fact that I hope to post soon. I welcome any other thoughts on the topic of teaching as a performance art.

May 28, 2009 | 7:59 PM Comments  0 comments





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