After attending ALA session last Saturday, I recalled these two teaching tips I learned over the past years, mostly through mentoring experience at my research lab and STEP. These two tips could be applicable to almost any teaching/mentoring subjects besides leadership and career development.These two tips may be commonsenses for most people but I found very few seriously try to execute them when it comes to teaching.
Tip#1: Between you and your students, begin at the end in mind --and say that out loud. Ask "what's the best case scenario at the end of this?"
When I decided to join the lab, my adviser and I took a long walk. His first question to me was: what do you wanna get from working with me over the next 5 years? What's the best case scenario at the moment your leave? I found that simple exercise very helpful. I had a tendency of jumping into work and keep working hard without having clear mental model of the end product. It is true that our goals definitely change more or less over time. Nonetheless, I think we need to start from some goals..and at least keeping some goal in mind through out the project.When it comes to "teaching/mentoring", whether the subject is molecular engineering or tennis or leadership, I think it is really important have students say or write down what they wanna get out of this educational session. Then, you will have to check with them throughout the program and in the end if the students get what they want, if their goals change and how you can help them to get their.
For my summer research students and rotation students, we had a 1-1 meeting at the beginning of the the program and maybe every couple weeks when we tried not to discuss low-level technical stuffs (like hey what do you think about that research paper? or how do you get this bacteria growing on that media?) but focus on checking high level goals (how is the lab? are you stilled excited about what you are working on? did you get to learn what you wanna learn? Let's suppose you have to leave next week, what will be the one thing you wanna get done?). For my STEP students, especially last year, I asked them to prepare and present "the final presentation" on the second day of their three week program. I asked on the first day "let's supposed the program will end tomorrow night, what will be the story you wanna tell at the final presentation?" Then, we iterated that process once a week and I'm amazed to see how much they improved by the time they are at their real final presentation. In the past, students had problem focusing..there are so many interesting things..so many possibilities along with associated challenges. Somehow this simple trick helped them focus.
Tip#2. Give short homework often.
When you teach someone skills, you would hope that the person can eventually use that skill by himself, in the absence of you. That's why homework is important. Homework differs from in-class exercise in that it should be done in the absence of the instructor, TA or other class room setting where the students first learn the the skill.Whether you teach your students about how to fry egg or about how to be an active listener, ask them to try that at home and then report back to you on the next day. Good homework should be short to make it is more likely to be completed. Having someone complete a small task (that he couldn't do before) in the absence of you, the instructor, is a great way to build his confidence. When students report back to you, ask them about what they found difficult about that homework..and then craft the next homework to address that point.
