David Wright @ NC State

Workshop Facilitator Responsibilities

Working with the NCSU Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning (FCTL) as a Research Assistant, I also had the opportunity to help develop, refine, and facilitate several workshops for the Certificate of Accomplishment in Teaching (CoAT) Program. Developing and planning a one and one-half hour workshop is much the same as planning a single lesson in terms of the mechanics of the process. Facilitating a workshop is also similar to teaching a lesson, but there are some significant differences (as I found). For example, attendees at a workshop tend to have a greater expectation of learning than many students have - they are taking time away from their normal responsibilities to aquire new knowledge or skills that they can use to improve their job performance. Also, you have a single window of time for a workshop - you cannot "run over" into the next class period if the lesson takes longer than expected.

Developing and facilitating these workshops also required me to work at a much higher level than my previous teaching experiences. As parts of the CoAT program, these workshops are intended to help graduate students with teaching responsibilities learn new techniques and skills that will be useful both in their current teaching assignments as well as in the future as they pursue their professional goals. Another challenge for me was that these workshops were outside the "comfort zone" of my own discipline, and my audience would be graduate students from a variety of fields across the university. When I was first asked to help with these workshops I did not feel qualified, but with hard work on my part and encouragement and feedback from Nancy Fire, CoAT Coordinator, and Dr. Barbi Honeycutt, FCTL Interim Director, I was able to rise to the tasks. Students who participated in these workshops noted that I did a very good job presenting the material and helping them integrate it into their own work.

In the sections below I briefly relate my contributions to the four workshops I was most intimately involved in developing, refining, and/or facilitating.

CORE Workshop

As the name implies, the CORE workshop covers a range of fundamental topics graduate student teachers need to understand to effectively help their students learn. The topics covered in this workshop are:

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Writing Your Statement of Teaching Philosophy Workshop

While this workshop does not specifically deal with helping graduate student teachers learn and implement new teaching techniques, it does serve an important purpose for the developing teacher. A clear statement of one's philosophy of teaching and learning helps the individual understand their own goals and objectives for their teaching. It can also serve as an instructional tool for the teacher's students - helping them to understand what the teacher expects of his or her students and what strategies the teacher generally employs to help their students learn. more...

Preparing for Your Teaching Observation Workshop

I was asked to facilitate this workshop with short notice, but because the workshop had been planned using the Workshop Plan Template, it was not a problem to step in at the last minute. The goal of this workshop is to help graduate student teachers prepare for and learn from observations of their teaching. Much of the workshop was devoted to discussion among the participants under my guidance. My personal goal was to seed them with examples from my own experience, then pose a question for everyone to answer and discuss. Topics included:

I think that telling my own stories of being observed and of formally observing faculty in my department teach were icebreakers for the participants. One interesting discussion was about the second topic above. One student made the comment about having very limited space in her classroom, and where the observer should be positioned in the classroom to disrupt the normal flow of the class. Several students mentioned having similar problems in their classes in general, and had not considered where an observer might sit or stand to be able to really observe their teaching as well as their interaction with their students.

Teaching Portfolio Workgroup

The Teaching Portfolio Workgroup was designed as more of an extended work and discussion space where students could begin developing their teaching portfolios that are a requirement for completing the CoAT program. Based on past experience evaluating participant portfolios, some kind of general organization and structure was needed to ensure that all participants in the program met a minimum level of performance with their portfolios. I made two important contributions to this effort with the development of this online workgroup: the collection and organization of a comprehensive set of resources about teaching portfolios, and the design of a "checklist" defining the minimal contents of a CoAT participant's portfolio for successful completion of the program. more...