Unit One instructors are encouraged to spend out-of-class time with their students. The $50/semester honoraria you receive is dependent on your doing some extra stuff. This honorarium is in recognition for your going beyond the normal expectation. It certainly is not meant to be payment for time spent, since many TAs go way beyond the normally expected University teaching obligation when they teach at Unit One.
At the end of each semester, we'll ask you whether you did any extra stuff. If you did, we'll arrange your honorarium in the form of a gift certificate to the Illini Union Bookstore.
Extra
stuff could include:
·
Regularly eating with your
students.
·
Meeting students for
coffee/discussion
·
Holding extra study
sessions.
·
Dinner at your house.
·
Pizza/study sessions.
·
Field trips.
·
Your participating in
non-classroom Unit One activities.
·
You and your class attending
Guest-in-Residence events.
If the extra stuff you want to do involves added expenses, we'll cover if it's reasonable. (Don’t confuse “reasonable” with cheap or "low budget"--let us confer to see if we can afford your ideas! We are budgeted to support instructors’ ventures…we’ve even helped classes take field trips to Chicago.) See Howard Schein or Laura Haber if you have ideas that will involve extra expense.
Here are some conceptual bases that can guide both your teaching and out-of-class activities at Unit One. These are taken from
The Impact of College on Students: Myths, Rational Myths, and Some Other Things That May Not Be True. Ernest T. Pascarella, University of Illinois, Chicago and Patrick T. Terenzini, Pennsylvania State University From: NACADA Journal, Volume 15 (2), Fall 1995. pp. 26-33. The entire article is at:
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/hschein/www/readings/Pascarella-myths.html
·The
fact is that there are instructional approaches that, under experimental
conditions, have been shown repeatedly to be more effective in facilitating
subject-matter learning than more traditional approaches. These more effective
approaches (e.g., the personalized system of instruction, audio-tutorial
instruction, computer-based instruction, and cooperative/collaborative learning)
differ in some ways, but they seem to stress certain elements:
1. small modular units of instruction,
2. student mastery of one unit before moving on to the next,
3. timely and frequent feedback to students on their
progress, and
4. active student involvement in learning rather than passive
learning.
The increased cognitive effectiveness of these instructional methods over
lecturing and other traditional methods of college teaching probably has
multiple sources, but the evidence suggests the following are particularly
important.
First, many of these nontraditional instructional methods reverse the time/achievement relationship of lecturing and traditional instruction. In traditional instruction, time in covering content is constant but course learning varies. In the alternative methods, time covering the material varies (i.e., students cover content at their own pace), and attempts are made to make achievement more constant by requiring student mastery of the content. In short, these alternative instructional methods (as opposed to traditional methods) are sensitive to individual student differences in speed of acquiring content.
Second, in contrast to the passive roles students are encouraged to play in most lecture/discussion/recitation classes, individualized and collaborative teaching approaches require active student involvement and participation in the teaching-learning process. Such methods encourage students to take greater responsibility for their own learning; they learn from one another, as well as from the instructor. The weight of evidence indicates that active learning produces greater gains in course content, and recent evidence clearly sup ports efforts to employ various forms of collaborative learning.
· Although a number of teacher behaviors are positively linked with student learning (e.g., rapport with students, interpersonal accessibility to students, feedback to students, enthusiasm, and the like), two highly related dimensions stand out as being strongly linked to how much students learn. These are instructor skill (particularly clarity of presentation) and course structure (e.g., class time that is structured and organized efficiently and course goals, objectives, and requirements that are clear). What is perhaps most important is that many of the elements of both of these dimensions of effective teaching can themselves be learned.
Recent evidence from the National Center on Postsecondary Teaching, Learning, and Assessment study of 23 institutions around the country suggests that the positive influence of at least one of these dimensions of teaching effectiveness extends beyond simple course achievement. Using a sample of nearly 2,600 students, we found that the more students reported high levels of course organization in the overall teaching they received at their institution, the more likely they were to make the largest first-year gains in ACT developed standardized measures of reading comprehension, quantitative reasoning, and critical thinking-and this effect persisted even after controls for the pattern of courses taken and precollege ability on those outcomes (Pascarella, Edison, Nora, Hagedorn, & Braxton, 1995). Thus, the teachable and learnable elements of effective teaching appear not only to enhance specific course learning; at least one of them also appears to have potential positive impacts on more general dimensions of cognitive and intellectual development during college.
· Specifically, the evidence is quite clear that even when we control for important student background characteristics, aspirations, and other confounding influences, the extent of students'. informal, nonclassroom contact with faculty positively linked with a broad array of outcome (Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991). These include:
1.
perceptions of intellectual growth during college,
2. increases in intellectual orientation and curiosity,
3. liberalization of social and political values,
4. growth in autonomy and independence,
5. orientation toward scholarly careers,
6. interpersonal skills and sensitivity,
7. educational aspirations,
8. persistence in college and educational degree attainment,
and
9. women's interest in, and choice of, sex-atypical (male
dominated) career fields (e.g., law business, medicine, engineering, and
academia).
Interestingly, but not surprisingly, it also appears that the impact of student-faculty informal contact on student development is determined by its content and focus, as well as by its frequency. The most influential forms of interaction appear to be those that focus on ideas or intellectual matters-thereby extending and reinforcing the goals of the academic program. The fact that faculty members have important educational impact on students beyond the classroom leads to our final myth (which is spelled out in the article…)