TITLE: Working on Advice for New Faculty
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: March 02, 2010  7:05 PM
DESC: 
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<IMG SRC="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog-images/sigcse2010.png"
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<A HREF="http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~zelenski/">
   Julie Zelenski</A>
and
<A HREF="http://dave-reed.com/">
   Dave Reed</A>
have invited me to serve as a "sage elder" at the
<A HREF="http://www.sigcse.org/sigcse2010/attendees/pre_symposium_events.php">
   New Educators Roundtable</A>,
a pre-conference workshop at
<A HREF="http://www.sigcse.org/sigcse2010/">
   SIGCSE 2010</A>.
The roundtable is "designed to mentor college and
university faculty who are new to teaching".  This
must surely be a mistake!  I may well be an elder
after all these years stalking the front of a
classroom, but sage?  Ha.  In so many ways, I feel
like a beginner every time I to the front of a class.

Experience does teach us lessons, though, so even if
I still have a lot to learn and incorporate into how
I teach, I probably do have some lessons I can share
with people who are just getting started.  If nothing
else, I can talk with new faculty about some of the
mistakes I have made.  Each person must must live
his or her own experiences, but sometimes we can
plant a seed in people's minds that will germinate
later, when the time is right for each person.
(That sounds a lot like all teaching, actually.)

The website for the workshop will ultimately contain
information from the workshop sessions themselves.
To start, it will have short biographies of the
elders.  Actually, "biography" is a bit too formal
a name for it.  The header on the draft web page
currently says "Bio / blurb / career highlights /
anecdotes / historical fiction".  Here is the
<A HREF="http://www.skepdic.com/retfalse.html">
   retrospective falsification</A>
of my own career that I submitted:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
In the fourth grade, my favorite teacher of all time
told me that I would never be a teacher; I was too
impatient with others.  For that and many other
reasons, I never expected to become a teacher when
I grew up.  As a graduate student doing AI at Michigan
State, I was assigned to teach a few courses.  I did
fine, I think, but even then I planned to move into
industry as a researcher and developer.  Somehow, I
ended up at UNI, a medium-sized public "teaching  
university".  I've been teaching classes here since
1992.  My largest section ever contained 53 students;
the smallest, 4.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

That is pretty much true, at least as I remember it.
I included the size of my largest and smallest sections
ever because many new faculty teach at big universities
and will face massive CS1 and CS2 sections of several
hundred students at a time.  The advice I have to offer
may not be as helpful in that context, so I want the
people who attend the workshop to know my context.
Several of my co-panelists will be able to speak more
directly to those attendees.  On the flip side, I have
taught a long list of different courses over the years,
so I can connect my experiences with many different
content areas and types of course.

We elders were also asked to submit a list of "things
you wish you had known" when we started teaching, as
a way to jump start our thinking, as well as that of
prospective attendees.  Here is a list that I
brainstormed:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
Be honest.  Students value honesty.

Even the best students will fall down occasionally.
When they do, it doesn't mean there is something
wrong with them, or with you.

Give feedback on assignments promptly.

The previous advice is a specific example of something
more general:  Most students don't handle uncertainty
well.  Even students who "get it" might think they
do not.

Setting draconian standards and policies does more
harm to your learning environment than it buys you.

Instead, set reasonable, firm, and challenging standards.
Students appreciate that they are expected to accomplish
something meaningful.

A lecture or classroom activity is only as good as what
it helps your students do.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

Each of these could use some elaboration ("Um, you
thought being dishonest with students was a good
thing?"), but as a start they reflect some of what
I've learned.

As I prepare further for the workshop, I plan to
read through the archives of the
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/cat_2.html">
   Teaching and Learning</A>
category of this blog.  There are plenty of things
I have learned and forgotten over the years.  I hope
that I wrote a few of those things down...

I think being on the New Educators' Roundtable might
be as valuable for this elder as it is for the new
educators.  (I repeat:  That sounds a lot like all
teaching, actually.)
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