Before the start of a new semester, after completing exam evaluations, you can focus on investing in teaching. What should one invest in? We’re here to provide you with some ideas and recommendations.
Reflection on the Past Semester or Year
This is the time to employ meta-cognition on the courses you taught in the past year or in the previous semester, in aspects of teaching, learning, and assessment.
What went well for you and made you feel comfortable in terms of teaching?
How well were the lectures coordinated with the tutorials and exercise sessions?
To what extent did the teaching assistants succeed in teaching and practicing the required content with the students?
What was the workload on the teaching staff, and was it necessary/justified?
What happened to the students during the course in lectures/tutorials/labs – did they attend class? To what extent did they participate in class? How much did they complain about the workload? How much did they understand?
Did you have any indication throughout the course regarding their learning?
Was there alignment between learning throughout the course and achievements in exams or the final project?
How did the students assess the course in the Student Evaluation of Teaching Survey?
Was there alignment between the assessment in the Student Evaluation of Teaching Survey and their achievements in the course?
Of course, there are many other questions that can be asked, and we’re here to assist you with that. Reflection is a critical thinking muscle that is important to exercise, especially in the era of artificial intelligence, both for us and for the students. It is advisable to incorporate opportunities for reflection as part of learning in the course.
Planning Teaching and Assessment for Next Year
After conducting reflection, we can begin planning our instruction for the semester or even for the next year. This is what’s called the course or instructional design process or curriculum design. There are many models for carrying out such a process. Here are some principles to follow:
1. Reconsider or formulate, in the case of a new course, the overarching goals, the big ideas around which the course content is organized, important principles in the content area, or even an educational message related to the professional field you teach.
2. Focus on learning outcomes and articulate several outcomes, such as knowledge, skills, perceptions and values that you want students to acquire by the end of the course. It is unlikely that before and after the course you teach, students will remain exactly the same. Templates for articulating such outcomes and examples from numerous courses at the Technion and from leading universities around the world are available on our website.
At this stage, you can proceed to assessment planning or teaching activity planning, aligning with the learning goals and outcomes that you have articulated. At the end of the planning process, it is advisable, of course, to reflect on and refine the plan, activities, and content of the course. The final products can be a syllabus and a detailed course plan with goals, learning outcomes, instructional modules or topics, instructional methods, teaching style (frontal, workshop, digital, etc.), and assessment methods.
The instructional design process has many benefits, both for the teaching staff and for the students. It requires an investment of time and resources, and it can certainly be implemented initially for part of the course – for example, for lectures only, for one lesson, for a summative assessment only, etc.
You can always include us in a joint thinking process.
