Quality of the Supervised Teaching Experience
Each GAANN fellow in CIS at Georgia State will be provided with a multi-semester supervised teaching experience through the project director and mentor. Shaped by feedback from former students, this program will provide new GAANN fellows with an extensive mentoring experience in teaching, comparable to their mentoring experience in research.
The GAANN fellowship requires a single year of supervised instruction, but the CIS Department feels that this is inadequate to develop the skills and experience to parallel the expectations in research. Therefore, CIS GAP will provide one (1) year of supervised teaching instruction and a minimum of two (2) years of supervised teaching experience.
Each semester during the first three years, GAANN fellows will register for a doctoral seminar on Best Practices in Theory and Practice of Information Systems Instruction (DSC 9250). This is a doctoral seminar with variable credit (1 to 3) hours and is designed to support instruction and research in the area of pedagogy. There are multiple activities that include developing and implementing a teaching philosophy, course design, syllabus and test construction, educational psychology, presentation skills, technology tools, classroom management, classroom simulations, ethical dilemmas, designing pedagogical research projects, and development of a teaching portfolio. GAANN fellows will be expected to conduct and publish pedagogical research resulting in one conference presentation and one peer reviewed journal article each academic year. This course is currently being redesigned based on feedback from the first GAANN fellows and will be presented to Graduate Program Council for approval in Spring 2004 for permanent inclusion in the Georgia State curriculum.
During their second semester at Georgia State, all fellows will be required to enroll in a seminar on University Teaching (BA 9200) to gain a basic understanding of instructional design and delivery at the university level. The course objectives are as follows:
- Identify the critical factors that affect student learning.
- Write cognitive objectives at the rote, meaningful-integrated, and critical thinking levels.
- Design effective presentations based on your knowledge of how students learn best.
- Form and run effective groups to achieve higher-level learning.
- Design and present an effective lecture (introduction, body, summary).
- Manage a case discussion in the classroom.
- Design effective structured essay, short answer, and multiple-choice questions at the rote and meaningful-integrated levels.
- Achieve greater consistency in your grading.
- Apply teaching tips provided in your classes to address difficult classroom situations.
- Evaluate the impact of different forms of technology on the learning process.
While taking the seminar on University Teaching, fellows will view the entire process of teaching an undergraduate course, from textbook selection and syllabus preparation to the final student evaluations of the course. Fellows will participate in classroom observations, examination development, examination grading, and student tutoring; and will develop materials for the courses they will teach. During the same semester, fellows will teach or co-teach the courses which they observed. By completing this course, fellows will be provided with frameworks, theories, teaching models, and practical teaching tips that will prepare them to become more effective in the classroom and to improve their teaching throughout their career.
The seminar on University Teaching will be followed with a required seminar in “Best Instructional Practices” conducted by the project director each semester for the GAANN fellows for three years while the fellows assume complete responsibility for teaching undergraduate courses. The one-hour seminar will address the theoretical and practical application of teaching philosophy to instructional delivery with direct mentoring. The fellows will refine their philosophies of teaching, update their teaching portfolios, and develop an individualized program that involves extensive observation and teaching components.
All fellows will participate in teaching effectiveness workshops and in-service education programs to improve their teaching skills. Topics will include responding to diverse learning styles in the classroom, discussion and lecture strategies, collaborative and experiential strategies, enhancing students’ learning and motivation, writing skills and homework assignments, testing and grading, instructional media and technology, evaluation and teaching improvement. Instruction in effective teaching will be enhanced by the university's state-of-the-art collection of support facilities for teaching and learning known as the "Center for Teaching and Learning” established in 1996 as a resource for faculty and graduate teaching assistants who wish to increase their use of technology in teaching. The Center provides an invaluable resource for those who seek to leverage technology to extend the reach of the traditional classroom. These resources are of particular value in support GAANN fellows.
GAANN fellows will receive written guidelines addressing such matters as grading, test security, office-hour requirements, classroom and safety procedures, and the philosophy of teaching in the CIS department. In addition to direction and feedback from the project director, fellows will receive systematic guidance and feedback throughout their teaching experience, from textbook selection and syllabus preparation to the grading of final examinations.
Each GAANN fellow will be filmed teaching a class each semester. The filmed classes will serve as a learning tool to document a record of teaching improvement. Every month the project director will observe, unannounced, classroom activity to provide fellows with constructive feedback and strategies for improvement.
Like all teaching assistants, GAANN fellows in CIS will be evaluated by the students in their courses, through peer observations, and by the project director. The project director holds a degree in education and experience in student teaching supervision, which will be used to offer feedback based on the stated objectives of the lesson plans developed by the GAANN fellows.
GAANN fellows will also prepare teaching portfolios which will include materials they develop for the courses they teach, a weekly journal, and student/faculty evaluations of their teaching. At the end of the program, these portfolios and journals will be submitted to the project director for evaluation and review.
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