Last week I wrote about participating in lots of instruction over the coming week. Well, that was this week, and this week is nearly over!
On Monday, I participated in orientation workshops for incoming freshman (I did this Thursday as well), and also completed a Word for Dissertation workshop. On both occasions, I had the chance to collaborate with colleagues, which was a great experience. Co-teaching has allowed me to feel more comfortable with instruction and has also provided me with the confidence that I could probably have done both on my own if I absolutely needed to. Working with my colleagues was great, though. It was wonderful to have someone there who could help answer questions or jump in if I forgot something, however it was also simply nice to work with people whom I respect and admire.
The orientation sessions were a nice "warm up" for my later Dissertation workshop. Talk about different audiences! I went from working with 18-year-old-incoming freshman to mainly doctoral students of all ages. The freshman were tired - it was early morning and they were there because they had to be. The doctoral students were fully interested and engaged as this was something they chose to attend on their own and something they knew would be helpful throughout their long dissertation process.
The freshman orientation provided little to no feedback, other than what we could see. Some students asked great questions while others struggled to keep their eyes open. Most participated in our polls via iClicker but other than that, it was impossible to tell how effective of an instructor I was. I did receive some feedback from my co-instructors, which was helpful because they could do this presentation in their sleep and have a good deal of instructional experience.
The Word for Dissertation workshop, on the other hand, provided more and different feedback. I not only received tips from one of the facility's main instructors, but also from 7 out of the 9 workshop participants. The feedback from my instructor was very helpful - she talked about not saying things were simple or easy (because they may not be for everyone!) and also about leading into topics with analogies and in simpler terms. Extremely useful information that I can carry across my instructional experiences.
We also received feedback from the participants via an anonymous evaluation system. The numbers that we received were good - no negative feedback, a few neutrals, and mostly good. The comments, however, were one of my first lessons of criticism in the way that I could not ask for further information or could not really use the information to be constructive. I received a comment that said it looked like I was nervous and made a lot of mistakes by having to go back and repeat myself. I read this comment, and of course, felt a little bad. The same commenter had said my colleague had a nice presence about him, so he clearly did not see that same confidence in me. I did, to be completely fair, mess up right at the beginning of my transition... which probably through this person off. But it was hard to read the comment and not be able to follow up, ask what I might do better, or simply realize that the beginning of my half of the workshop was confusing for people and that I need to practice more for next time. Which I will, regardless :)
The point of this post is just a reflection on my instruction this past week. It also is a beginning thought on how we could make our assessment of the workshops better in a way that might provide more constructive feedback. I'm pretty sure that there will nearly always be "that person" or people who don't respond at all, but as I am more confident in teaching certain workshops, I would like to evaluate the assessment that goes along with them. The one-shot workshop model might be something I re-visit when this time comes.
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