Enriching Scholarship: A Transformative Week for Instruction and Reflection

Before I started writing this, I reviewed my post about last year's Enriching Scholarship session.  Just a quick review, Enriching Scholarship is a, "week of free workshops, discussions, and seminars has become an annual event each May for instructional faculty and staff, and showcases over 120 sessions that address the role technology plays in fostering engaging and effective teaching, learning, and research"(http://www.teachtech.umich.edu). 

Last year, I considered teaching The New Basics: Computing 101 to be my first official instructional experience.  I wrote that after the session, we realized we needed to tweak the workshop because there was too much content for too little time.  So in between last year and this year, my co-instructor and I taught a Web Basics class, which went pretty well.  This year for Enriching Scholarship, however, we decided to not only teach The New Computer Basics: Understanding the Web but also The New Computer Basics: PC Desktop Computing.  The Understanding the Web session had several participants, many of whom seemed to appreciate the information we provided about clearing your "cache" and downloading images.  And the few participants in the PC Computing class appeared to enjoy learning about how right-clicking can make moving around the computer easier and more efficient.

In my post from May 2011, I wrote about practicing instruction prior to actually instructing.  Many of my other posts over the last year have covered this as well.  So now might be the proper time to reflect.  To start, I'm more comfortable teaching - especially something I've already taught.  Secondly, I've become better at being patient while instructing - I've learned the goal is not to get everything done (especially in computer basics workshops!) but to teach at a pace that is both effective and appropriate for the group's learning processes.  Participant's learning is the goal!

A third "lesson learned" is that I still get nervous teaching something I've never taught before, but that I've learned how to combat this.  Prior to the PC Basics workshop, I spent hours preparing and getting materials ready and arrived much too early the day-of to make sure the computers were loaded with the proper documents and that the handouts were printed and correct.  But through this I also learned that that helped me to feel more comfortable with the instruction.  Instead of stressing, I built that time into my work schedule and was feeling prepared to teach when the time came.

Most of all, instruction is a process.  Having taught the Web Basics three times now, we're still finding things to change and pieces of the workshop to adapt, and that is OK.  In fact, it makes instruction fun because I've realized that nothing is perfect and that we can always do better for our participants and ourselves.  The process of instructing is part of the learning process for us all (I always learn something new while teaching) - and having the opportunity to do both at the same time is something for which I'm grateful.