My First (Official) Instructional Experience and Enriching Scholarship

This week at the University of Michigan, Enriching Scholarship consumed my time.  Enriching Scholarship is an annual week-long technology event (FREE to anyone with a uniqname) around the University presented by many departments including Literature, Science, and Arts, the Duderstadt Center, Communications, the Library, and many more.  For a little history on the people who produce Enriching Scholarship, taken directly from the Enriching Scholarship home page:

The TTC is a group currently comprised of staff from these units across campus. An annual initiative of the TTC is Enriching Scholarship, a conference offered for instructional faculty every May, showcasing over 100 workshops and sessions that address the use of technology in teaching and research.

Anyway, Enriching Scholarship is pretty great.  It brings together people who know technology, who want to know technology, and who want to share information about technology.  I attended four sessions - one each day - and learned about Productivity Tips, Tools and Tricks, Embracing Facebook in Your Teaching, Using Everyday Technologies for Teaching, and Find, Use, Remix and Create Open Learning Materials. Each of these sessions brought something new to my work and gave me ideas to move forward as I think about instruction and my professional practice.  


Additionally, I had the opportunity to co-teach one of these sessions: The New Basics: Computing 101.  What a valuable and great experience!  Our session was attended by very receptive folks who gave us great feedback about what they wanted to know and about what they learned in the session. 

While it seems our participants had a valuable experience, I learned a lot too.  Not so much about Computing 101 (though I did learn some tricks and tips too :) but about presentation style, preparedness, and adaptation during workshops.  As this was the first iteration of this workshop, we planned too much (or differently) than the participants wanted or needed.  The first part of the workshop - browsers, bookmarks, tabs, etc., took much longer than expected but it was mostly because people were asking so many (great!) questions.  So, timing of the workshop will need to adjust - either into a Comp 101 and Comp 102 or adding another half hour, or... so many possibilities!

Secondly, I could have been more prepared.  Part of me is always hesitant to actually practice presentations (which I did, but not enough).  I need to get over that and just practice, practice, practice!  Which actually leads to my third point - adaptation.  I had practiced, but only to the point where I could pretty much repeat information - and this did not serve me well when we had to adapt.  I got frazzled and tried to do way too much in the last 15-20 minutes, which I think was confusing for the participants after the first 1 1/4 hours was at the perfect pace.  But, the participants stayed after and asked questions so I think people were truly interested in the topic and glad to be there.

I am excited to reflect on and revamp this workshop with the feedback and observations that were made on Tuesday.  Plus, I got the first instructional experience out of the way and am more confident moving forward knowing what I can do better next time :)