The first days as an Assistant Professor is filled with adrenaline-laced excitement. The anxiousness and eagerness to get to work has you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. New faculty orientation consumes the first days while you are mentally creating prioritizing your checklist: obtaining your institution login information, your new email address, signing up for your parking pass, meeting with your Department Chair and checking out your new office. Your faculty identification card, office layout, computer setup and business card ordering will happen in a few days. The focus is settling into this career path — making that context switch from your previous status as a graduate student, postdoc or other technical professional to an academic.
The first days as an Associate Professor at a new institution is a seemingly echo of your first days as an Assistant Professor. The adrenaline excitement is replaced with an excited calm. Prior academic work experience makes that aforementioned checklist unnecessary. The systems integration of your credentials and generation of your new affiliation occurs at the pace of the institution. Your inaugural year teaching, research and service expectations are far more reasonable. The academic life can be summed up by solving the Tower of Hanoi puzzle.
Towers of Hanoi Description
The puzzle traditionally has 3 pegs: starting peg, spare peg and destination peg. The starting peg has a user-specified number of disks with the disks stacked from smallest to largest (largest disk at the base of the peg). The object of the puzzle is to systematically move all the disks from the starting peg to the destination peg, but a larger disk can not be placed on top of a smaller disk. The key to solving this puzzle is understanding that the functionality of the pegs alters as you are moving the disks, e.g., when moving a disk, the starting peg operates as the spare peg, the spare peg operates as the destination peg and destination peg operates as the starting peg.
But here's the rub for any new faculty hire:
1. You don't know the number of disks
2. You don't know the number of pegs
3. You don't know which is the starting peg, spare peg and destination peg.
Initially, you can safely assume there are 3 pegs and 9 disks. For the purposes of this example, the disks are stacked service activities at the top, then teaching and lastly research activities at the bottom.
Disk 1: Institution Collegiality
Disk 2: External Collegiality
Disk 3: Course Preparation
Disk 4: Course Modification and Development
Disk 5: Research Team Building
Disk 6: Publications
Disk 7: Conference Attendance
Disk 8: External Grant Writing
Disk 9: Funded Award Management
Disk 1 &2: Institution and external collegiality — The variety and plethora of academic service-related activities has the potential to consume your days (and nights). Be purposeful of which departmental, college-wide and technical program committees you are a member.
Disk 3: Course Preparation — A class lecture is like Showtime at the Apollo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Showtime_at_the_Apollo). Depending on your temperament and talent, you select how you will engage students in the course material via a series of slide decks, problem-based learning techniques, flipped classroom or another method altogether. Each class, you are on stage and the students tell you by their (lack of) questions, body language, (lack of) enthusiasm, etc if your teaching approach has resonated. If you instruct a course that tends to interest students, kudos -- course prep becomes a bit easier. Otherwise, I suggest you invest quality time to determine how to relate the material to your student body. Any course can be exciting when the proper care is given to the learning experience. A teacher's excitement about the materials helps fuel a student's deeper curiosity about the course content.
Disk 4: Course Modification and Development — Course material can become stale and outdated. The fundamental course topics can be presented in new ways, new assessment mechanisms can be devised, your prior experience with the course could render you to change the order of course topics. Course evolution through revision or developing a new course is a necessary activity of any faculty member. By evolving your course, you increase your likelihood of students’ remaining engaged in your courses year after year.
Disk 5: Research Team Building — The talent and aptitude to mentor students in research activity is the hallmark of a great research advisor. Honestly, experience is the best teacher. You have to learn the balance of motivation and criticism, students' temperament and abilities, work effort and work product. I suggest The Craft of Research by Wayne C. Booth and Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath as good starting points.
Disk 6: Publications — The frequency and quality of your conference papers, journal articles, book chapters and books are common academic metric in assessing a faculty member's national and international influence. The summer months are a great opportunity to complete scholarly work due to the lack of a required teaching responsibility. The co-authorship with fellow colleagues and students is strongly encouraged, in some academic environments, a necessity.
Disk 7: Conference Attendance — Conference registration, attendance and paper presentation are required for publication. The conference talks help keep you current in your field's advances. While the time and cost of conferences can be expensive (see previous post), it is a cornerstone of your branding activities. The reputation for contributing good work to the field and presenting it well will only help in bringing opportunities knocking.
Disk 8: External Grant Writing — When responding to a grant proposal solicitation, the act of actually writing the project objectives, anticipated outcomes, evaluation and assessment plan is a time-intensive, idea-articulation scholarly exercise. The proposal operations can be an added stressor that consists of working with your institution's office of sponsored programs for internal grant submission approval. The coordination of the proposal document, supplemental materials, and colleague collaborations. Grant writing and proposal submission has a high work-effort yielding a low conversion to a funded award, but if awarded, external awards are highly valued in the academic realm.
Disk 9: Funded Award Management — Do your work and do it well.
With great power come great responsibility. ~Voltaire
A funded grant gives the awardees a newfound elevated social currency (aka power) amongst his/her colleagues. The spotlight turns in your direction to revel in your successes and witness any mishaps. Don't let the award excitement overshadow the necessary work in properly accomplishing the project outcomes.
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Sunday, July 13, 2014
Letter to the Postdoc
 |
| Originally posted on August 29, 2008 by PHD Comics |
The Job Description
It can be summed up in one word: TEMPORARY.
The Postdoctoral Associate/Researcher is wedged between the full-time graduate student classification and the full-time permanent employee classification. You are no longer a graduate student. Your conference travel scholarship eligibility is now nil. When you say you are a postdoc, the question wheel triad always includes: "when does your postdoc end?", "what do you want to do next?" and "where are you focusing your permanent employment search?" Ugh, in most cases, you don't know, but the questions still come. Also, you are not in a permanent employee in the faculty, industry or government ranks. You notice that your influence and impact factor within your postdoc position's organization is low at best. Plus, your direct supervisor is a permanent employee, who tends to be referred to as your postdoc mentor and serves as a pseudo-research advisor. On the bright side, a postdoc provides you 1-2 years time to close the graduate student life book and start the next book -- whatever your career ambition.
Job details
- Perform specific contributions on aspects of your postdoc advisor’s research agenda
- Submit and publish technical research papers
- Learn grantsmanship
- Attend professional development workshops and activities
- [optional] Assist in managing the research projects of your postdoc mentor’s graduate students
- [optional] Serving as the instructor or co-instructor
Goals and outcomes
In understanding this job description, you probably realize that it’s advantageous to be strategic in your postdoc appointment. You need to figure out your next professional step and obtain full-time permanent employment. I followed the academic life so I can only speak to it. The suggestions I provide is geared toward successful tenure-track position attainment. Regardless, the postdoc life can serve as a preview of what may be in your future.
Build your technical and support network by connecting with postdoctoral-centric organizations, such as the National Postdoctoral Association or discipline-specific postdoctoral events. For example, there is the Academic Career Workshop for URMs in computing. I was mostly unaware of organizations and resources as a postdoc. I wish I paid more attention. Don’t be like me.
Research
Be productive. Shoot for quantity AND quality.
If you are fortunate to gain grant writing experience as a senior graduate student, soak it all up. If not, a postdoc is a great opportunity to get started. Step 1 - request an NSF/NIH/DoD/etc ID and create your NSF/NIH/DoD/etc Biography.
Teaching
If you are seeking an academic teaching position, do, Otherwise don't do.
Service
Don’t do it! DON’T DO IT!
Job Hunting
Computing Research Association - Job Announcements.
Chronicles of Higher Education - Job Search.
Your faculty position application includes cover letter, CV, research agenda, teaching statements, professional references and scholarly publication samples. When submitting your faculty position applications, you may want to provide your professional references draft letters of recommendation. As you write, you should strongly consider how the role of gender influences your word choices, phrases and statements. You can read J. Madera, M. Hebl and R. Martin's research entitled “Gender and Letters of Recommendation for Academia: Agentic and Communal Differences”. Communal terms center on helping others (kindness, nurturance) while agentic terms center on influencing others (assertiveness, initiating tasks). Their studies resulted in two major conclusions “women were described as more communal and less agentic than men (Study 1) and (b) that communal characteristics have a negative relationship with hiring decisions in academia that are based on letters of recommendation (Study 2)” using a psychology department’s tenure-track faculty search.
Let's assume your application is well-received by at least one faculty search committee. You make it to the on-campus interview. Please consider interviewing your potential bosses (Department Heach/Chair, Dean, Provost, etc) and colleagues (fellow departmental junior and senior faculty) as they are interviewing you. Here are some starter questions and comments:
- How do assistant professors in the departments acquire graduate students? Is there a partnership between the department and some schools? What are the recruiting efforts?
- How long has the Department Head/Chair been is his/her current position? What is the Department Head/Chair's vision for the department? Most likely, he/she will not be in that position when you are seeking promotion and tenure in 5-6 years.
- How are teaching assistantships distributed? Does the Department Head/Chair or Division/College/School Dean allocate them? How does this process operate? For instance, the Dean of the College allocates number of TA position to each department based on faculty contact hours and the Department Head assigns these TAs to the faculty who are instructing those courses. Note: contact hours are some combination of class size and number of times the faculty is in front of the students. If you teach smaller classes, you will not be awarded a TA position.
- Is there a maximum number of trips you can take in one semester? Are there location restrictions e.g. domestic only?
- Comment: Google the Department Head/Chair to find out if he/she was an internal or external hire? This may indicate the department culture of mostly internal/external department-level administration.
- Comment: Investigate the research collaborations within the department. Who are publishing papers together? What are their respective faculty ranks? It helps to know who are collegial and who are not to junior faculty. Ditto for external funding activities.
- Comment: Identify which undergraduate classes at that institution are required for any student (grad or undergrad) to assist you in your research objectives? Ask specific questions about course topics (if you can speak directly with the faculty member who teaches the course, that would be optimal).
- Comment: Make no assumptions about what students know. Students may remember the term but have not used/implemented that concept.
Sunday, June 1, 2014
Research, Teaching & Service: Let's talk research
Research is not a series of step by step activities, but a meandering slow and fast, exciting and dull, frustrating and rewarding process over time and mostly in collaboration with colleagues. Research has interlocking elements of publications, student completion rates and funding. High quality and quantity of your publications is evidence of your ability to contribute to your selected discipline. Your student completion rate can be an indication of your social good contribution by shepherding undergraduates and graduate students to degree completion with good quality research experience. Your acquisition of funding dollars shows your ability to financially support yourself, your research and your student researchers. All three are tangible metrics to evaluate your “success” as an academic. Quite honestly, it also serves as your professional currency and your value add to an organization.
Publishing takes a lot of time and resources from idea germination to *hopefully* the published paper, article, chapter and/or book. To create, implement and evaluate an idea worthy of novel contribution to your selected discipline takes effective thought, planning and execution strategies. You should be mindful of the publication venue. The acceptance rate of the publication venue implies scholarly quality to some, if not most, promotion and tenure committees. The lower the acceptance rate, the more valuable your research appears to researchers unfamiliar with the specific discipline.For computing in general, conference papers are the common and recognized mode of publication. However, when it comes to promotion and tenure (beyond the departmental level), conference papers do not tend to hold as much value as refereed journal articles. I’m emphasizing this rule because I completely missed this nugget of advice.
When you are a faculty member, your daily tasks are divided between research, teaching and service. One commodity at your disposal is your department, institution and external colleagues, e.g., former graduate studies classmates, academic colleagues at other institutions, government and industry collaborators. Depending on potential collaborators’ career path and aspirations, a research partnership could be a win-win situation by sharing resources and responsibilities toward a common goal.
Another commodity you must learn to leverage is the (undergraduate and/or graduate) student researcher. Publication production can be aided by having students perform some research-related tasks, e.g., prior works’ paper summaries, software coding, tables, graphs and figures. More students doesn’t necessarily mean that more of your research will be completed. You will need to manage each student’s progress, which may take more time initially than you just doing the work yourself. It is important to expect some trial and error since each student’s personality requires you to impart some of your finesse to meet their needs.
Suppose the research is ready for a conference paper submission in 6-8 months. The time lapse for a top-tier conference paper (submission to conference event) is 6 months. By now, you are already 1 year invested. Undergraduate and graduate students may or may not be still working with you due to course load conflicts, changing interests and/or graduation. Graduate students are a bit more pressed for a submitted publication since it may be a condition of their graduation. You have trained some students, but most likely you will have to train a new group of new researchers each year. Now, assume your conference paper is accepted. (Note: if you are a graduate student reading this post, conference paper acceptance is not guaranteed. You will likely receive more rejections than accepts). The peer-reviewed remarks are returned and the camera-ready/final version of the paper must be submitted.
Is that it?
Nope.
To ensure the conference proceedings include your paper, at least one author must register and deliver the oral presentation at the conference. The cost of attending a conference can be expensive including conference registration, travel expenses (airfare or mileage, ground transportation to/from airport), hotel accommodations and food per diem.
Who is going to pay for you and/or your student to deliver the research presentation?
Now we come to the real matter: funding streams. Your funding may come from your department by asking your department administrators, your startup funds, internal awards sponsored through other academic units at your institution and external awards through corporate sponsorships or gifts and/or government agencies. You should only serve as principal investigator (PI) or co-principal investigator (coPI), which indicates you are a member of the research project leadership team. Even though Internal grants can be less competitive, external awarded grants have greater value and impact on your academic currency since the research problem, proposed solution and implementation plan has the peer-review/SME approval. In year 1 & 2 of a tenure-track faculty position, your startup funds and requesting departmental funds can support your research activities. From year 3 and thereafter, other internals and external funding streams are expected to supplement your scholarly endeavors.
Q. What do you need?
A. Money.
Q. How much do you need?
A. As much as possible. Enough to pay for your annual summer salary (10 weeks), conference travel expenses, journal article publication fees, computing equipment, graduate students (tuition, fringe benefits and stipend), etc.
Q. When do you need it?
A. Now.
Translation: to increase your likelihood of getting a grant awarded, you must be regularly writing and submitting internal and external grant proposals. Consider your institution’s perspective: How many times has Faculty A asked for financial support? Sooner rather than later, Faculty A should be able to support herself and her research through other means.
For more information:
Publishing takes a lot of time and resources from idea germination to *hopefully* the published paper, article, chapter and/or book. To create, implement and evaluate an idea worthy of novel contribution to your selected discipline takes effective thought, planning and execution strategies. You should be mindful of the publication venue. The acceptance rate of the publication venue implies scholarly quality to some, if not most, promotion and tenure committees. The lower the acceptance rate, the more valuable your research appears to researchers unfamiliar with the specific discipline.For computing in general, conference papers are the common and recognized mode of publication. However, when it comes to promotion and tenure (beyond the departmental level), conference papers do not tend to hold as much value as refereed journal articles. I’m emphasizing this rule because I completely missed this nugget of advice.
When you are a faculty member, your daily tasks are divided between research, teaching and service. One commodity at your disposal is your department, institution and external colleagues, e.g., former graduate studies classmates, academic colleagues at other institutions, government and industry collaborators. Depending on potential collaborators’ career path and aspirations, a research partnership could be a win-win situation by sharing resources and responsibilities toward a common goal.
Another commodity you must learn to leverage is the (undergraduate and/or graduate) student researcher. Publication production can be aided by having students perform some research-related tasks, e.g., prior works’ paper summaries, software coding, tables, graphs and figures. More students doesn’t necessarily mean that more of your research will be completed. You will need to manage each student’s progress, which may take more time initially than you just doing the work yourself. It is important to expect some trial and error since each student’s personality requires you to impart some of your finesse to meet their needs.
Suppose the research is ready for a conference paper submission in 6-8 months. The time lapse for a top-tier conference paper (submission to conference event) is 6 months. By now, you are already 1 year invested. Undergraduate and graduate students may or may not be still working with you due to course load conflicts, changing interests and/or graduation. Graduate students are a bit more pressed for a submitted publication since it may be a condition of their graduation. You have trained some students, but most likely you will have to train a new group of new researchers each year. Now, assume your conference paper is accepted. (Note: if you are a graduate student reading this post, conference paper acceptance is not guaranteed. You will likely receive more rejections than accepts). The peer-reviewed remarks are returned and the camera-ready/final version of the paper must be submitted.
Is that it?
Nope.
To ensure the conference proceedings include your paper, at least one author must register and deliver the oral presentation at the conference. The cost of attending a conference can be expensive including conference registration, travel expenses (airfare or mileage, ground transportation to/from airport), hotel accommodations and food per diem.
Who is going to pay for you and/or your student to deliver the research presentation?
Now we come to the real matter: funding streams. Your funding may come from your department by asking your department administrators, your startup funds, internal awards sponsored through other academic units at your institution and external awards through corporate sponsorships or gifts and/or government agencies. You should only serve as principal investigator (PI) or co-principal investigator (coPI), which indicates you are a member of the research project leadership team. Even though Internal grants can be less competitive, external awarded grants have greater value and impact on your academic currency since the research problem, proposed solution and implementation plan has the peer-review/SME approval. In year 1 & 2 of a tenure-track faculty position, your startup funds and requesting departmental funds can support your research activities. From year 3 and thereafter, other internals and external funding streams are expected to supplement your scholarly endeavors.
Q. What do you need?
A. Money.
Q. How much do you need?
A. As much as possible. Enough to pay for your annual summer salary (10 weeks), conference travel expenses, journal article publication fees, computing equipment, graduate students (tuition, fringe benefits and stipend), etc.
Q. When do you need it?
A. Now.
Translation: to increase your likelihood of getting a grant awarded, you must be regularly writing and submitting internal and external grant proposals. Consider your institution’s perspective: How many times has Faculty A asked for financial support? Sooner rather than later, Faculty A should be able to support herself and her research through other means.
For more information:
- Robert Boice. (2000). Advice for New Faculty Members. Pearson Publishing.
- Kerry Ann Rockquemore and Tracey Laszloffy. (2008). The Black Academic's Guide to Winning Tenure--Without Losing Your Soul. Lynne Rienner Publishing.
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Research, Teaching & Service: Let's talk teaching
We are familiar with what both sides want by the end of the term. The educators want the students to learn the course materials. The students want to receive an A in the course. These two desires are not always associated. But as the course instructor, you seek to correlate learning achievements with appropriate score outcomes. You aim to master the intersection among the instructional practice, identification of your classroom implementation and your teaching philosophy.
Instructional practice
Where did the idea that somehow a graduate student would magically know how to be an instructor as a result of completing his/her graduate degrees? Nevertheless, this notion is erroneous. The traditional graduate school experience does not prepare you for organizing, leading and managing a classroom of students. The priority in graduate school is in developing research scholars, where instructing and teaching assistantships serve as a mechanism to financially support your scholarly pursuits. Thus, the transition from graduate student learner to professor instructor is a colossal leap.
You must learn how to teach for different discipline concepts, class sizes and student learning styles while also establishing your own teaching style. The subject matter should be relatively easy since the topics appeared in your undergraduate and graduate studies. It is refreshing your memory about the course topics. However, constructing manageable learning modules for students takes study and practice.
Teaching styles range from dull to exciting. Death By PowerPoint is the dullest of them all. A large set of dense slides. Students are overwhelmed with content, but instructors can easily execute. A blend of PowerPoint slides, individual/group problem sets and in-class discussions is one of the most exciting. Students are actively engaged in course topics, while course instructors must thoughtfully plan lecture activities. Check out one of many articles and resources on designing more effective lectures: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/how-to-build-dynamic-lecture-todd-finley.
I have yet to cover teaching for different class sizes and student learning styles. Well, they will be covered in next in classroom implementation.
Classroom implementation
Class size can be a contributing factor to which teaching style you use. Small class sizes, less than 25 students, allow for lectures to be more of a discussion and conversation that supports a personalized learning environment. Large class sizes, more than 100 students, trigger a structured learning environment with formal content presentation and small group problem sets/discussions that provide the course instructor informal feedback on students' learning. If you are unfamiliar with Bloom's Taxonomy, then I strongly suggest you take a look. Bloom's Taxonomy is an example of how to classify a student's learning (from the simple recollections to advanced abilities in connecting concepts). I find that undergraduate students are comfortable to receive knowledge and show some comprehension with some instances of successful application, while graduate students are more comfortable with application and analysis via showing some evidence in their ability in evaluation. Regardless of the class size, the course instructor should have mechanisms to uncover the class's learning gaps.
The class composition can also influence the effectiveness of your teaching style. For example, college freshmen have a different level of emotional and intellectual maturity than college seniors. The same observation can be said for graduate students and undergraduate students. Undergraduate students tend to ask more detailed questions about format and presentation, e.g., response length, while graduate students ask more detailed questions about technical content, e.g., which method best suits a particular problem. Class composition includes the students' learning styles. The seven learning styles are visual (spatial), aural (auditory-musical), verbal (linguistic), physical (kinesthetic), logical (mathematical), social (interpersonal) and solitary (intrapersonal). You may wonder "how will I apply my teaching style to my class based on differing learning styles?" As the course instructor, you should conduct a mix of different exercises that benefit certain learning styles early in your term to determine the best universal construct for your class.
At the end, you must accept one cold-hard fact: you can not make all students happy or satisfied with your teaching performance. You must stay true to your teaching philosophy.
Teaching philosophy
Simply put, your teaching philosophy is an expression of your morals, values and ideals as it pertains to student instruction. The teaching philosophy evolves as your instructional practice broadens and your classroom implementation matures. Since your teaching philosophy is unique to you, I can only offer up an excerpt of mine as an example.
My teaching philosophy is best described by Bloom's Taxonomy: striving for synthesis, "[to] compile information together in a different way by combining elements in a new pattern or proposing alternative solutions". Learning occurs within and outside the context of the structured assessment mechanisms of quizzes, assignments, exams, projects, etc. But in an effort to minimize subjectivity, these assessments are established to provide the student a gauge on their learning and growth. As a natural result, students associate learning and aptitude with their grade.
I have seen students struggle to understand (and accept) that every course concepts can not be segmented into measurable units. There are many repetitive tasks in which there is no grade. For example, let us take learning how to washing your clothes. You learn how to separate your clothes based on color and fabric. You learn when you should versus need to wash your clothes. The larger, more applicable life lesson is about understanding responsibility, accountability and consequences. A classroom is truly no different. There are course concepts having surrounding contexts and effects. The high priority concepts are assessed and the other ones are their backdrop. You can not deeply know a course concept without comprehending the proper context. This context reveals a concept's benefits and drawbacks.
It is the beautifully frustrating ebb and flow of learning.
Disclaimer: I'm not a computing education researcher. My comments here are the result of 8-semesters as a graduate teaching assistant and 12-semesters as an Assistant Professor.
Instructional practice
Where did the idea that somehow a graduate student would magically know how to be an instructor as a result of completing his/her graduate degrees? Nevertheless, this notion is erroneous. The traditional graduate school experience does not prepare you for organizing, leading and managing a classroom of students. The priority in graduate school is in developing research scholars, where instructing and teaching assistantships serve as a mechanism to financially support your scholarly pursuits. Thus, the transition from graduate student learner to professor instructor is a colossal leap.
You must learn how to teach for different discipline concepts, class sizes and student learning styles while also establishing your own teaching style. The subject matter should be relatively easy since the topics appeared in your undergraduate and graduate studies. It is refreshing your memory about the course topics. However, constructing manageable learning modules for students takes study and practice.
Teaching styles range from dull to exciting. Death By PowerPoint is the dullest of them all. A large set of dense slides. Students are overwhelmed with content, but instructors can easily execute. A blend of PowerPoint slides, individual/group problem sets and in-class discussions is one of the most exciting. Students are actively engaged in course topics, while course instructors must thoughtfully plan lecture activities. Check out one of many articles and resources on designing more effective lectures: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/how-to-build-dynamic-lecture-todd-finley.
I have yet to cover teaching for different class sizes and student learning styles. Well, they will be covered in next in classroom implementation.
Classroom implementation
Class size can be a contributing factor to which teaching style you use. Small class sizes, less than 25 students, allow for lectures to be more of a discussion and conversation that supports a personalized learning environment. Large class sizes, more than 100 students, trigger a structured learning environment with formal content presentation and small group problem sets/discussions that provide the course instructor informal feedback on students' learning. If you are unfamiliar with Bloom's Taxonomy, then I strongly suggest you take a look. Bloom's Taxonomy is an example of how to classify a student's learning (from the simple recollections to advanced abilities in connecting concepts). I find that undergraduate students are comfortable to receive knowledge and show some comprehension with some instances of successful application, while graduate students are more comfortable with application and analysis via showing some evidence in their ability in evaluation. Regardless of the class size, the course instructor should have mechanisms to uncover the class's learning gaps.
The class composition can also influence the effectiveness of your teaching style. For example, college freshmen have a different level of emotional and intellectual maturity than college seniors. The same observation can be said for graduate students and undergraduate students. Undergraduate students tend to ask more detailed questions about format and presentation, e.g., response length, while graduate students ask more detailed questions about technical content, e.g., which method best suits a particular problem. Class composition includes the students' learning styles. The seven learning styles are visual (spatial), aural (auditory-musical), verbal (linguistic), physical (kinesthetic), logical (mathematical), social (interpersonal) and solitary (intrapersonal). You may wonder "how will I apply my teaching style to my class based on differing learning styles?" As the course instructor, you should conduct a mix of different exercises that benefit certain learning styles early in your term to determine the best universal construct for your class.
At the end, you must accept one cold-hard fact: you can not make all students happy or satisfied with your teaching performance. You must stay true to your teaching philosophy.
Teaching philosophy
Simply put, your teaching philosophy is an expression of your morals, values and ideals as it pertains to student instruction. The teaching philosophy evolves as your instructional practice broadens and your classroom implementation matures. Since your teaching philosophy is unique to you, I can only offer up an excerpt of mine as an example.
My teaching philosophy is best described by Bloom's Taxonomy: striving for synthesis, "[to] compile information together in a different way by combining elements in a new pattern or proposing alternative solutions". Learning occurs within and outside the context of the structured assessment mechanisms of quizzes, assignments, exams, projects, etc. But in an effort to minimize subjectivity, these assessments are established to provide the student a gauge on their learning and growth. As a natural result, students associate learning and aptitude with their grade.
I have seen students struggle to understand (and accept) that every course concepts can not be segmented into measurable units. There are many repetitive tasks in which there is no grade. For example, let us take learning how to washing your clothes. You learn how to separate your clothes based on color and fabric. You learn when you should versus need to wash your clothes. The larger, more applicable life lesson is about understanding responsibility, accountability and consequences. A classroom is truly no different. There are course concepts having surrounding contexts and effects. The high priority concepts are assessed and the other ones are their backdrop. You can not deeply know a course concept without comprehending the proper context. This context reveals a concept's benefits and drawbacks.
It is the beautifully frustrating ebb and flow of learning.
Disclaimer: I'm not a computing education researcher. My comments here are the result of 8-semesters as a graduate teaching assistant and 12-semesters as an Assistant Professor.
Saturday, May 17, 2014
Research, Teaching & Service: Let's talk service
The three initiatives of a higher education faculty member are research (r), teaching(t) and service (s). Each institution has a particular weighed value structure assigned to each initiative, w1, w2, w3 respectively. It's best to consider it a simple linear combination:
S = w1*r+w2*t+w3*s where w1+w2+w3 = 1 s.t. wi > 0 and r+t+s = 1 s.t. r > 0, t>0, s>0
This post and next two posts will be dedicated diving deeper into a faculty's research, learning and service initiatives. Most institutions value research, then teaching, and lastly service. But, I'll discuss service first since it results in the most direct impact on an individual faculty member, and thus a cascading positive impact on your home institution.
External service, sometimes called engagement or outreach, is serving as an subject-matter expert (SME) reviewer for technical journals, conferences, workshops and industry/government funding agencies. To offer your expertise in reviewing papers and/or proposals is a great opportunity to keep up-to-date on the technical advances within your specific field. It is a donation of your time and expertise. It's also a bit of flattery for you to be asked to serve in this reviewer capacity. External service can be a distraction from promotion & tenure (P&T) focused activities, e.g., research. But, this is part of a time-intensive multi-year effort to carve your research niche, to academically brand yourself and to show consistent evidence of your good stewardship.
What's your "reward" for this time and expertise donation? (1) you can providing tangible evidence of societal impact of your research and teaching efforts and (2) you have access discipline-specific colleagues e.g., research collaborators, P&T external letter writers, position reference letters and career opportunities. Essentially, the benefits are building your technical reputation and growing your professional network which outweighs the time spent reading and writing your reviews. SME reviewing is a byproduct of submitting grant proposals, publishing journal articles/conference papers and attending technical and professional development conferences. As your good reputation grows, you will become the chair of workshops, conference and/or serving as a journal editor.
Naturally, you may wonder how do you become a reviewer? (1) you must do good work, (2) you should publish it in a well-respected technical venue and (3) you should have at least one influential member within your field to introduce and advocate for you. To do good work, you must know the related literature, articulate your problem's scope, significance and motivation. Then, you must formulate a novel solution and conduct experiments that show the intellectual merit of your solution. A peer-reviewed, high-quality and preferably low-acceptance rate publishing venue is optimal for your research work. Your instructor or MS/PhD advisor suggest the publication avenue initially. If the research is accepted for publication and you are presenting the work, a seasoned member of the community, e.g., your instructor, MS/PhD advisor or co-author, can be a great gateway to meet others and could lead to more opportunities.
For us #dataheads, data-centric publication venues and meetings are plentiful so I won't be providing a comprehensive list here. In fact, I'll direct you to the KDNuggets monthly list: http://www.kdnuggets.com/meetings/. As for me, I will be reviewing conference and workshop papers by serving on 4 Program Committees this summer:
The advice typically given to new faculty is don’t say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ right away. You can say you have to review your schedule or you may decide ask follow up questions as to the amount of time and/or responsibility affiliated with the committee. Then you can make a better informed decision. The impact of accepting too much or less-beneficial-to-your-academic-career committee work may cause havoc to fulfilling your research agenda.
I rank committee work impact and its time commitment (from most desirable to least desirable) for any faculty member as follows.
S = w1*r+w2*t+w3*s where w1+w2+w3 = 1 s.t. wi > 0 and r+t+s = 1 s.t. r > 0, t>0, s>0
This post and next two posts will be dedicated diving deeper into a faculty's research, learning and service initiatives. Most institutions value research, then teaching, and lastly service. But, I'll discuss service first since it results in the most direct impact on an individual faculty member, and thus a cascading positive impact on your home institution.
External service, sometimes called engagement or outreach, is serving as an subject-matter expert (SME) reviewer for technical journals, conferences, workshops and industry/government funding agencies. To offer your expertise in reviewing papers and/or proposals is a great opportunity to keep up-to-date on the technical advances within your specific field. It is a donation of your time and expertise. It's also a bit of flattery for you to be asked to serve in this reviewer capacity. External service can be a distraction from promotion & tenure (P&T) focused activities, e.g., research. But, this is part of a time-intensive multi-year effort to carve your research niche, to academically brand yourself and to show consistent evidence of your good stewardship.
What's your "reward" for this time and expertise donation? (1) you can providing tangible evidence of societal impact of your research and teaching efforts and (2) you have access discipline-specific colleagues e.g., research collaborators, P&T external letter writers, position reference letters and career opportunities. Essentially, the benefits are building your technical reputation and growing your professional network which outweighs the time spent reading and writing your reviews. SME reviewing is a byproduct of submitting grant proposals, publishing journal articles/conference papers and attending technical and professional development conferences. As your good reputation grows, you will become the chair of workshops, conference and/or serving as a journal editor.
Naturally, you may wonder how do you become a reviewer? (1) you must do good work, (2) you should publish it in a well-respected technical venue and (3) you should have at least one influential member within your field to introduce and advocate for you. To do good work, you must know the related literature, articulate your problem's scope, significance and motivation. Then, you must formulate a novel solution and conduct experiments that show the intellectual merit of your solution. A peer-reviewed, high-quality and preferably low-acceptance rate publishing venue is optimal for your research work. Your instructor or MS/PhD advisor suggest the publication avenue initially. If the research is accepted for publication and you are presenting the work, a seasoned member of the community, e.g., your instructor, MS/PhD advisor or co-author, can be a great gateway to meet others and could lead to more opportunities.
For us #dataheads, data-centric publication venues and meetings are plentiful so I won't be providing a comprehensive list here. In fact, I'll direct you to the KDNuggets monthly list: http://www.kdnuggets.com/meetings/. As for me, I will be reviewing conference and workshop papers by serving on 4 Program Committees this summer:
- International Workshop on Big Data Security and Privacy 2014
- International Conference on Data Science and Advanced Analytics 2014
- IEEE International Symposium on Multimedia 2014
- IEEE International Conference on Data Mining 2014
The advice typically given to new faculty is don’t say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ right away. You can say you have to review your schedule or you may decide ask follow up questions as to the amount of time and/or responsibility affiliated with the committee. Then you can make a better informed decision. The impact of accepting too much or less-beneficial-to-your-academic-career committee work may cause havoc to fulfilling your research agenda.
I rank committee work impact and its time commitment (from most desirable to least desirable) for any faculty member as follows.
- high impact, minimal time, e.g., graduate applicant selection committee
- low impact, minimal time, e.g., e.g., faculty grievance committee,
- low impact, exponential time e.g., faculty search committee,
- high impact, exponential time, e.g., departmental accreditation committee, curriculum committee, faculty senate/university senate (typically an appointed tenured faculty member)
Sunday, May 11, 2014
#GradingJail
Teaching and student learning can become hefty part of the college professor life. Instructors must consider what are the students’ prior knowledge, students’ expectations, reasonable course topic presentation order, course assessment mechanisms and degree program’s learning outcomes.
End of term grading (EOT #GradingJail) includes, but not limited to: the duration between end of classes and when term grades are due. It's one of the academic stressors. First, there is a short amount of time to score the last assignment, final project deliverable and/or final-term exam. Second, students seem to all of a sudden know my name, email and office location by end of the term in an effort to meet with me about their performance, or lack thereof, in the course. Third, the non-teaching responsibilities mound as internal and external reports are due to various levels of the institution's administration. But the #GradingJail stressor can be managed. The one and only rule I have to share is protect yourself from the potential disgruntled students and grade appeals.
Course Syllabus
EOT #GradingJail starts at the beginning of the semester. Here's a highlight reel of my course policies:
Instructor Feedback
Providing feedback, especially in a timely fashion, is important for student learning. However, students attempt to garner favor at every turn so being savvy to their tactics is must. Hold them accountable and be accountable. Be consistent and tough but fair in your grading. Be prepared to easily (and frequently) answer 5 of 6 information gathering questions concerning your coursework feedback policies.
Academic Integrity and Dishonesty
As required by every institution, instructors are to include the student plagiarism policy to their course syllabus. My years as a GTA and instructor has taught me the following. Those who plagiarize know exactly what they chose to do. Most of those who plagiarize then expect grace and mercy. I give them none. I suggest you do the same.
We mark the end of another term. Spring 2014 is put to bed. Congratulations, you survived it.
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More On Brandeis Marshall's Teaching Credentials
End of term grading (EOT #GradingJail) includes, but not limited to: the duration between end of classes and when term grades are due. It's one of the academic stressors. First, there is a short amount of time to score the last assignment, final project deliverable and/or final-term exam. Second, students seem to all of a sudden know my name, email and office location by end of the term in an effort to meet with me about their performance, or lack thereof, in the course. Third, the non-teaching responsibilities mound as internal and external reports are due to various levels of the institution's administration. But the #GradingJail stressor can be managed. The one and only rule I have to share is protect yourself from the potential disgruntled students and grade appeals.
Course Syllabus
EOT #GradingJail starts at the beginning of the semester. Here's a highlight reel of my course policies:
- Assignments are due on a <date> at <time>. Any assignment will be penalized 25% of the original possible score if it is turned in within 24 hours of the due date and time. It will be graded based upon 50% of the original possible score if it is turned within 24 to 48 hours of the original due date/time. No assignment will be accepted later than that.
- Graded exams and quizzes will not be returned. To review a graded exam or quiz, the student must make an appointment with the instructor.
- To discuss a grade-related matter, the student must make an appointment with the instructor. The instructor will not discuss any grade-related matter over email or in the presence of other students, unless it’s concerning a team project.
- A student has one week to inquire and submit an appeal about his/her score after it is posted to Blackboard. After one week, the score will be final. The GTA (graduate teaching assistant) or I will send an announcement via Blackboard when scores are posted. Note: The one week appeal period helps circumvent student EOT point haggling.
- Life is not True/False or Multiple Choice so neither are any assignments in this course. In other words, no T/F or MC questions.
Instructor Feedback
Providing feedback, especially in a timely fashion, is important for student learning. However, students attempt to garner favor at every turn so being savvy to their tactics is must. Hold them accountable and be accountable. Be consistent and tough but fair in your grading. Be prepared to easily (and frequently) answer 5 of 6 information gathering questions concerning your coursework feedback policies.
- Q1: Who provides the feedback?
- A1. Instructor and/or GTA
- Q2: What are the feedback avenues?
- A2. Assessment mechanisms can include homework assignments, labs, exams, in-class exercises, course project deliverables and peer reviews.
- Q3: When will the student receive feedback?
- A3. Digitally through comments on graded homework and lab assignments. Face-to-face conversations during lecture, office hours and scheduled appointments
- Q4: Where will the student receive feedback?
- A4. For the online submitted assignments, Blackboard or another course management system. For written submitted coursework, comments are hand-written on the coursework so the student must see the instructor to view these comments.
- Q5: How will the feedback be given to the student?
- A5. Typed, written and orally. I strongly suggest that instructors devise an evaluation/grading rubric for each assignment. When students argue for points, and they will, you reference your grading rubric. I am in favor of using a matrix-style rubric. The rows are the instructor-defined evaluation criteria and the columns are labelled no evidence, does not meet expectations, meets expectations and exceeds expectations. Then, the instructor can assign the point structure as appropriate. The release of the grading rubric to the students is at the instructor's discretion.
Academic Integrity and Dishonesty
As required by every institution, instructors are to include the student plagiarism policy to their course syllabus. My years as a GTA and instructor has taught me the following. Those who plagiarize know exactly what they chose to do. Most of those who plagiarize then expect grace and mercy. I give them none. I suggest you do the same.
We mark the end of another term. Spring 2014 is put to bed. Congratulations, you survived it.
------------------------------------------------
More On Brandeis Marshall's Teaching Credentials
I have integrated my business intelligence expertise into Purdue's CIT undergraduate and graduate curriculum. With over 250 student enrollments, I have incorporated problem-based learning as a central theme into CNIT 39200 (Enterprise Data Management), CNIT 31500 (Systems Engineering) and designed CNIT 49900 (Data Integration on the Web) an elective undergraduate course, CNIT 58100 (Data Integration on the Web) for graduate students interested in information retrieval and CNIT 62300 (Research Methods in Computing) for MS Thesis graduate students. To expand my teaching strategies, I was awarded Purdue's Teaching for Tomorrow Fellowship for the 2013-2014 academic year. In addition, I have participated in graduate research mentorship as a member of 20 committees, 1 of which is a PhD Dissertation committee, chairing 6 MS Theses and co-authored 8 refereed publications with graduate students. I have graduated 5 MS Thesis students to date.
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