Learning / teaching

The arrival of the Freshers over the weekend has certainly brought some life back to the Streatham campus here at Exeter. As I’ve said several times over the past few days, this year is technically my fifth ‘Fresher’s Week’, so I’m used to the noise and commotion as every single one of the university societies camps out near accommodation in an attempt to recruit the freshers. Nevertheless, there is something slightly odd about it this time: as I’m not living on campus, I do feel – perhaps justifiably – slightly cut off from, and ‘separate’ to, the critical mass of unbridled enthusiasm that the Freshers embody. This wasn’t helped by my visit to the French Society today, where I was swiftly put into a ‘conversation leader’ role alongside two native speakers. Still, there’s always the postgraduate pub quiz later this evening – and the ‘conversation’ (on French slang) wasn’t half bad.

The sheer number of eager freshers only really hit me on Monday, as I queued for my university card: we were presented with the news that there was an hour-and-a-half wait for the process to be completed, such was the length of the line. Unfortunately, I couldn’t wait that long, necessitating a quick return at 5pm: Monday, you see, was actually my first proper day of PhD stuff. Well, sort of – it actually had relatively little to do with my thesis, or even how to research. Rather, it was a day-long session that delivered some basic concepts in teaching.

At Exeter, all postgraduate students who want to teach or support undergraduate students in any way, whether as a demonstrator, supervisor or guest lecturer, have to complete a one-day course, offered by the University’s Academic Development division, entitled ‘Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (Stage 1)’. As a general rule, scientists get involved in undergraduate teaching a year or two earlier than their arts and humanities counterparts – they often find themselves demonstrating experiments from the get-go – but I decided to strike while the iron was hot, and to take the course before I had technically begun as a PhD student. Perhaps understandably, there were relatively few of us on the arts and humanities ‘strand’ of the course: around 15 out of a maximum number of 60. Thankfully, this didn’t pose a problem: if anything, it allowed us to interact with each other far more, which was a fantastic way to put the material covered into practice.

Having taught a little before coming to Exeter, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the day. In the end, though, I didn’t leave disappointed, as I found myself grappling with what was, for the first time in my teaching ‘career’, a rock-solid, unambiguous theoretical framework on which I could ground my future practice. For instance, the hour or so spent discussing Bloom’s taxonomy and how it can be used in setting Intended Learning Outcomes was a real eye-opener: while I certainly ‘knew’ before yesterday that knowledge and skills acquisition are very different beasts, I now feel far more able to actually distinguish between the ‘lower orders’ of the taxonomy (remembering, understanding, applying) and the ‘higher’ ones (analysing, evaluating, creating). One particular highlight was the ‘micro-teaching’ session: we were tasked with explaining a concept relevant to our future teaching in seven minutes, after which we got feedback from an ‘observer’. I chose to give an introduction to concepts of the ‘medieval’, which seemed to go down pretty well; it’s certainly left me feeling more prepared for any undergraduate teaching that I might get the chance to do in the future.

Thinking about the short-term, though, the next challenge (after postgraduate schmoozing this evening and rowing tomorrow) will be induction, the ‘compulsory requirement’ scheduled for Thursday afternoon. Here’s to hoping more Useful Stuff™ will spring from it.