I Just Got Assigned a New Course. What Now?

Bill Reynolds and Kim Fournier from the Lucas Center for Faculty Development join Maggie and John discussing what are the first steps an instructor should take when assigned a new course.  

Theme music composed, performed and produced by James Husni.

Adjunct Nation is a collaborative podcast under the auspices of The Lucas Center for Faculty Development at FGCU. You can learn more by clicking on this link:

https://www.fgcu.edu/lucascenter/

Transcript

Welcome to the Adjunct Files.
We're a growing, diverse community who face challenging work in an ever-changing, higher education landscape.
Your co-hosts for this podcast are with you in this.
I'm John Roth, Adjuncts since 2015 and now a coordinator for Adjunct Faculty at Florida Gulf Coast University.
I'm Maggie Hohne, Adjunct since 2022 and currently work in the Office of First-Year Seminars.
Together we hope to have conversations to empower, support, and elevate Adjunct Faculty.
This conversation today is one to do just that.
Welcome back to the Adjunct Files. Maggie, how are you today?
I'm great. I'm so sorry I missed our last recording.
I know you would have added so much to it, but I'll tell you,
Pi Rice is snarky and fun.
She's the best. Glenn Whitehouse, I was surprised.
He has a hidden personality.
He doesn't want to happen very often. He's very goofy.
And he laughs. Oh, can he laugh?
So it was a great one on the QEP, but I am really excited today.
Not just because this is my supervisor and co-supervisor here, but because of the topic as well.
These two individuals have helped me more times than I can count, which I greatly appreciate.
Great. Well, let's have them introduce themselves.
So I'm Bill Reynolds. I'm the director of the Lucas Center for Faculty Development
and I am a professor in the social work program as well.
I'm really happy to be here with you guys today to talk about this important topic.
Awesome. And Kim Fournier, I'm the associate director for the Lucas Center.
And I also have an appointment as an associate professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences over in Merib.
Is that amazing? I did not know that. That's awesome.
I know these. I knew it was in your background. I just didn't know you're still active here.
That's awesome. Side hustle at your main gig. Official categorization, I suppose.
All the dotted lines. Great. Well, the reason we asked these two here, or I don't know who
generated this question, I think it's a great practical one because we're going to have probably
30 or 40 people in this situation this summer. And that is, I was just assigned a new course
as an adjunct faculty member at FGCU. And I said yes. Oops.
T-U-dun-dun-dun. Yeah. Now what do I do?
Does a new adjunct faculty member do in order to get ready for the fall?
Any of you want to just take that generally? Yeah, sure. And I think Kim and I all sort of
probably go back and forth a little bit about this. But first, take a breath. Spend a minute.
Take a really deep breath. And start to think a little bit about what are the questions that I
have that are going to help me to do this job effectively. And how do I get those questions
answered? And the reason why I start with that is that I think when you're a new adjunct faculty
member, you're inclined to want to show that you're competent and not bother people and jump
right in. And one of the things, and this is related to your role, John, certainly, that we do
here at the university is we provide a lot of support for adjunct faculty. And we see that they
don't always take us up on it because they don't know what support is available. And so we can talk
about some of those questions that they might ask themselves that might help them. But then
that'll be related to like what are the supports that are available? What do you think Kim?
Yeah, I'm thinking about what you're saying, Bill. And what's coming to mind for me is that I can
imagine how daunting that must feel for an adjunct faculty member to have some things
brung on them last minute and not know where to begin. But I get the sense that this is almost a
universal feeling for new faculty in general. It could happen to those who are full-time and
those who are experienced that they get assigned a course very last minute. So I think our adjuncts
are in good company with that anxiety of like, what do I do? I have no time to prepare and I'm not
even sure where to start. And I think something that's interesting that you both said was,
I don't know what's available. A lot of conversations that I've been hearing is,
I know it's available, but am I allowed? Because I'm adjunct faculty, but that's kind of air quotes.
Like what resources and programs am I allowed to get involved in and things of that nature? I think
that's also too just an awareness because some programs I think they can participate in and some
is just for like ranked faculty. Well, and I think that that's a really good place to start
because when we work with faculty through the Lucas Center and the Lucas Center is our Center
for Teaching and Learning and our main role is to support faculty in their own professional
development, but also very specifically around teaching and learning. And one of the things that
when adjunct faculty do come in contact with us, whether it's through adjunct orientation or
academies or other programs that we run is that almost everything that we do is available to the
adjunct faculty and the university as a whole perceives them as faculty members here. They might
only be part-time, they might come in and teach one course a semester, one course an academic year,
but we want to provide them with as much support as possible because that's what student success
is about. Once the students are in the class and the adjunct faculty members in the class,
there's no difference in perception of who this person is and both of you have experienced that.
Probably a lot of your students wouldn't necessarily know like what does that mean that you're an
adjunct faculty member, you know, and how does that compare? So but we want the adjunct faculty to
know that because of that it's really important that they feel like they have the agency so to speak
to reach out and say, hey, I don't know about this, where can I get support? And the Lucas Center is
one of those places and so one of those questions that they might ask themselves is something to
the effect of, well, is this a course that other people regularly teach? Because if the answer to
that question is yes, there may be a lot of resources within the department from their peers and colleagues
that are available to them so that they don't have to really start from from the ground floor,
which they might assume that they do starting off. Yeah, and that's whether or not a lot of
people are teaching it currently, so it would be one section among other sections, or if it has
been taught in the recent past by some other colleague, I think those resources might be available,
and even if that's not the case, there might be some expectation for that course within the
curriculum or the program. And so there may be some questions for the adjunct faculty member to ask
of the department chair, like what are some of the expectations for this course? Is it in a series of
courses? Does it contribute in a significant way to the program outcomes?
Most likely, am I correct on this, that any adjunct faculty teaching a new course to them,
it's been taught here before, and there's probably a syllabus at least, with possibly like Kim,
what you were saying, learning objectives or learning goals that are kind of standard for that
course. Is that the majority? I think that would be common. I could imagine, perhaps, like in the
Luttgart College of Business, for example, somebody coming in with outside experience and giving a
topics course that may or may not have been taught before, but I think you're right in thinking
that often it's a course that has been taught before, and it's likely part of the series,
or multiple sections type of course. And a lot of times, you know, another one of those questions
is, is there is there some, but if it is, if that is the case, is there somebody who's responsible
for this course, for sharing resources and things like that? Because a lot of times,
when a course has multiple sections, there's some kind of course coordinator or faculty member
who kind of oversees and helps people get on the same page. And so that's a person who the adjunct
faculty member would want to get connected to fairly frequently. One would hope that the department
chair would refer them to that person right away, hopefully. Sometimes communication breaks down,
adjunct faculty miss emails often, because once they're in the email system, they're getting a
flood, they don't know what belongs to them and that kind of thing.
Right. How about you, Maggie? What was your first class you taught?
The first class I taught was the university transition, SLS 1101, fall of 2022,
Irma hit, and they had just redesigned the course. So I was already kind of out of my element from
what I had previous, my previous expectations were. So I was a little overwhelmed to say the least.
Were you given a syllabus and curriculum or?
I was given a syllabus. We had about, I think it was 15 sections that were run that fall. I was
given a syllabus and some power points. Okay. So you had to develop. The syllabus and the assignments
and then it was half fun. And John, Maggie just mentioned Irma and for all of your
international listeners, they may not realize that Irma was a bad hurricane that happened here.
Yeah. Irma. Ian. The eyes. Watch out for the eyes around here. When we get to that part of the
alphabet. It's downhill from there. It never ends well. Everyone's bracing for the eye.
Okay. So this is assuming at this point in time that they've gotten through the HR process here,
which I just met with Patricia Massey and Grace O'Connor. Super sweet and very informative.
I was amazed at how much they have streamlined this and try to work out all the kinks and really
want to do the best. And just if you've just gotten a course and you've just been assigned,
you've got to get your email. That is the number one thing. And then there's some work
day events through that email and stuff. But without the FGCU email, you can't get your UIN,
which means you can't get into our learning management system. So that just putting that out there.
Well, and I think, John, that it's a good transition because that's another question that
adjunct faculty may not even know to ask. And that is about the learning management system.
When you're brand new to teaching, you may not even know what a learning management system is.
And so somebody tells you, you got to get your course into Canvas. And that's like,
what does that mean? That was me in 2015. Yeah, exactly. And so in terms of another resource
that we try to connect adjunct faculty members with very quickly, that's their instructional
designers. And so the Lucas Center and the Department of Digital Learning collaborate very
frequently. And the Department of Digital Learning has the instructional designers. Each department
has an instructional designer assigned to that department. And the role of those folks is to
support the learning management system, to support online learning. And so any adjunct
faculty member who is teaching a course has an instructional designer who can support them
in getting materials into Canvas, organizing the course, those kinds of things. And from a
student perspective, we know very clearly that students who experience a well organized Canvas
course have a better experience in the class as well.
Now, Maggie, you were a student here. I was. Yes. Did you have some organized Canvas courses
and some disorganized ones? I had no name names, just saying. No, I would say I have more
disorganized than organized. But also to, like, if that's not your profession, you're just like,
I just need to get the assignments in here so that I can attach it to the grade book to give you
grade at the end of the semester. That's just more of what it felt like than like a support
infrastructure when I'm outside of the classroom. And so the instructional designers can help you
move it from just a bunch of assignments in there to a holistic support system.
Yes, some classes I just had a list of assignments.
Wow. Okay. There's a sense if you're not familiar with how to quote unquote build in an LMS,
then a lot of faculty, whether it's adjunct or full-time, will view that space as a repository
for files and links to assignments and aren't really viewing it as an extension of the classroom,
as a learning environment. And so that's why it's so helpful for them to connect with digital
learning and an instructional designer because they can help them not only put the appropriate
building blocks into that Canvas course, but put them in in such a way that they're developing a
learning environment for students that promote success. And the other aspect of that is that
a lot of people associate Canvas, the learning management system, with online learning only.
And once an adjunct faculty member learns enough about Canvas to put assignments in there and to
have potentially learning modules in there, those kind of things, they're going to find that they're
able to do things more efficiently. And those skills that they get from doing it one time are
going to then carry over every time they teach in the future. And so it's also helpful for folks
to think into the future. Like if this is something I'm interested in doing over time, this is a skill
set that's going to actually really benefit me in a relationship with the instructional designer
with the Lucas Center that will be helpful over time. I will say that the digital learning team
really thinks thoughtfully, thinks carefully about supporting faculty. So they have templates
available with the module set up with the support pieces in it. So it won't really require a lot of
work from the faculty member in terms of designing their space that they can just apply this template
and have that as a framework. And that makes loading information into that Canvas course so
much easier and more beneficial for the student. Go ahead. One thing I definitely recommend,
if you've never used Canvas before and you don't, I say definitely use a template if
then structural designers can help you, but also do the Canvas introduction and the intermediate
workshop where you have to, it's all on Canvas. So it's virtual asynchronous. But you can really
just kind of choose your own adventure. What features of Canvas do you want to focus on?
You can make confetti rain down when students turn in assignments, which is my favorite thing
ever. It's so fun. I feel so accomplished when I do it. I can't imagine how they feel if they
might not care. They can let me know later. But using those tools, and I just learned how to code
and change the button colors in Canvas. And now I can do multiple tabs and I can switch in between
them. I can do icons, banners. I've like, my canvas course looks so cool. I'm like, am I a coder?
Another benefit is once you do it, it can be if you teach the course again, you can just import
the whole thing, just change the dates, improve it the next time around. So it's not like the
virtual shells that way. I just upload them to comments, like my courses and just like the
bare bones that way I don't have to delete and move because I like to redesign.
Well, and this is another thing that the adjunct faculty may not know coming in,
especially for their first time. And that is that once they are assigned their university email
and they're assigned their course, even though they're not starting their official work until
that course starts, they have access to all of those things beforehand. And so we want to be careful
we don't want them to be doing, you know, we talk a lot about an uncompensated labor with adjunct
faculty. But if they know that they have access beforehand and can start to do some of the things
that we're talking about, including connecting with us, connecting with their instructional
designers, they don't have to wait until the start of the semester to do those things that might
smooth out the start of their course. Yeah, yeah, I think in reality, Bill, my father was a teacher.
Every teacher in the United States has uncompensated work that they do. I mean, it's just the reality
of the teaching profession, isn't it? Being a little snarky, but it is true. It is true.
It speaks to the passion of those who are teaching. It does. It's really a calling a lot of times.
It's not just a career.
We've talked to our department. We found out if there's another course that has been taught here
by someone. We've gotten some materials from them. We've introduced ourselves to our instructional
designer. We met with them. We've got our canvas course shell set up. Some of the things that are
done. What else? I would suggest thinking very carefully about the first day of class.
Like, what is the tone that you want to set with your students? If you don't script out every
single class, really think carefully about how you want that first class to go. A little bit of
not really secret about how students see that first day of class. You'll hear this term regularly.
Students often call day one of class syllabus. Oh, yeah. John, you're rolling your eyes.
Well, that would be the most boring thing to just sit there and just, yeah.
Well, exactly. I don't do it. I don't do it either. But a lot of, if you talk to students,
a lot of students believe, and they call it that, but a lot of faculty do a lot of different things
than just go through the syllabus. But I think that for an adjunct faculty member who may be
inclined to be very business oriented and logistics and those kinds of things, they might want to
think about what kind of overall kind of tone and experience do they want to set
that's going to establish what they're going to do through the semester and then try to do some
of the activities that they believe that they'll be doing so that students from minute one
have some kind of understanding of, if I'm going to stay in this class and not drop and want to be
successful, I know from day one, here are the things that I'm going to be doing. I'm sure Kim
there are a lot of other first day kind of things, but it seems that planning for that first day
probably would make a lot of sense for an adjunct faculty member. Yeah, I think there's, you know,
that idea of syllabus day has come from, you know, olden days when you had the printed syllabus
that you handed out on day one and you went through all of the details and now with, you know, the
advent of the internet and emailing and electronic documents, you can now provide that ahead of time
and it can be in your canvas course ahead of time so you don't necessarily have to, you know,
hold your students hands and read through that document when they themselves can read through that.
You can certainly highlight areas that they want to focus on because students will often come in
that first day and they're going to wonder how they're being evaluated, like where am I getting
my grade from? What am I, what is going to be expected of me? And so I think those answers are
more valuable to provide to your students on that first day. So I do think there's some aspect of
setting the tone of what's going to happen for the rest of the semester but also it's a really
nice opportunity to motivate and engage them right from the beginning, right? So it's not about the
details of, you know, how I'm going to break down the grades and how many exams or quizzes you're
going to have. I want to have a conversation with you about how fun this course is going to be.
Okay, so how do you engage them from the beginning? What are some student engagement ways to do that?
I like to get them all talking in some way. I like to get to know them in some way.
Cool. Even if it is, you know, what are they excited about for the course? What do they
help to get out of the course? What are they anxious about for the course? And that way we're
starting right from the beginning of you are part of this conversation. As a student,
I care about what's important to you and I care about ensuring that not only do I make this
meaningful for you but I ensure that you're going to be successful once you leave the classroom.
And I think, you know, any of the strategies that we talk about,
we also have to understand that especially if it's a first-time adjunct faculty member,
you know, they have to assess like what their own comfort level we're doing.
They can only do so much. Exactly. But understanding that there are a range of options and that they
don't have to come in and, you know, start lecturing or those kinds of things, you know,
sort of frees things up for engaging the students in setting some of the guidelines
for the class. When students feel like they have some control over the way that
the rules or the standards of the class are established, then maybe they're going to be a
little more likely to buy into them. And so often on a first day of class, I have the students
talking small groups about like what are the characteristics of a teacher that have been really
beneficial for them in the past and what are the characteristics that have not been helpful to
their learning. And what are the characteristics of other students in the class that have made
for a good class experience? But what happens with other students when it's not such a great
experience? And then based on this conversation, well, what does that imply about what standards
or what guidelines we should have for this class? And then they're contributing and they're sort
of saying, this is what is going to be helpful for my learning. This is what we're all agreeing
upon. And then maybe it doesn't feel like it's so much on me to enforce it all the time, but they
have some accountability for it also. Cool. I think I would often take an approach. Like one of the
things that I focused on a lot in my course was this idea that students believe themselves that
they could be successful in my course. Right. I had courses that were historically challenging
and students had a lot of anxiety around. And so I would spend my first day, you know, highlighting
those anxieties in an anonymous way, but then sharing those to the group so that each student
knew that it wasn't just them feeling that way and that others felt that way as well and that we
were going to get through it together and that they could ultimately see the path to success.
That's what I wanted to highlight on that first day, that it was doable and they did have what was
necessary to be able to reach that goal and that we were going to do it together. So you're saying
maybe not on the first day as an instructor, what happened to my son in a course, say 60% of you
are going to fail or drop this course, so you better buckle up. That's probably not a good
technique. That's always heartbreaking to hear. Please do not do that. It stresses students out
so much and it yeah. But there's that implicit belief I think among many of us that some are made
for college and some are going to be okay in this type of course or this type of discipline
and some aren't and what if we took the attitude of like wow what if I was so successful as a teacher
that I could help all of my students pass and do well like brain exploding. Where that is a
batch of honor. Instead if you see somebody who has high grades across the board for their students,
the immediate assumption is oh well that must be an easy class instead of an effectively taught class.
And your classes are not easy. No. Well I think they are. If we're staying with that idea of like
what you do on the first day of class, one of the other things to think through a little bit is
what do you want to share about yourself that's going to kind of help the students get to know
you a little bit. We all have like our own kind of boundaries in terms of what's appropriate for
disclosure. But I think that one of the things for adjunct faculty in particular to know coming in
is that the students really value their professional kind of life experience which is the reason why
they've been invited to teach a course in the first place. And so sharing something about that
experience and the relationship between what they do in the really you know out in the world outside
of the classroom that's going to be relevant to the classroom can really be engaging for students
from the minute one because this may be a class that's related to something that they want to do
professionally in their lives and now you as the adjunct faculty member serve as a model or an
example for what this might look like moving forward. You know and again within your comfort
level in terms of what you what you care to to reveal to them and share with them. Cool.
So we get through the first day of class maybe the first week we've got Canvas more or less
we're probably I mean the first semester oh my goodness I can't remember what that's like hardly
anymore. You're just white knuckling the steering wheel. Yeah that is some of it. Holding on and
holding on hoping like you look good enough and are doing well enough and the students are
getting it enough that we're going to get through this. I was always satisfied if I was at least
one step ahead of my students like one class ahead of them. I felt like I was I was on track and
I was being successful. So what are some common I don't know mistakes or glitches that adjunct
faculty might fall into or just like missed opportunities. Yeah that might be a better way of
saying. Well I mean I think a lot depends on what their own experience with teachers has been in
the past and and some personality characteristics in terms of like you know what they've heard before
coming in about you know as an example I was a high school teacher way way back in the day and
my I came from a family of educators and my father before I went in to teach my first class
said well the best advice that I can give you is don't smile until Christmas. That's what yeah I
was going to bring that. That is so not right. I would fail on the first day.
And right. Exactly. But if you've heard that kind of thing like your your approach is going to be I
have to establish my authority and discipline and that kind of thing. And so
just having this sense of that respect is important but mutual respect is is important as well. And so
kind of when you when you're engaging the students in a conversation about those kind of guidelines
you may find that you can get buy-in in other ways than trying to take that kind of authoritarian
approach. They want to feel included part of the class. I think that's really important to
to have respect for the students as well. I will say that there there are also scenarios for
for faculty who you know depending on their personal characteristics might make it a little
bit more challenging in some cases. So when you are younger looking maybe a female professor
right that might invite a level of familiarity with the students that may cause you know that line
of respect to be blurred a little bit and that can be challenging for the faculty members. So
there there is something valuable in thinking about the tone that you want to set and being
cognizant of how there may be some pushback from students particularly if you're teaching
students who are in that first year who are just fresh out of high school that you know there is
some some aspect of behavioral management in the classroom that's required in those courses that
may not be required in an upper level class and that just has is something that you should think about.
I think that's also you bring up a good point is how you approach the first day for teaching
first-year students is very different how you approach teaching seniors taking their capstone
spring semester who are ready to go get a 401k and live their life kind of thing. I often give
that example of I taught an upper level biomechanist class and a senior level and I would go in and
they were nervous about the course in general so I was the the big sister we're going to get through
this together we're going to have a good time but then when I showed up with that kind of demeanor
in my freshman fall semester with a you know an anatomy course it was completely different I
felt like I almost got eaten alive in my class and so there really was a change in my demeanor
as I approached each of those groups of students but ultimately the respect was still there and
the pedagogy was still there I just had to be a little bit more cognizant of of who I was in the
classroom and who they saw me as and how I treated them. We assume most adjunct faculty most
faculty know their subject matter extremely well I mean they've mastered it or at least they've
studied enough of it right in order to teach but one thing I sure didn't learn in any of my courses
hardly is the whole idea of pedagogy which you brought up Kim. I might know my material but how
do I get them to know it and master it. I'm finding the longer I'm teaching that the art of
teaching is much more complex and much more difficult than I thought. Not trying to scare people but
it's just like it's very humbling to try to. It's like the more you learn the more humbling you get
and you're like oh my gosh I don't understand how to yeah I'm like I've been teaching this right.
Yeah but is anybody else getting it? Well there's some aspect of a lot of us have not gone through
formal training and that idea of even that word pedagogy is scary but if you have have gotten to
the point where you're invited to teach a course at the college level whether you're adjunct or full
time you have experience as a learner and so you're very likely doing things very implicitly
without even realizing that you do have very strong pedagogy you're just doing it through
your own experience and it's fun about connecting with a group of colleagues through the Lucas Center
or through digital learning or through the adjunct community is that you start to have these conversations
and you think oh I am doing that. I did know that that idea like I am aware of that theory. Oh is
that what I'm doing. And so then you build your confidence realizing like you do know more than
you realize and now you're just starting to add names to it and tweak it and see where the nuances
are for really making that technique work. Making it more deliberate. Well and I think that one of
the things that's probably hardest early on in your teaching career and especially when you're
coming in as an adjunct faculty member where you've been told your professional experience the
things that you do out in the world are why we're bringing you in here and we want you to be able
to share them with with your students that creates perhaps an inclination to toward
lecturing in the sense of I'm going to tell them what I know and that's a very that's very different
than teaching but it's it's also a natural part of of what we want to do and so starting that process
of thinking through the fact that students can get information in so many different places and
so many different ways at this point that it's probably a little bit less important for you to
tell them what you know than it is for you to give them activities related to what you do
so that they can bring in the knowledge from wherever and that you're helping them build that
knowledge you're helping them access that knowledge but what your your your value is really going to be
is helping them figure out what to do with all that information that's out there in the world
right now and that's what you are already really skilled at but that you can't just give that
to somebody by telling them you have to help them construct activities and things to do with it
because that's that's how they're going to learn and that's like the pedagogy part of it that's
the thing that that we might not know at the very beginning of what we're doing but if we think
about well let me just think about some ways to create activities you know assignments things for
the students to do that are related to what people like us do out in the world that's going to be
even more significant than a lot of what the students may get in other places.
I think that speaks to your question John that idea of like the mistakes are pitfalls and when you're
designing early on there's that idea of I have to cover this much content so when when preparing
your course you're thinking about all of the the modules and chapters that you have to cover
and I think one of the recommendations that I would give for someone who's newly designing a
course is to have that information available to you the the chapters that you want to cover the
theories that you want to make sure that students know but then take a moment to reflect on what's
most important here because less is more you can pack it full of content but if you can distill
like the core ideas that you want to make sure that your students leave your course with then you
can focus on what kinds of activities real life scenarios can I incorporate into my teaching so
that students get that experience that that bill is talking about where it feels more authentic it
feels more real world as opposed to I'm just going to cover all of this information and just
because I've covered it I'm going to assume that you know it yeah related to that point so somebody
much further along in my career than when I heard from my father told me do less better and I think
that that that's more of a sort of an idea that I follow now than the not smiling until Christmas
well school is incision and boy does it get messy I'll get my very first confession in just
some few short minutes i've just been dying to share the lessons and inside making okay from
from your experience as since 2022.
Right?
So three years.
Yes.
Anything else that would have been nice for you
to have known that for a semester that you know now?
I would say just ask for help because when I,
I did not know how to lesson plan, I did not know,
I knew how to make some pretty sick look and power points.
Ooh.
I don't know what I'm putting in them.
Right?
So it's like I have all these ideas in my head,
but how do I actually get that information across?
And so thank God I found the Lucas Center.
They helped pull it out of my brain
because they know the right questions to ask.
But I think just ask for help and honestly,
T.O. in the leadership experience office,
he was also teaching the course.
And we were like, we refuse to go down with the ship.
So like he would lesson plan sums,
we'd work on learning objectives together.
I do some power points, he do some power points.
And that helped tremendously.
Awesome.
So fine, maybe a couple of people that you might partner with,
but definitely ask help.
And the same thing we tell the students.
Right.
Instructional designers, Lucas Center has many help.
There's a lot online even that you can do asynchronously.
It's, which means anytime on demand, whenever you need it.
Which I probably didn't do either at first.
Outside of I did get to course design academy
in May before August when I was teaching.
And I don't know what would have happened if I didn't.
That was revolutionary.
That was so transformative.
It just, that was back in 2015.
So I don't, I think it was one of the-
Before my time, yeah.
Yeah, I think it was, I just happened to have an FGCU email
for other reasons.
And I saw it and I mentioned it to somebody.
And they said, that sounds good.
I think it might have been one of the first adjuncts
to have shown up at it.
You probably were-
I'd better say that tracks.
And, and you know, making reference to course design academy.
And I'm sure we're close to wrapping up now.
Cause you know, it's such a huge topic.
There's so much more-
There's so much more.
There's so much more.
But a lot depends like figuring out at the beginning
how much latitude you actually have
in your own sort of design, I think is important.
Because the first time you teach something,
it's actually really, really helpful
to have somebody else's design.
Because then, you know, you can follow their plan
and be tracking along the way,
oh, if I do get some latitude,
how might I change this at some point?
What might match my skills or my approach better?
But if you do have a little latitude,
one suggestion related to that course design is,
when we do that workshop,
we look at what are the objectives of the course
and what are the activities and the assessments
and the assignments that are gonna help us
meet those objectives.
And one of the things that we know,
and we've seen this from other adjunct faculty members
who have really done a nice job with their courses,
is if you have more frequent, lower stakes assessments,
instead of just a couple of big tests,
your students are gonna have more opportunity
to demonstrate what they know,
and your grade is gonna be distributed
across more assignments and things,
so that students don't get that real pressure,
like, oh, if I tanked this first test,
my semester is done, I'm over.
So that's one more piece of advice
is if there is some control over that,
can you, some people have weekly quizzes,
some people have every class they give a small quiz,
but those little assessments that give you a sense
of where the students are on an ongoing basis,
but don't crush them if they don't perform well,
can be a really nice piece of advice,
I think, for our new faculty.
And when those are nicely aligned,
what you're doing is you're giving students
the opportunity to practice.
Right, so it's like scaffolded towards.
Right, so they could potentially fail
and learn a little bit from that failure
in a low stakes manner, so that when they get to the test,
the exam, the project, whatever that larger assessment is,
you've prepared them to be successful,
it's not a, I expect you to be perfect right out of the gate
without ever having practiced before,
you have seen some of this already,
and you have practiced this sometimes already
before you get to that assessment.
Awesome.
I do have one last question.
So if adjuncts are teaching a course
they've never taught before,
sometimes you can feel a little bit out of your element
the first time around.
So what's your advice on handling the unexpected
when discussions go off track, or lessons don't land
like you had planned on them too,
because sometimes that happens, and for me it kind of hurts.
Like what did I do wrong?
So what's some advice you have?
Well, first of all, Maggie, I think it's really lovely
to hear you say that, you know,
not that it's lovely to hear you say this,
but that it hurts a little bit,
but that you're reflecting on this idea
that you're going into the classroom with a goal,
and that is to have your students learn something,
and that you've observed that maybe they haven't learned that,
yes, can hurt our hearts a little bit,
but I think that's really important for us
to reflect on those opportunities and say like,
okay, why didn't that work?
You know, what might I do differently?
And if that is an essential component,
a building block to the rest of your course,
your choice is to move forward and say,
well, too bad, hopefully you figure it out along the way.
There's tutoring at five.
Right, or you reflect and come back to your students
and say, you know, I get the sense
that maybe this wasn't clear,
and I'd like to revisit this in a way
that's gonna help you gain this building block,
because I think it's essential for your success
in this course, and so that's why if you jam-packed content
into your course and you don't have the space
or you don't feel like you have the leeway to do that,
so if you're approaching it from the perspective
of less is more, then you're leaving some padding in there
for when this does occur, that you can go back
and revisit that topic, and then you're teaching students
that their success actually matters.
It's important that they learn this information
and that they are not the only ones responsible
for their learning, you know,
you're teaching as a component of it,
and vice versa, right, that this is a team effort
and that you're reflecting when you feel
maybe you haven't quite hit the mark
and you will encourage them to reflect
when they haven't quite hit the mark.
And one of those principles,
I think that we talk to faculty a lot about
that's really related to what Kim was talking about
is the idea of transparency, and that is,
you know, when you can reflect on what's going on
in the process, kind of with the students in some way,
you're modeling kind of a reflective process for them
that says, you know, I'm thinking about what's going on here
and I'm seeking maybe a little feedback from you,
or we're in dialogue about what's happening here
and it's not always gonna be fully successful,
but through this kind of ongoing conversation
about what's working, what's not working together,
we'll continue to create an effective experience
and most of the time they're with you on that.
They don't necessarily see it as like,
oh, this person doesn't know what they're doing
or this is a weakness or whatever, it's,
oh, they want us to learn, they wanna get better,
we all wanna do this together.
And so I think that that's been our experience, usually.
So what we'd love to do as we wrap up
is just have a few resources, links in the podcast notes.
So if you guys can give us a couple of those things
that you say, hey, you know, we'll put the Lucas Center
and that's one, maybe digital learning, right?
Their blog is a great one.
It's a good resource.
But, and these are places you can definitely ask, help.
That's what we're here for, right?
Absolutely.
Yeah, but anything else that might,
that you all think this was really good
or reading this chapter or understanding
an active learning strategy like this or that would be good.
And the Lucas Center has a library too.
Now I know this is, that's a lot more time, maybe,
reading books or whatever, but we do have plenty of resources.
Yep, and available for checkout by adjunct faculty,
just as they are by full-time faculty.
Cool.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I might encourage too that, you know, adjunct faculty,
if they can, connect with other faculty in their department
and see if they can observe a class.
Oh, that'd be cool.
To get a sense of what it's like to see someone else do it.
Yeah.
Any last thoughts, Maggie?
I just want to make like a best practice checklist now
for new adjuncts, like how much autonomy
do you have in your course?
I know like in anatomy and physiology,
every section runs like clockwork
and you're not getting off this train.
We're stopping at week 16.
But in other areas, it's very different.
So I'm just thinking about all like the differences
and the disciplines in the college
and the varying experiences of the adjuncts there.
And just kind of like, here's like 20 questions
based off the information you've been given
that you should have the answer to before you step
into the classroom.
And that's a good conversation
with the instructional designers as well
because they're assigned to a particular college
and discipline.
So very often they know in a lot of depth like,
oh, here are some of the norms for my kind of domain here.
We can certainly help with that too,
but we're sort of the university as a whole
and they have their more specific areas of focus.
Well, thank you so much.
You too, this was a wonderful conversation.
Hopefully helpful to everybody who's listening, right?
I learned something new every time.
I know.
We appreciate being asked.
Yes, congratulations.
We're happy to come back another time.
Awesome.
Well, thank you so much.
Thanks for having us.
Absolutely.
And it's a delight, Maggie.
We'll all see you next time on the adjunct files.
Bye, y'all.
Awesome.
See ya.
Bye.
Music for the adjunct files was written, composed, and produced
by James Husband.
Music for the adjunct files.
Music for the adjunct files was written,
composed, and produced by James Husband.
Music for the adjunct files was written,
composed by James Husband.
Music for the adjunct files was written,
composed by James Husband.
Music for the adjunct files was written,