Enhancements to Instructional Practices

Demystify your Role

Faculty members, advisers, and instructors play important roles in creating a positive culture within their learning spaces. By providing clarity on your professional role, you can help break down some of the barriers in how students view you and themselves.

Can you position yourself as an ‘ally in learning’ even as you are also responsible for designing instruction and evaluating students?

Back to toolkit homepage

 

Example practices

The strategies below are organized along the timeline of a course: from development and syllabus planning, to early weeks of the semester, to ongoing.

Course Development and Planning

  • Whenever possible, make explicit your expectations of students. Explain your goals and objectives for students in the course and how you designed the course to achieve them.

Early (First Two Weeks)

  • Whenever possible, make explicit your expectations of students. Explain your goals and objectives for students in the course and how you designed the course to achieve them.
  • Share your teaching philosophy: How do you conceive of your role in students’ learning? Consider: What is the nature of the ideal working relationship you have with students, in your view?
  • Remember that, although it is important to develop cordial relationships with students, an inherent hierarchy exists in which you hold great power; you are not their friend.
  • Make clear: What kind of help and guidance can students receive from you? Will you provide resources and advice on how to learn effectively, study for exams, do projects, etc.?
  • Encourage your students to attend office hours, sharing what they can expect there.
  • Personally invite small groups of students to attend office hours.
  • Create time and space in regular class meetings to check in about how students are doing and how current events and/or climate issues (Princeton community, nationally, worldwide) may be impacting them.
  • Clarify the roles of preceptors, UCAs and others and be explicit about your aims and expectations for lecture, precept, lab, etc. components of the course.

Ongoing

  • Remember that, although it is important to develop cordial relationships with students, an inherent hierarchy exists in which you hold great power; you are not their friend.
  • Personally invite small groups of students to attend office hours.
  • Create time and space in regular class meetings to check in about how students are doing and how current events and/or climate issues (Princeton community, nationally, worldwide) may be impacting them.