Teaching tips we wish they'd told us before we started
When we started teaching, our more seasoned colleagues were probably ready with pearls of wisdom to share with us. They no doubt pointed us to several of the excellent resources on teaching as a new faculty member [2,3,4,5,6,7]. As an instructor, there were so many hats to wear: lecturer, teaching staff mentor, exam / project / lab author, grader and leader of office hours. It was a lot to take in, and even with all that counsel, it was probably still quite daunting! Years later, what have we had to learn on our own? What egregious mistakes could have been avoided had we just known a single fact? What advice has stood the test of time? How can we share these with each other? The purpose of this panel is to gather seasoned educators together (with over 80 years of combined teaching experience) and allow each to share their favorite teaching tips. We will have ample opportunity for audience members to share their own tips and to comment on ours. The position statements that follow offer a random sampling of two of these 'hidden' pearls. When possible, we've tried to tag them with relevant categories: Lecturing, Office (hours), Staff (mentoring), Exams (authoring & administering), Labs (authoring & running), Section (TA-led discussion), Projects (and homework; authoring & supporting), and Meta (advice spanning categories).
