Ask-A-TAC: What about blogging?

The TACs would like to encourage our readers to send in questions about teaching! We are happy to make suggestions and/or direct you to appropriate resources. Please send your questions to tac@ucdavis.edu. Whenever appropriate we will share our suggestions here, making sure you, dear TA, stay anonymous. We hope to make the "Ask-A-TAC" entry a regular event here at this blog.

Dear TAC,

I have a blog and it’s awesome! But how do I generate discussion and get my blog readers to ask and answer questions? Please help!

– Bogged-Down Blogging TA

Dear Bogged:

Good for you! Starting a blog as a busy graduate student is above and beyond the call of duty. It’s a tricky undertaking that requires some thoughtful planning, time and energy and the desire to experiment and see what happens. Let me ask you a few question: Do you read other people’s blogs? What do you like most about your favorite blogs? What motivates you to leave a comment on a blog?

As an avid blog reader myself, I find that I return to blogs and become a regular reader when a few criteria are met. First, the blog needs to frequently post new material. Depending on the type of blog this might mean a weekly post (which I very much look forward to), several times a week with “Theme Days” or, best of all, daily posts. This takes a lot of work! It might be a good idea to generate a list of topics and try to stay ahead of your posting schedule, that way new content is always being published.

Second, my favorite blogs have a consistent point of view. This means they cover the same type of content on a regular basis. This also means that they act as a clearing house for information about a given topic. The authors will link to, comment about, or discuss various articles or topics they find interesting and relevant to the central themes of the blog.

Finally, my favorite blogs mix it up! Contradictory to #2, I know. But it’s always interesting when a guest blogger shows up. It’s also fine if a blog takes a hiatus and comes back with fresh new ideas and posts.

But let me return to your original question: how do you generate discussion on a blog? To be honest, I don’t have the magic answer, but I do have some suggestions. First, your readers will want to feel like they know you (and your fellow blog authors). It’s really easy to lurk on a blog, but it takes some pluck to leave a comment, or ask a question. The point is: your readers need to feel safe!

Your readers also need to have content upon which to comment! Posting frequently provides them with content. However, posting “Reading Group” style questions at the end of your posts-- topics you would like to see discussed--will also generate discussion. It might even initiate conversation about other topics. When the conversations start, make yourself heard, and participate in the conversation in the comments section. Your readers will feel valued and acknowledged if the conversation is respectful, friendly and encouraging. And those lurking might be enticed to join in.

Your blog will serve as an amazing teaching and learning tool! If you want your students to traffic the site you can require a certain number of comments per term, and/or invite them to write guest posts. If you are attempting to reach a wider (global) audience you will need to build a sense of community with your readers through content and by generating a safe space to keep them coming back to learn more.

I hope these suggestions help. If any TAs reading this have their own tips we would all benefit if you left a comment. Tell us what's worked and what hasn't for you when it comes to teaching and blogging.

Keep us posted, Bogged, on how it turns out and good luck!

~ UC Davis TA Consultant

PS. If you’re still feeling stuck, check out these links:

Building relationships

For Science Bloggers

Establishing a Persona

Blog lurkers

And more about blog lurkers

Matthew Nesvet

Hi, TA's! My name's Matt. I'm a PhD student, California Humanities Scholar, HASTAC Scholar, and one of the 'awesome eight' graduate students chosen to be your teaching consultants this year. Teaching can be many things: the awesome second class citizen of the modern university; the reason why you spent six of your last summer hours in TA training workshops; a great reason to think broadly about your research and how you can make it meaningful to others ('other' [people] (adj.): those who, though they're not on your dissertation committee, do indeed, yes the rumors are true, exist); how you'll make a difference in your student's lives; your job; and possibly, hopefully, one of the most exciting, valuable activities you'll engage in while at university. I've both taught and TA'd many college classes, and love helping my students learn. I'm excited about working with you this year as you develop, reflect on, and improve upon your teaching practices. For those of you who want to stop by and talk about teaching, my office is in Kerr Hall (6th floor); you're welcome to visit whenever you have a few minutes. You can also send me an email and we can schedule a time to meet. Otherwise, I look forward to seeing you in workshops and consultations throughout the year!

My name is Richard Osibanjo. Am a second year TA Consultant and a 3^rd year PhD student in Analytical Chemistry. My experience has a TA Consultant has being a blast. I teach General and Forensics Chemistry which is very exciting.

I believe everyone is a teacher and at one point or the other we all will have to teach something to someone or a group of people. Being a TA consultant, has really helped me develop my teaching skills, which are applicable not only in the classroom but to every facet of life.

My best memories being a TA consultant involve relating and meeting with diverse people, sharing their experiences and helping them become the best they can be in their teaching experience. I am influenced by the words of John Maxwell said “people don’t care how much you know till they know how much you care” Being a TA Consultant, provides an avenue for me, to really do what am passionate about, which is connecting with diverse people , getting to see through their eyes and speaking their language. This has gone a long way in making my classroom fun, inclusive and memorable. There is nothing so gratifying, as being able to help my students, in a 360 degree way in and out of the classroom.

Outside teaching, I enjoy meeting people, reading, writing, photography and am building my portfolio as a long distance runner

TAC: Sarah Dalrymple

I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Population Biology Grad Group, and I study fire dynamics in Jeffrey pine forests in the Eastern Sierra. A bulk of my research also involves ants so I spend a lot of my time crouched down looking at the ground in forests. It's more fun that it sounds!

In my last 4 years at Davis I have TAed a variety of classes, including biology labs, a field course, and an art-science painting studio. I am incredibly enthusiastic about teaching and learning how to get students to engage more effectively with one another and with course material. This is my second year in the TA Consultant program and my first year serving as a TAC Co-Coordinator alongside Mara Evans. The current TA Consultants come from a range of disciplines and backgrounds, which often results in well-rounded and lively discussions about teaching and education in our weekly meetings.

As a TAC, I hope to pass along knowledge I have gleaned from my own experiences and from discussions with other TACs, whether during individual consultations or workshops. TAs often interact with students more than professors, and as a result, they have an opportunity to positively influence student learning. However, many of the departments on campus lack structured support for grad students interested in improving their teaching. This is why I am so excited to be a part of the TA Consultant team! My ultimate goal is help TAs improve their teaching and provide encouragement for those who otherwise lack the support to do so.

Emily Evans

This is my first year with the TAC program and I am really excited to be a part of this group. The opportunity to engage and research teaching and learning is the reason that I am here at UC Davis. The TAC group has been a great opportunity to meet and collaborate with others who share these interests.

I am currently in my 5^th (and hopefully final) year of a PhD program in education. I am in the science education emphasis specifically focused on environmental education. My dissertation research is an investigation of what youth learn about water and water systems through experiences in different formal and informal contexts, such as school, home, and outdoor fieldtrips. As part of my work, I coordinate a section of the science education and outreach program. In the winter quarter, students participate in a weekly seminar and discussion sessions. In the spring quarter, students apply what they learned in seminars to field work with different environmental science education programs. I particularly enjoy the interdisciplinary nature of this work and that is also what I enjoy about the TAC group; the chance to meet and work with people from different fields and interests.

I look forward to meeting many more TA’s in the coming quarters and working together to advance our practice as teachers and expand learning opportunities for students.

Building Community in the Classroom Wokshop

Building Community in the Classroom

On Monday, May 3rd, we held the third of six workshops in the "Collaborative Connections" workshop series. Here is a condensed version of what we did.

In this workshop we talked about how you (as the TA or instructor) can develop a sense of community in your classroom, and how this contributes to an effective learning environment for all of your students where they feel safe participating and learning from each other and from you.

We identified these learning goals for the workshop:

Understand components of successful and unsuccessful learning environments

Especially the role of community between teachers and students in these environments

Appreciate the diversity of factors that contribute to successful learning environments

Including factors related to learning activities and social and environmental activities

Reflect on and articulate the classroom community you want to create and the relationship you want to foster with your students

We tried to model classroom techniques that help facilitate an effective and collaborative learning community. We began the workshop with a 'group mingle', where participants talked to their 'classmates' to get to know each other and find out what they had in common and what was different.

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‘Group Mingle’ Activity

For four (or more) of the following statements circle the response that best describes you, and find someone in the room who is on the other end of the spectrum to initial the other response. You can only have each person on your sheet ONCE.

I prefer sitting at the front of class I prefer sitting at the back of class

I like working alone I like working in groups

In my free time I like reading fiction In my free time I like reading non-fiction

I am a night owl I am an early bird

(do my best work at night) (do my best work in the morning)

I generally speak up in class if I generally stay quiet in class

I have something to say and let others do the talking

I am older than most of my siblings I am younger than most of my siblings

In groups I tend to be a leader In groups I tend to be a follower

I am the most excited about this I am most excited about other

workshop workshops in this series

**This is one example of a way to get your students talking to each other at the beginning of class. Make the questions anything you like – for example, they can be personal, related to the class topics, or about how they typically prefer to learn. Activities like this can help set a tone for your class and help establish an environment where your students communicate with each other. Depending on the types of questions you ask, your students may meet other students that they have things in common with which can help establish collaboration outside of class.

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Successful and Unsuccessful Learning Environments: Reflecting on our Experiences as Learners

In order to think about how WE can create an effective learning environment, we reflected on the experiences that we had where we felt like we were successful learners, and unsuccessful learners, and defined successful and unsuccessful learning.

Participant folded their paper into four quadrants and brainstormed their thoughts about learning in each box.

#1 Your own definition of a learning success

#2 A personal example of a successful learning experience

#3 Your own definition of unsuccessful learning

#4 A personal example of an unsuccessful learning

**This activity generated a lively discussion about how we as instructors can contribute to successful learning environments.

Main ideas:

- Many different factors contribute to learning success. Many of these are related to the environment that the instructor can create in the classroom, and related to interactions between teacher and students.

- There are many things that we as teachers cannot control. For example, the physical space and set-up of the environment, and the experiences, perspectives, and motivation of our students coming into the class. By keeping in mind what these challenges are we can be better prepared to deal with them and create a successful learning environment.

Communicating with your students

After we spent some time reflecting on what makes a successful learning environment, participants applied their ideas to real classroom scenarios. These classroom scenarios included diverse physical and social environments (large lecture, lab, discussion) and different activities. For each of the following 'unsuccessful leanring environments' participants were asked how they would turn it into a successful learning environment:

Scenario #1: You are teaching a 7-10 pm lab and students have to stop all experiments and start cleaning up. the dispensary closes by 10pm and you as the intructor or TA would be held responsible for anything that happens after 10pm. you have a student who refusues to stop the experiment and tells his partner to do the same. You make an annocement 2 more times but you are just ignored The whole class is aware of this behaviour, what would you do to solve this situat

Scenario #2: You are the TA/instructor for a seminar of about 20 students in a small classroom with large tables and lots of chairs. Your discussion section meets on friday afternoon and most of your students appear tired and distracted. Every time you ask a question or solicit feedback from the group, it is always the same 2-3 students that respond. By mid-quarter, attendance has dropped and you had one section where only 1/2 of your students showed up.

Scenario #3: The TA/instructor is teaching a large class in a stadium-style lecture hall. The students are a mixture of majors and non-majors, with a large diversity in the amount of preparation for and interest in the course. The instructor would like to have an engaging and interactive class, but is struggling to get the students to engage and communicate with each other and with him/her during class, and with so many students, there's not a lot of time for one-on-one conversations/questions between instructor/student.

Successful learning environments in YOUR classroom

By this point in the workshop we had spent a lot of time thinking about all of the characteristics of an effective learning environment, and all of the factors that influence your classroom community. Then we asked participants to apply all of these ideas to a real life teaching situation for them.

Prompt:

Think about a class you have taught, that you will teach, or that you would be interested in teaching, and what your goals are for that class. Which characteristics of an effective learning environment are the most important for you to incorporate into your classroom community? What type of relationship do you want to have with your students? What tone do you want to strike with them?

After reflecting on our own classroom communities, participants wrote a mission statement to their students:

Write a letter to your students about the community that you want to create with them? Things to consider including: what should they expect from you? What expectations do you have for them? How will you try to create a community where everyone feels valued?

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Strategies for Creating a Community in Your Classroom

Value your students as individual learners that are part of the community. Students learn more when they feel valued as individual learners. Suggestions:

• Greet your students when they enter class.
• Make an effort to get to know your students.
• Start and end class on time. This acknowledges to your students that you value their time and their other commitments.
• Encourage questions.
• Give all students the opportunity to talk.
• Make time spent in class worthwhile.
• Acknowledge contributions .
• Gather information about the class and what they want to learn. (eg. student can fill out a KWL chart - what the Know, Want to know, and at the end of you class what they Learned)
• Consider asking them to write a letter of introduction.
• Give students opportunities to make comments and suggestions (eg. a comment box)

Encourage Participation. Create a classroom where students feel comfortable testing and sharing ideas. Suggestions:

• Get to know your students.
• Arrange seating to promote discussion.
• Use discussion techniques (eg. popcorn discussion, have students share work on individual writing exercise as a springboard to discussion)
• Encourage students to meet one another and provide opportunities (when possible) in class to facilitate group discussion and promote outside of class group work.
• Create opportunities for all students to talk during the first two weeks.
• Periodically divide students into small groups.
• Assign leadership roles to students.

Give timely and effective feedback. Giving feedback to your students is important for them to feel like you value their efforts and their learning, and that you are not just there to give them a grade. Suggestions:

• Give feedback as quickly as possible.
• Use praise judiciously - students can be particularly affected by specific positive comments.
• Try to cushion negative comments (eg. a criticism sandwich - try to bracket each constructive criticism with something positive about their work)
• Focus on the task, rather than on the learner.
• Provide guidance in manageable chunks.
• Give comments in writing.
• Emphasize learning rather than performance by acknowledging the role that mistakes play in the learning process.
• Avoid comparisons with other students.

Extending The Claaroom: One great attribute of effective communities is elimination of walls. The classroom is not necessarily confined to your assigned teaching space, you can extend it. Suggestions

• creating a chatroom for students for communication (participation)
• Students writing on note pads to account for participation
• Having a blog to keep the community alive
• Use of Social media Facebook, Youtube, Myspace
• Coffee bars and outdoor meeting points--- (limits)
• Wikis
• Having class projects that groow dependent that each person does their part
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TAC: Sarah Augusto

I’m a first year TAC and a doctoral candidate in sociology. My research areas are social movements, sex and gender, culture, and emotions. I have studied reproductive rights issues for much of my academic career and wrote my masters thesis on the pro-abortion rights and anti-abortion movements. I’m currently working on my dissertation, a study of the UC budget crisis and the movement to defend public education.

When I first came to grad school I wasn’t sure if I’d enjoy teaching, but it turns out I absolutely adore it. I am passionate about education and about the subjects that I teach. My goal is to impart this enthusiasm and dedication to my students. While it is my responsibility to convey specific information and knowledge, my ultimate goal is to encourage students to be excited about their education and to seek out knowledge on their own. I want to help instill in them a lifelong love of learning that extends beyond the classroom and the university.

As a TAC, I am excited to be part of a community of educators who share my enthusiasm for teaching and to impart that enthusiasm to new TA’s. The TAC program offers a unique opportunity to improve my own skills and knowledge while helping others do the same. To me, this is what truly great education is all about – a collaborative environment where rigid barriers between students and teachers are broken down and we all learn from one another.

TAC: Mara Evans

This is my second year as a UC Davis TA Consultant, and my first as a Co-coordinator for the Teaching Assistant Consultants Program at the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. I am a fifth-year PhD student in the Ecology Graduate Group. I spend my time in local creeks, up to my hips in cold water looking for the tiny, non-native New Zealand Mudsnail. When I'm not sliding down a creek bank I'm teaching, thinking about teaching, or thinking about how to teach about teaching.

Graduate school has been a tremendous, often unpredictable experience. Having time and space to focus on my teaching has made these past four years incredibly rewarding and personally formative. I am happiest when I am immersed in teaching in some way, and I am getting a PhD to become a professor of Ecology with the hope of changing how we teach ecology at the college level, and changing how we help graduate students develop into educators.

As a TAC I especially look forward to working with new TAs so that teaching is not seen as a chore but a creative opportunity. Every year I learn right along with our workshop participants and this year I hope we can have conversations about social media in the classroom, facilitating classroom discussions, and helping students with disabilities thrive in our classrooms.

When I'm not teaching, I swim for the Davis Aquatic Masters team, spend time with friends and family and make quilts.

I'm the quiet one in the funny shirt.

Hello, my name is Jonathan Bragg (but call me Jon!). I'm a seventh-year graduate student in Microbiology, and I'm a first-year TAC. My time in lab is focused on identifying key regulators of the multicellular fruiting body formation program of the soil bacterium Myxococcus xanthus; my time in the classroom has also revolved around Microbiology in both intro and more advanced labs.

Teaching wasn't really on my mind when I started grad school, but I quickly discovered that T.A.-ing is in fact my favorite part! Whether it's helping students understand complex processes, giving them useful skills that I know they can use, or just having a captive audience for my jokes, I'm a fan. I especially like being a TAC because of our strong commitment to collaborative work: I can add my practical experience but cover for my lack of formal education training.

I'm really looking forward to getting out there and helping other T.A.s fine-tune their classes and work through the rough spots. I think we got a great start with the T.A. Orientation a couple weeks ago and I hope to maintain that great momentum all year.

In my off time you'll find me doing any one of my innumerable hobbies. Games of all kinds fascinate me, comedy (writing, TV, movies) invigorates me, and photography and cooking challenge me.

I look forward to meeting other T.A.s during our workshops, consultations, and other events!