Active Learning for First-time Teachers

My Early American Literature course this semester is a ninety-student class that meets Mondays and Wednesdays in a large lecture hall, and then subdivides into six smaller classes of fifteen students that meet as discussion sessions on Fridays with my graduate teaching assistants. Since I have taught this same course in an active learning classroom recently and I already have materials and plans for it, I have decided that rather than have Friday discussions of the week’s earlier lectures as in past classes with this arrangement, that I will instead take advantage of the smaller class sizes on Friday to make them active learning sessions with group work and Canvas-distributed prompts.

The advantage here, beyond the obvious one I believe this gives the undergraduates, is that it provides more structure for the graduate students who will direct the Friday sessions as a part of their teacher training, and who, therefore, are doing their first teaching and doing it with material they may not be familiar with. They will then also gain experience with a novel and effective teaching strategy. I hope that while providing guidance and security, this will also give the teaching assistants enough space to bring their personal elements to the class. I will be quite eager to hear what their experience will be.