We are delighted to announce the appointment of Allen Koretsky (English/Arts) and Belarie Zatzman (Fine Arts/Atkinson) as Faculty Associates at the CST for 1999-2000. Allen and Belarie will each play an active role in the development of teaching and learning at York – Belarie will be coordinating the newly instituted New Faculty Teaching at York programme, and Allen will be working to address teaching development needs at the department/division level.

Allen Koretsky
Department of English, Faculty of Arts

A conference of the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education in Calgary this past June was an exhilarating experience for me. There I was delighted to meet many other university teachers, from many institutions, Faculties, and disciplines. These men and women were bright, lively, intellectually engaged and serious about teaching. The sessions brought us together from across the curriculum and from different parts of Canada and the United States, and they stimulated all sorts of questions about teaching at the contemporary university in North America. I came back to Toronto convinced that there are many important issues in undergraduate teaching that all of us have to address, and that doubtless many of us do address frequently in our professional lives. Like many other teachers, I love questions, especially difficult questions.

Here are some of the questions I have been considering:

• What are the assumptions about university teachers, students, teaching, and learning that I bring into the lecture hall and classroom each day?
• How do I design my courses, and why do I design them that way?
• Who are the students who sit in front of me?
• Why is it important that I know something about them?
• What is my repertoire of teaching and assessment methods?
• What in particular are the use and value of lectures, discussions, essays, exams?
• What do I understand by critical skills, and how can I hope to develop them in my students?
• How many important problems in teaching are subject-specific, and how many are common, transcending particular disciplines, subjects, and departments?
• How can we teachers learn from each other and help each other to be better teachers?
• What are the resources at York, and how can they be most profitably used for benefit of teachers and students?

The pursuit of some of these questions with my colleagues at York would, I think, be stimulating and rewarding. As a new Faculty Associate of the Centre for the Support of Teaching I'd like to talk about these questions, informally and, if it seems appropriate, in a more structured way, with others at York this year.

Belarie Zatzman
Department of Fine Arts, Atkinson College

Honestly, it feels as if someone has surreptitiously given me a gift, though luxury it should not be – the opportunity to create an infrastructure for supporting teaching practice at York. Here is what you should know: as part of a week-long intensive programme for new faculty, a CST team (Amy Rossiter, Walter Whiteley, Ron Sheese, Allen Koretsky, Pat Rogers and me) designed a summer intensive programme, replete with reflective exercises, in which participants examined their experiences, practice and theories of teaching. One of the many issues with which we grappled was the evolution of effective course outlines. On the back page, take a look at a document we created to help guide discussions, as each new faculty participant was invited to focus on the development of one particular course they will be teaching this academic year. As a corollary to this work, we also had an opportunity to hear a great panel of experienced York faculty walk us through both the rationale and objectives of their finely-crafted course outlines!

The New Faculty Teaching at York initiative is an important and unique one, not only to York University, itself, but also insofar as this programme is a part of an international research study being conducted by the Centre for Higher Education Practice at the Open University. York is one of ten universities outside the UK participating in this project, along with universities from Australia, Europe and Asia – York is the only participant from North America, our programme being one that is substantive and comprehensive enough to meet the criteria of the project.

The New Faculty Teaching at York programme will extend throughout the year. As the Faculty Associate at CST coordinating the programme, please do contact me if you should wish to become involved in the ongoing teaching development programme, or if you simply have some questions. I hope that you, too, will have an opportunity to make use of these critical guidelines!

The following guidelines were used to guide discussions on the evolution of effective course design at the Summer Institute for New Faculty Teaching at York (August 23-26, 1999)

GUIDELINES FOR TAKING A CRITICAL LOOK AT YOUR COURSE DESIGN

• What are the best features of my outline? For example, the way I have sequenced my assignments; the way I have organized the assigned texts/readings of my course; the description I provide of what students may expect to learn from my course.
• In which areas might my outline be improved? You may want to ask some very specific questions about areas of concern to you.
• Are my assignments sequenced effectively to help students develop the knowledge and skills required for success in my course?
• Given my course objectives, are the weighting and choice of assessment methods appropriate?

QUESTIONS FOR YOU TO ASK THROUGHOUT THE INSTITUTE:

• I have identified learning objectives for my students. Where is the evidence of them in my course outline? How are those learning objectives demonstrated in my course design?
• Given the repertoire of teaching strategies at my disposal, which of them and in what sequence will be most appropriate for helping students achieve the learning objectives?
• What circumstances may arise during the academic year that would cause me to change my course design while the course is in progress? Is there a specific example of the kind of adjustment I may have to make?