Design your courses backward, Robyn Wright Dunbar tells faculty in the sciences and engineering. Start with a “learning outcome”: something you want students to have mastered by the last day of the class. Then, make that central to homework assignments, projects and exams.
A professor teaching an introductory course in geology, for example, might want her students to be able to make an informed analysis of unfamiliar topography by the end of the quarter. If she keeps that goal in mind while projecting a slide of rocks onto a screen during a lecture, Dunbar says, she’ll be more likely to say, “Okay, interpret this,” instead of, “Isn’t that a nice picture of a fault?”
As senior associate director of the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), Dunbar is fascinated by how people process science information. A former professor of geology at the University of New Mexico and Rice University, she now helps Stanford science and engineering faculty organize courses, works with teaching assistants who are giving their first lectures and sits in on classes to provide feedback on teaching styles. Two other associate directors of the center—Marcelo Clerici-Arias and Valerie Ross—offer similar services to faculty and teaching assistants in the social sciences and humanities. And Doree Allen, MA ’82, PhD ’92, helps undergraduates and graduate students hone their speaking skills as director of the oral communication program.
Stanford’s CTL, which marked its 25th anniversary in 2000, is one of the oldest teaching centers in the United States. Most were established between 10 and 15 years ago, and some—including Princeton’s—have been around for less than five years. Michele Marincovich, ’68, assistant vice provost for undergraduate education and director of Stanford’s center, says these are “exciting days” for the field, noting that the center directors from the so-called “Ivy-plus” campuses gathered for the first time in May.
Improving teaching is the core of the center’s mission, and Marincovich says that requires a particular climate. “There was a strong sense that teaching and learning centers would only succeed if the faculty themselves bought in and felt comfortable. So we always promise our clients confidentiality and we never share with the administration who is, or isn’t, using us.”
When a department chair wants to refer a faculty member to the center, Marincovich often suggests several alternatives, including having the instructor work with colleagues and mentors in the department first. “If faculty then choose to come to us, they will be more receptive to advice,” she says. “Whereas if they feel they have to come, they may be resentful about any suggestions for change.”
CTL works with an estimated two-thirds of the University’s 1,000-plus teaching assistants, often helping them prepare for their first classes and walking them through the fine art of leading discussion sections. At an annual orientation workshop in the fall, Marincovich and her staff spell out University policies that can affect teaching, from sexual harassment to disability services. “If you say something to TAs like, ‘What are you going to do if, after your first section, a deaf student comes up to you and wants to know how they’re going to be able to absorb your material?’ then people begin to be interested in knowing what the disabled-student services are.”
The center’s customers give it high marks. “I especially appreciate the way Michele brings people together across the disciplines and schools for highly productive exchanges,” says history professor Estelle Freedman, who helped Marincovich organize a series of workshops on incorporating the study of gender into certain areas of the curriculum. “I think the results were tangible—I certainly incorporated ideas raised by panelists into my teaching, and I think that grad section leaders and new faculty especially benefited from hearing experienced teachers share the tricks of the trade.”
