Teaching Materials

    This section includes some examples of instructional materials I’ve developed for the students and for other teaching assistants from a variety of classes. My goal in including these materials is to demonstrate my commitment to course development and improving instruction both for the students and the instructors.

    My first example is a personal syllabus I developed for use in my introductory biology classes. This syllabus was handed out to students in addition to a standardized course syllabus listing the general lab policies and schedule. My goal in creating this syllabus was to help my first year students know what was expected from them in the lab and to help them approach the laboratory exercises with the appropriate attitude and preparation.

   As the Head TA for Introductory Biology I conceptualized and created a series of grading rubrics for use by the TAs and the students. The main goals for these rubrics were to standardize grading between TAs in different lab sections and to better communicate our expectations to the students. In addition to creating the rubrics, as part of TA training at the beginning of each semester I would have all the TAs grade the same sample assignment using one of the rubrics and we would discuss our differences in grading and use of the rubrics.

   Due to my work with the Center for Teaching at the University of Massachusetts in developing and building rubrics for the Introductory Biology course, I was asked to lead workshops on effective grading at the annual university-wide TA Orientation in the fall. Click here to see participant feedback from my latest workshop.

   As the TA Mentor for Introductory Biology, I developed a series of PowerPoint presentations for the TAs. These presentations gave the TAs, who come from diverse departments and backgrounds within the field of biology, basic background material on each lab so they would be better prepared to answer student questions. These presentations also provided each TA with a resource that they could then use to build their own introductory presentations for the laboratory.

   My final example is a protocol I created to adapt the medical simulation program Rashi, developed by faculty at Hampshire College and the University of Massachusetts, to the Introductory Laboratories at UMass. The goal with this protocol was to adapt Rashi to the time and logistical constraints of the labs, without losing the important inquiry based nature of the program. This protocol has since been used and adapted by Rashi users at other institutions.