Graduate Teaching Toolkit: Teaching What You Don’t Know

Date: Thursday, March 21, 2024, 11 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

Location: Great Hall Meeting Room 3 - Ohio Union (1st floor)

Cost: Free

Admission: - RSVP Required

Teaching a course or lesson outside your area of expertise and unsure where to begin? In this session, participants will identify challenges which emerge in teaching unfamiliar topics and develop strategies for doing so without sacrificing instructional quality. Our focus will be on helping participants apply strategies related to choosing, organizing, and teaching the course content they anticipate covering in current, future, or hypothetical courses.

Many graduate students will confront the challenges associated with course design: either as a graduate student instructor, while preparing materials for the academic job market, or in their early career post-graduation. This semester, in Graduate Teaching Toolkit, the Drake Institute’s workshop series for graduate instructors, we’ll explore each step of the course design process. Toolkit workshops are designed to support participants’ professional development, engage them in reflecting on, discussing, and sharing their teaching practices, and build community between graduate instructors on campus who are passionate about improving their teaching. All graduate students, regardless of teaching experience, are welcome to attend.

As a result of attending this GTA Toolkit, participants will: 

• Identify challenges surrounding teaching what you don’t know

• Describe techniques to choose course content around learning goals and student experiences

• Explore methods to organize course content in a meaningful way for students

• Develop strategies for teaching unfamiliar material without sacrificing instructional quality