next »

[nectarine]

Hi all. Long time lurker, first time poster.

I've got a campus interview coming up that requires me to give a teaching demonstration.  I've read through some old threads on teaching demonstrations. They were helpful, but I didn't find an answer to my particular questions.

So here are my questions: The SC chair told me that I am going to give a 30-minute teaching demonstration about anything (it doesn't even have to be in my particular subfield). It won't be in a classroom and it won't be attended by an actual class. Instead, there will be approximately 10 people in attendance, including the department faculty and a few students.  To what degree can I (or should I) expect the faculty/students present to behave like an actual class?  Should I just prepare a 30-minute lecture, or should I try to make it more like one of my actual classes by encouraging "student" discussion?

If it helps, the school is a SLAC and the job is a 4-4 teaching load. It's a very, very small school and a very, very small department.

Thanks very much for any and all advice.

[this_is_my_username]

my impression is that straight up lecture is a quick way to fail the teaching demonstration at a SLAC. At least in my field, your audience must be actively engaged to impress the SC

[shiraz]

I think that you should definitely make it student-centered.  Just pretend that it is a real class and do what you would normally do.   Good luck!

[zuzu_]

You do need to engage these people somewhat, but the success of your lesson should not depend on their engagement. Too risky. I think you need to approach this as an interactive lecture. You are doing most of the work, but you are still engaging them in a conversation. For example, ask them to shout out examples. Or have them help you work through a  question/problem. I think it is also a good strategy to prepare a handout with some sort of independent/small group activity that you would do in a real situation, and hand it out to them at the end of the half hour. Make a joke like, "Don't worry, I won't really make you do this--I just wanted to give you an idea of the sort of thing that would come next if I did this in a real class setting."

I've been on both ends of this process, and sometimes people will ask questions. One time I had someone heckle me a little--some sort of "test." I've served on SCs where other SC members make a point of asking questions that are a little tough. Most of the time people don't give you a hard time and their questions would be pretty straightforward. So while I don't think to you need to worry too much about that, have a game plan in case you have one of those a$$holes on the SC.

Good luck.

[present_mirth]

I concur with zuzu; it should be sort of like a real class, yet not.  In my experience, the setup you're describing is the worst of all possible worlds -- few guidelines, a mixed audience, and a group that doesn't have an established dynamic and may not be particularly comfortable around each other.  I much preferred the ones that were held in actual classes.  However, here's what has and hasn't worked in my experience (from the candidate's point of view -- I've never been on a search committee, so I can't really speak to the other side).

-- A combination of lecture and discussion is much better than straight lecture.  They'll want to see how you engage students and get them involved.  That said, don't get too fancy; it took me a few teaching demos to figure this out, but group work, in-class writing, etc. tend not to work well in this context, even if they're staples of your usual teaching approach.  In a normal class, some down time is OK, and it's often pedagogically useful for the center of attention be the students rather than the instructor -- but the teaching demo is a dog and pony show, and it needs to be your show.  Zuzu's strategy is a good compromise.

-- I don't know what your field is, so this may not be applicable, but you may need to figure out a way to work around the fact that normal students have usually had a reading assignment or homework before class, while teaching demo students haven't.  (I'm in English, so this was a major problem for me; the best workaround, I found, was to use short poems that the students could read aloud in class, or else a short scene from a play that we could watch on video.  Another possibility, of course, is to do your standard first-day-of-class lesson, assuming you do more on the first day than go over the syllabus.)

-- Images, video clips, etc. are good, as long as a) you don't overuse them; and b) you have a technology-free backup plan.  Always assume that anything that can go wrong will.

-- Faculty are not good at pretending they are students, even when they try (bless their hearts).  Either they will completely drop the pretense after a couple of minutes and start using words like "Bakhtinian," or they will go completely stone-faced and refuse to participate (and you won't be comfortable putting them on the spot because they're the freaking search committee!)  Try not to let either of these behaviors rattle you.

[normative_]

To what degree can I (or should I) expect the faculty/students present to behave like an actual class?  Should I just prepare a 30-minute lecture, or should I try to make it more like one of my actual classes by encouraging "student" discussion?

I'll submit another vote to go with your actual class format. You're in your element, that will put them at ease and it seems to suit the profile of the prospective employer. You can't do any better than that.

[nectarine]

Thanks to all for your advice and good wishes.

As for the reading assignment issue that present_mirth raised, hooo boy, I've been fretting about that for a while because I'm in English as well. I decided to go with an extremely canonical text that everyone should be fairly familiar with (something in the same vein as Hamlet).  I'm going to provide a handout that will have excerpts from the text. So I'll lecture a little, ask some open-ended questions, and pray that the audience isn't feeling super snarky. The pessimist in me imagines that the SC will do things like whip out their cell phones or nod off just to see what I would do if a student did that.  The super-pessimist in me imagines that the SC will do things like whip out their cell phones or nod off because I am boring and/or they are rude.

[oseph]

Thanks to all for your advice and good wishes.

As for the reading assignment issue that present_mirth raised, hooo boy, I've been fretting about that for a while because I'm in English as well. I decided to go with an extremely canonical text that everyone should be fairly familiar with (something in the same vein as Hamlet).  I'm going to provide a handout that will have excerpts from the text. So I'll lecture a little, ask some open-ended questions, and pray that the audience isn't feeling super snarky. The pessimist in me imagines that the SC will do things like whip out their cell phones or nod off just to see what I would do if a student did that.  The super-pessimist in me imagines that the SC will do things like whip out their cell phones or nod off because I am boring and/or they are rude.

Actually, they are likely to sit there silent just as many students do, even when they're supposed to have read the assignment.  So marshall your best "get discussion started" questions and be prepared to use them in conjunction with the handout you're providing.

[seniorscholar]

I have generally recommended to my grad students on the market that in such a situation -- and even when they're teaching an actual undergrad class, if they have the choice of reading -- that they use something short enough to be read on the spot, and come prepared with a handout (or, if they know the classrooms are all wired, an appropriate slide or webpage). Say, for example, one of the more obscure sonnets instead of Hamlet. That way you can ask direct questions instead of vaguely encouraging discussion (and therefore demonstrate how good you are at meeting students where they are and dragging more out of them). You have to realize that when the "class" is ten people at a small campus, the majority of them will not have read Hamlet within the last two decades (if at all). One of my grad students wowed a "class" that, she discovered, was largely composed of clerical workers from HR plus two department faculty and a dean because she had brought a short provocative poem by an 18th century woman writer that no one at all had heard of, but which they had a lot of fun discovering and being helped to tease out a meaning. (She's now chair of the department, though the school is still so small that a somewhat similar "class" is probably in the offing for anyone who interviews there.)

[nectarine]

I went with the Hamlet-esque text. I think it went very well. The professors and students in attendance were all extremely friendly and everyone joined in on the discussion.

Thanks so much to all of you for your help!

[oseph]

I went with the Hamlet-esque text. I think it went very well. The professors and students in attendance were all extremely friendly and everyone joined in on the discussion.

Thanks so much to all of you for your help!

Thanks for the update - best of luck.