Preparing to Teach for the First Time
Have you been invited to teach a course for the very first time and wondering where to begin? Staff from the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning are available to meet with you and further discuss any questions you might have about teaching. In addition, center staff host monthly workshops on a wide variety of teaching and teaching with technology topics available to all NIU faculty, staff, and graduate teaching assistants.
Below are a few questions to consider about your upcoming teaching assignment. Answers to these questions will help raise awareness of what you need to know and do as a new instructor.
- Has this class been taught before and will you have access to the syllabus, PowerPoint lectures, class activities, handouts, assignments, assessments, etc.?
- How often does the course meet and how long is each class period?
- Is there a lab section of the course?
- How do you plan to teach course content? (e.g., lecture, discussions, group work, case studies, simulations, projects, guest presenters)
- Are you planning to use Blackboard?
- How do you plan to integrate your years of professional expertise with the course content?
- Will you have a graduate assistant?
Resources
Below are selected resources which may be helpful when preparing to teach:
Instructional Guide for University Faculty and Teaching Assistants
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.