Teaching Your Research: A Workshop to Teach Curriculum Design to Graduate Students and Post-doctoral Fellows

Abstract

Graduate students and post-doctoral fellows are typically underprepared for the teaching roles they will take on when they assume faculty positions. While students are often undertrained in the complex skills of teaching, they are highly adept in their research areas, making them uniquely qualified to teach the science underlying their research. We hypothesized a sequential curriculum design workshop focused on designing a course based on their research would increase graduate students’ and post-doctoral fellows’ skills and confidence in teaching. To test this hypothesis, we designed a workshop series (nine weekly one-hour sessions) that would progressively lead senior Ph.D. candidates and post-doctoral fellows through the basics of curriculum design and culminate in the assembly of a full course syllabus using a wide range of learned curriculum design skills. Junior research-oriented departmental faculty were recruited to participate as discussion facilitators. Of the 31 students who participated in three separate cohorts, 22 completed the workshop and submitted final projects of a full course syllabus, complete with learning objectives, instructional plans, course schedule, and assessment approaches. Syllabi were evaluated for quality by two independent reviewers. Participants retrospectively self-assessed their skill level in each of eight key course objectives, and significant changes in all parameters were reported. They also completed pre- and post-course surveys to assess student attitudes about teaching. Participants reported significantly increased comfort with curriculum design and confidence in their ability to teach. In summary, this workshop represents a minimally burdensome and easily implementable workshop approach to providing teaching skills preparation for research-focused graduate students and post-doctoral fellows who typically receive little to no formal teaching training.