Agnes Ly
Assistant Professor, Psychological and Brain Sciences
I attend the Summer Institute for 3 main reasons:
1) to learn more about the variety of courses offered and the diverse styles in which professors teach them,
2) to network with other colleagues who genuinely care about their teaching — you need friends with the same goals to reinvigorate you, and
3) to learn about opportunities in get involved on campus as a part of my own professional development as both a professor and an advisor.
One thing I learned in a previous Institute was about creating rubrics with Kevin and Kathy! I tried to use rubrics for a class the previous semester and I realized I created terrible rubrics by the time I was done with grading. I went to the Summer Institute, learned some basics, and did some homework on identifying what went wrong. I brought my issues and with an outline of some new rubrics it to a one-on-one consultation with Kathy for more specific feedback. That whole process was AMAZING! I feel like I genuinely learned about the process to create them regardless of course content and assessment type.
I saw that there was a track of sessions specifically for teaching larger courses. Although I was trained as a graduate student to teach very large courses and I’ve taught very large classes for 6 years here at UD, it is my eternal struggle as a teacher. In combination with the large classes, I also struggle with teaching predominantly first-year students in that context.
I’m always looking for help with new ways of thinking about how how to balance requiring rigor and trying to hold my students to high standards and creating the space and developing resources to scaffold students to meet these expectations. Honestly, any strategies are helpful because teaching 600 students and expecting them to do more than memorization is rough!
