Teaching, Course Prep and Resources

Most of us who embark on teaching careers have been ill-equipped to actually teach. If your experience was anything like mine -- and admittedly this is a bit more of a problem in British programs than American -- you had no pedagogical training or experience in your doctoral program. Fortunately, I had spent many years doing student ministry prior to pursuing an academic career and that has been a big help for me, but still there is so much to learn.

I am of the mind that good teaching is extremely important, and for me it is as important it not more important than good writing. But it appears to me that we spend much more of our time trying to be better researches and writers than we do being better teachers. Perhaps this is because it is in writing that we can make a name for ourselves (but that is another issue).

I have been collecting good resources for course preparation and teaching and I would like to know if you can recommend some.

Recently I came across this resource and it really helped prepared my courses for this senester; I would highly recommend it:

L. Dee Fink. Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses.

You can also find the meat of the book on the web; Fink published an article entitled A Self-Directed Guide to Designing Courses for Significant Learning.