Teaching and Communication Certificate
Throughout the 2019-2020 academic year, I committed myself to becoming a better instructor and at the end of the Spring 2020 semester, I completed the requirements to earn the Teaching and Communication Certificate through the Graduate School at NC State. You can learn more about this program here, and I highly advise my peers that are interested in learning quality teaching strategies and enhancing their teaching practice to engage in similar pursuits.
See below for a snapshot of the experiences I have had through this opportunity and through the required teaching course offered by my department.
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PA 885 Doctoral Supervised Teaching: The objective of this course is to help doctoral students become confident and competent instructors. In essence, this course teaches doctoral students in Public Administration how to teach. This is accomplished through the following activities:
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Teaching Mentorship with a faculty member who has similar interests
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Shadowing the undergraduate course that you plan to teach and meeting regularly with the course instructor
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TA appointment for an undergraduate course
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Facilitating a lecture at the MPA level
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Creating a lecture at the PhD level
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Creating an online learning module for a potential course topic that you would teach
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Class seminar weekly discussions on teaching goals, strategies, processing experiences as TAs, student development, equity and diversity in education, developing learning outcomes, etc.
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Creating a teaching portfolio
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Spring 2020 - How to process your course evaluations: A workshop offered through the Graduate School to assist participants in reading, interpreting and using formal and informal course evaluations effectively to improve teaching and to explain your teaching to others
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Spring 2020 - Crafting Your Professional Digital Portfolio: A workshop offered through the Graduate School focused on creating digital research and teaching portfolios.
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Spring 2020 - Getting Your Course Online Quickly: This workshop was offered collaboratively through the Graduate School and DELTA to help instructors review the course tools available through our Moodle platform and other resources through DELTA in order to move their courses from face to face sessions to online due to COVID-19.
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Spring 2020 - Keep Teaching: Creating an Academic Continuity Plan: This workshop was offered collaboratively through the Graduate School and DELTA to help instructors write their continuity plans. Continuity plans are both a tool and an outcome. Instructors could use the templates to help them consider shifts in their teaching to accommodate for virtual learning while also remaining accountable to students and the university. Overall, it was an effective planning practice. There are many aspects from this tool that I will carry forward as I plan future courses in multiple modalities.
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Spring 2020 - How to use Learning Outcomes: This was offered through the Graduate School and participants learned how to write course and class learning outcomes, as well as gaining perspective in measurable outcomes.
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Fall 2019 - Accessibility in the Classroom: This workshop was offered through OIT and the Graduate School and gave instructors tools, resources and knowledge about creating documents and web materials that are universally usable.
