Ten Simple
Rules To Combine Teaching and Research
Tuesday,
May 19, 2009 11:30 PM
"Presenting
your research in class could bring you a solid return on your investment. For
example, teaching gives you exposure; talking about your research may help you
recruit motivated students in your lab, which will help you advance your
research, possibly by taking it in original directions. In parallel, you could
also use your research to design a novel course and possibly evaluate student
learning
in a fashion that would make for a publication in a science education journal.
"
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Folks:
The posting below looks at XXXX. It
is by Quentin Vicens of the University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, and
Philip E. Bourne of the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Science,
University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, Copyright: © 2009
Bourne, Vicens.
----------------------------------------- 1,789
words ----------------------------------
Ten Simple Rules To Combine Teaching and
Research
The late Lindley J. Stiles famously made
himself an advocate for teaching during his professorship at the University of
Colorado: "If a better world is your aim, all must agree: The best should
teach". In fact, dispensing high-quality
teaching and professional education is the primary goal of any university [1].
Thus, for most faculty positions in academia, teaching is a significant
requirement of the job. Yet, the higher education programs offered to Ph.D.
students do not necessarily incorporate any form of teaching exposure. We offer
10 simple rules that should help you to get prepared for the challenge of
teaching while keeping some composure.
Rule 1: Strictly
Budget Your Time for Teaching and for Doing Research
This
rule may seem straightforward, but respecting it actually requires more
discipline and skill than it first appears to. The key is to set aside time for
both teaching and research from the beginning, with a well-marked separation
(e.g., mornings will be devoted to course preparation, afternoons to
experiments and manuscript writing). Firmly stick to this agenda, particularly
if this is your first time teaching. Failure to do so would eventually affect
the quality of your teaching or the progress of your research (or both). Over
time, you will become more skilled at jumping from one commitment to the other,
and therefore allowing the boundaries to fluctuate somewhat. Avoid
underestimating the time necessary to fulfill teaching-related obligations
(e.g., office hours, test preparation, grading, etc.) by consulting with your
colleagues.
Rule 2: Set
Specific Teaching and Research Goals
In
order not to have one occupation overpower the other one-which would transgress
Rule #1- it is a good idea to decide on specific aims for each enterprise.
Compile a list of reasonable but specific long-term goals (for the month or the
semester) and short-term ones (for the week) for both your teaching (e.g.,
finish Chapter 3 by Nov. 1; this week propose a discussion to engage students
to brainstorm about the risks of GMOs) and your research (e.g., finish
experiments for this project and start writing before Easter; this week do the
control for my primer binding assay). Make sure you achieve them. If you
don't-this is likely to happen at first-ask yourself how legitimate your reason
is. Then review and adjust the goals accordingly.
Rule 3: "Don't
Reinvent the Wheel"
We
borrowed the title for this rule from excellent suggestions on How To Prepare
New Courses While Keeping Your Sanity [2]. Most likely, you will not be the
first one ever to teach a particular topic. So get in touch with the colleagues
in your department who have taught the class you are going to teach, or who
teach similar topics. You can also use your network and contact former
colleagues or friends at other institutions. They will usually be happy to
share their course material, and along the way you might also glean precious
tips from their teaching experience (e.g., a list of do's and don'ts on how to
approach a notoriously difficult topic). You will also learn a lot from sitting
in one of their classes and watching how they handle their topic and their
students. Here are more examples of precious time-savers:
1.
Choose a textbook that is accompanied by rich online resources such as
annotated figures, pre-made PowerPoint slides, animations, and videos. Students
will thank you for showing movies, for example, as they often are a better
option to break down complex mechanisms or sequences of events into distinct
steps.
2. Administer a Web site for your course. Many universities and some textbooks
now offer you the possibility of hosting a Web site with course-related
materials, including automatically graded assessments. See, for example, the
CULearn suite used at the University of Colorado
3. Gather
a solid team of motivated teaching or learning assistants, who will both serve
as an intermediary between you and your students and help you grade. In short,
don't be afraid to ask for help!
Rule 4: Don't
Try To Explain Everything
Class
time should be spent guiding students to create their own explanation of the
material and to develop cognitive abilities that will help them become critical
thinkers. In other words, you don't want to present all aspects related to a
certain topic or to lay out all the explanations for them. Thus, an effective
way to teach is to get students to learn by transformative learning: beyond
memorizing and comprehending basic concepts, they will learn to reflect on what
they learn and how they learn it. Such
teaching practices require that a significant part of the learning process
happens outside the classroom, through reading assignments, homework, writing
essays, etc. So make sure you budget time to organize these, as specified in
Rule #2. Remember that in the end this will be a win-win situation: you will
save time by not having to fit everything into your class time, and students
will learn how to find answers through their own thinking.
Rule 5: "Be
Shameless in Bringing Your Research Interests into Your Teaching"
This
is yet another great time-saver, and this rule title is actually from
Confessions about Stress and Time: Thoughts for Faculty. Students want to know
how what you teach relates to the world around them. They also like to know
what is happening in science right now, so this is where you can feed in some
of your research interests (for some examples of how researchers around the
world have been bringing their research into the classroom, refer to the
special section of the July 6, 2007, issue of the magazine Science entitled The
World of Undergraduate Education [3]. Students will welcome such connections,
especially in an introductory course or in a course for non-majors.
Additionally, they will feel the passion that makes you love being a scientist.
On your end, you might find that preparing course materials will be easier
(because you are already a master of that topic), and you might learn to be
more comfortable at presenting your research in layman's terms.
Rule 6: Get the
Most in Career Advancement from Bringing Your Research into Your Teaching
As
a sort of follow-up to Rule #5, presenting your research in class could bring
you a solid return on your investment. For example, teaching gives you
exposure; talking about your research may help you recruit motivated students
in your lab, which will help you advance your research, possibly by taking it
in original directions. In parallel, you could also use your research to design
a novel course and possibly evaluate student learning in a fashion that would
make for a publication in a science education journal. Another option would be
to write or edit a book, or to contribute a chapter in someone else's book that
you would eventually give as a reading assignment in your class. Conversely,
there is wisdom in crowds. Consider having students review aspects of your
research that fit the course and get feedback. You will be surprised at what
useful information can come from students critiquing a new manuscript or
proposing new experiments.
Rule 7:
Compromise, Compromise, Compromise
A
significant part of the compromise once you accept a joint research/teaching
commitment is to realize that your list of "things that in principle you
would like to do but won't have time to do" will get longer. Maybe you
would like to personally respond to all the students who e-mail you about any
problem they may have, but, realistically, such things can't happen. Instead, a
solution would be to send some general feedback in answer to the common queries
and to write occasional brief personal responses. As you get more skilled at
combining research and teaching, you will be able to progressively bring back
activities such as scanning the most recent scientific literature and attending
seminars and lectures more often. But remember to accept that no matter how
skilled you are at budgeting your time for teaching and research, you will
still face the conflicting demands of both, and you will have to keep
compromising. In the end, compromising will sometimes imply learning to say no
when pondering about taking on a novel and exciting assignment that would
unequivocally conflict with your current research/teaching agenda.
Rule 8: Balance Administrative Duties with Your Teaching and Research Workload
Your
responsibility as a teacher and as a researcher is to be as productive as you
can be in these two areas, at the same time. This is what your colleagues and
the faculty board will expect from you when evaluating you for tenure, for
example. Doing service within your community (for example by sitting on
committee meetings, or by being part of a local scientific club) counts as well,
but not as much. In consequence, turning down yet another offer to organize a
series of seminars, or to edit the newsletter of your department, is legitimate
if it cuts into your productivity. Similarly, keep your ability to career
advance in mind when considering taking on another teaching assignment.
Rule 9: Start Teaching Early in Your Career
This
will be the best way to get exposed to some of the difficulties mentioned in
the other Rules sooner rather than later. You can see this as an opportunity to
learn how to add on various responsibilities in a gradual rather than an
immediate manner (e.g., when "jumping" from a post-doc to a faculty
position at a university). Many options are available to teach at the graduate
level (e.g., by becoming a teaching/learning assistant), as well as at the
post-graduate level (e.g., by teaching part-time on campus or at a local school
while doing your post-doc). You may need to be proactive about looking for such
opportunities, but an increasing number of universities and institutions are
developing programs that formally offer teaching experience to graduate
students and post-docs [4],[5].
Rule 10: Budget
Time for Yourself, Too
A
lot of stress can build up from a constant shuttle between teaching demands and
research occupations. In order to be able to evacuate some of that tension, it
is a good idea to hide some time for yourself that you will spend with your
family, or to do your hobby, to exercise, to travel, etc. An unfulfilling
personal life is incompatible with successful teaching and research careers.
Consequently, don't forget to spend some energy learning how to balance both
areas.
Finally, keep in mind that your experience can make for a valuable contribution
to the scientific community, for example, in the form of a report on your
efforts in science education.
REFERENCES
1. Editorial (2007) Those who can teach, should. Nat Chem Biol 3: 737.
2. Brent R, Felder RM (2007) Random thoughts: How to prepare
new courses while keeping your sanity. Chem Engr Education 41: 121-122.
3. Mervis J (2007) Special section-The world of
undergraduate education. Science 317(5834): 63-81.
4. Coppola BP, Banaszak Holl MM, Karbstein K (2007) Closing the gap between
interdisciplinary research and disciplinary teaching. ACS Chem Biol 2: 518-520.
5. Tahmassebi DC, Williamson JR (2007) Balancing teaching
and research in obtaining a faculty position at a predominantly undergraduate
institution. ACS Chem Biol 2: 521-524.
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