How do you tutor your tutors?

Each semester our Department faces dealing with an ever increasing number of new sessional staff. The most visible problems associated with such staff are managerial and logistical, such as making sure they are correctly signed up, allocating classes and forwarding relevant information and teaching materials to them during the semester. Less immediately visible are problems associated with instruction or in dealing with students, which are often only brought to a unit coordinator's attention by student complaints or more likely when numbers in a particular class dwindle. To assist these staff with these problems we have been presenting a variety of workshops and staff development activities. This paper describes the successes and pitfalls of a recent project in which we presented a series of workshops which focused on helping these staff to incorporate reflective strategies into their teaching.

Introduction

While feedback obtained from the participants of the 1994 workshop (Loss and Zadnik, 1994) revealed a high degree of satisfaction with the workshop it also identified a number of shortcomings including:

• half day workshops did not allow sufficient time to cover the needs of sessional staff.
• the need to provide ongoing support throughout the semester.
• during a half day workshops it is difficult to produce a mind shift from "teacher" to "student" centred instructional methods.
• the need to set aside time each week in which Reflective Teaching Practices can be developed.
• the urgent need to break the "teaching as you were taught" cycle propagated by sessional staff.

A second factor was that of the social and professional isolation of sessional staff (Coorey, 1996). Although this had not been specifically identified in the past in our sessional staff (possibly because the majority are senior students and most know each other) we were concerned that this may be affecting their teaching.

With these issues in mind the authors applied to and received support from the Curtin Quality Office in 1995 to fund a project in which sessional and senior physics staff could attend a series of workshops during semester to develop reflective teaching strategies and to discuss problems and solutions. A substantial report which documents and discusses the process, contents, operations and evaluation of these workshops is available (Loss and Zadnik, 1996).

Workshop Program

Further details of the topics and samples of the materials used during the workshops are available in Loss and Zadnik (1996).

A total of 16 different staff attended the workshops during the first semester of 1996. Of these, 13 were sessional tutors and laboratory demonstrators and 3 were full-time lecturers. During this period, the Department of Applied Physics also employed an additional 5 sessional staff. Although all sessional staff were invited to the workshops the reasons given by non-attendees included lack of interest and conflicts with other classes and/or commitments.

At each of the workshops the participants were required to submit a one page written reflection on their teaching activities undertaken in the previous week. These were to include;

• A list and a description of any problems that arose
• Some suggestions as to how these could be overcome
• List and discuss ways of improving individual teaching needs

From the very first of the one hour sessions, the workshops began to exceed their allocated hour by as much as 30 minutes. This was due to the intensity of the discussions and complexity of the problems being discussed. After session 5 the group decided to increase the frequency of the meetings from fortnighly to weekly, alternating each week between formal and informal sessions.

Evaluation

A copy of the survey form along with a detailed discussion of the responses is available in Loss and Zadnik (1996). Briefly, the survey form consisted of 27, 5 point multichoice questions (strongly agree, agree, neither disagree or agree, disagree, strongly disagree) on specific aspects of the workshops followed by 5 open ended questions which required written responses.

Evaluation Results: Multi-choice component

Seven or more of the 10 respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed with;

Q1.	Initially I was reluctant to attend these workshops.
Q2.	The workshops are mostly much a waste of my time.
Q4.	The discussions that took place during the workshops was of little use in my day to day teaching.
Q6.	Material presented in these workshops were of little relevance to my classes or students.
Q8.	The advice provided by the workshop supervisors during the workshops was not all that useful in the classroom situation.
Q9.	These workshops should be split into sessions (i.e. one for lab demonstrators and one for tutors).
Q11.	The materials and ideas presented at the workshops were not all that easy to understand.
Q15.	I have not really learned much about teaching from attending these workshops.
Q16.	Teaching is not all that complicated, anyone can do it, you just have to put in the hours of planning etc.
Q17.	Now that I have attended these workshops I would not attend similar workshops again.
Q25.	These workshops have not met my initial expectations.
Q27.	There was too much time spent in the workshops discussing individual problems.

Seven or more of the 10 respondents agreed or strongly agreed with;

Q3.	The information provided during the workshops was of direct use in my day to day teaching.
Q5.	The information and experiences of the other demonstrators and tutors attending the workshops is a valuable part of the workshops.
Q10.	The presenters of the workshops were well organized.
Q12.	I would attend these workshops even if I was not paid to attend.
Q13.	I would recommend all new lab demonstrators and tutors attend these workshops.
Q14.	I would recommend all lecturers attend these workshops.
Q18.	I would make it compulsory that all new tutors and lab demonstrators attend these workshops as a condition of their employment.
Q19.	I would make it compulsory that all new tutors and lab demonstrators attend these workshops before they are employed.
Q23.	I would be prepared to video myself teaching for private discussion and evaluation with a supervisor.

The following resulted in a mixed response.

Q7.	I found the written reflection component of the workshop to be of benefit during the following weeks classes.
Q20.	I found the written reflection component of the workshop to be difficult to write.
Q21.	The activities in the workshops should allow more time for individual reflection.
Q22.	The workshops should be run every week of every semester.
Q24.	I would be prepared to video myself teaching for discussion and evaluation in these workshops.
Q26.	These workshops are too short and should be extended by 30 minutes each.

Results: Open-ended questions component

The responses obtained to, What do you think are the better features of these workshops? indicated that the "creation of a forum for the discussion of common problems and issues" was the best feature. During discussions held in the evaluation session, one of the participants also said that as a result of the workshops he felt a decreased isolation from other departmental staff and activities. Three of the participants said they appreciated "gaining wisdom" from the input of the experienced staff at the workshops and that the workshops made them feel as though the Department "cared about their work". This the presenters believe was a significant outcome of these workshops. On reflection it unfortunate that these points were not specifically surveyed in more detail.

In response to Which features of these workshops need to be improved? several participants were concerned that the presenters of the workshops were "not staying on track". This was a deliberate action by of the coordinators who believed that the participants should have some control of the direction of discussions. Perhaps the presenters should have stated this explicitly earlier in the semester.

Self evaluation: Written reflection component

Several of the comments obtained describe the problem that can arise from successful senior students instructing a range of junior students with weak backgrounds and a lack of interest in the subject. It appears we need to assist sessional staff with ways of motivating and supporting such students early in the semester.

The written reflections were also used by the participants as prompts for discussions during the workshops and then submitted to the coordinators at the end of that session. While most participants believed that there was some value in writing these reflections most indicated they had less time as semester progressed to devote to this activity. The varying impact of the written reflection is also demonstrated in responses to the survey questions: "I found the written reflection component of the workshop to be of benefit during the following weeks classes", and "I found the written reflection component of the workshop difficult to write". Responses to these questions are evenly spread across all categories. Perhaps a more direct feedback from the coordinators about specific issues raised in these reflections would have increased their value to participants.

Discussion

A survey of the students taught by the participants may also have provided another prespective on any changes in the teaching over the period of the workshops. A comparison with the responses of these students with those taught by tutors and laboratory demonstrators who did not attend the workshop may also have been valuable since some anecdotal evidence of general dissatisfaction with their instruction was obtained from the latter group of students. An analysis of retention rates and performance for students in both groups is currently being undertaken although it may be difficult to extract any incremental benefit of these workshops from amongst the myriad of variables in the current educational matrix.

Some Outcomes

• The realization that even as experienced instructors we can still learn about teaching and learning from novice teachers.

• The ultimate question is "have these workshops produced better teachers". This is very difficult if not impossible to assess. However, the participants themselves believe that the workshops have been successful in improving their teaching.

• Increased socialization and decreased sense of isolation of sessional staff.

• Last but not least has been the Loss and Zadnik (1996) project report in which the level of documentation provided we believe will be of considerable value for all university staff training developers.

Recommendations

• The workshop program be integrated into the Department of Applied Physics Staff training in subsequent years.

• Responsibility for administering the workshops be allocated to the undergraduate laboratory coordinator who also be given an appropriate teaching reduction allowance to run the workshops.

• All new tutors and laboratory demonstrators to attend these workshops as a condition of their employment in the Department.

• All experienced teaching staff are to be encouraged to attend some or all of the workshop sessions every year to share their experiences with less experienced sessional staff. Experience staff are to be invited by a letter of invitation from the head of dept. when the times for these workshops

Dilemmas for you to consider

• How do you tutor your tutors?

• How do we convince full time staff to participate and practice reflective teaching strategies and come to such workshops?

• How can we improve the evaluation of our "tutoring tutors" program ?

• What specific practical activities can you suggest for sessional staff development ?

Acknowledgements

Curtin University Quality Office for funding support for this project.

Mrs Alex Radloff, Curtin University Teaching and Learning Group for valuable discussions on staff development and student interactions.

Mr A. Murphy, Curtin University School of Social Sciences and Asian languages for discussions on staff development and presenting our case in 1994 to a CAUT workshop (Murphy et al., 1994).

References

Coorey, M. (1996, April 3) Case of the 'invisible part-timer'. The Australian, p22.

Loss, R. D. & Zadnik, M.G. (1994). Report on the 1994 Workshop for new and inexperienced physics laboratory demonstrators and tutors. Report SPS 622/1994/AP 40, School of Physical Sciences, Perth, WA: Curtin University Publishing.

Loss, R. D. & Zadnik, M. G. (1996). Reflective Teaching Strategies for Part-Time Physics Tutors. (In preparation).

Murphy, A., Zadnik M. G. & Loss, R. D. (1994). Improving the teaching and learning opportunities in Physics tutorials. Committee for the Advancement of University Teaching Workshop for benchmark projects, Canberra, 9th July 1994.