Authentic and near-authentic tasks for feedback and engaging trainees in a higher education teaching improvement course

Abstract

To develop Higher Education (HE) teaching competencies, actual classroom teaching is considered the best authentic task for feedback. However, authentic tasks and real-time feedback may be impractical due to resource constraints on both training staff availability and teaching opportunities for Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs). In response, curriculum designers are called to design alternative strategies that mirror classroom teaching to facilitate feedback delivery to successfully achieve learning needs. We discuss a case of a GTA training programme where half of the trainees had at first anticipated teaching duties, but became severely reduced in practice with only 2% (n=11) voluntarily requesting tutors to observe their classes to receive real-time feedback. For these cases, we will report on what matched and mismatched between GTAs’ performances within the course compared to their actual classroom teaching. On the basis of one-on-one discussion that took place shortly after each class visit, we will report on what might be the causes of those mismatches as well as tutors’ efforts in setting GTAs a path for further teaching development. For the remaining GTAs who did not have teaching opportunities or did not opt to be observed, we will report on alternative real time feedback strategies we used to overcome this and to meet participants’ needs identified in a pre-course questionnaire survey which revealed 33% of participants expressing their greatest desire in becoming “good” or “effective” teachers. The balance described their desired outcome to be learning about or improving on some specific aspect of teaching such as active learning and communication skills. The training activities to reach these expressed improvements included the design and delivery of near-authentic course activities and assessment tasks such as formative and summative micro-teachings, teaching observation and reflective essay writing. These resulted in over three-quarters of trainees improving in areas identified in personalized feedback comments.