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Center for Teaching Excellence

ADVANCING MY TEACHING

Teaching Graduate Students

Based on her research on teaching graduate students, as well as her experience as a graduate student at KU, Ann Volin (2003) suggests that what makes graduate seminars successful includes clear goals, adequate preparation and follow-up. Often professors begin seminar preparation with their experience as a student as the sole blueprint. Augmenting that experience with the following ideas can streamline benefits and increase student learning:
  • Model your professional leadership. You are undoubtedly an expert about the seminar topic; thus, your presentation of the seminar material should model relevant skills for teaching, learning and presenting in your profession. A seminar offers the chance for you to relay to graduate students the professional expectations of your discipline. It’s best not to assume that students know what these are—make them explicit.

  • Set clear course objectives. Articulate not only what you plan to achieve for the semester, but also what each session will accomplish so you can judge whether your plan will achieve its intended benefits.

  • Make behavioral intentions clear. What are your expectations for student learning? Do students know what behaviors, attitudes and ideas you hope to address through this seminar? These fundamentals can be taken for granted in a seminar that assumes advanced students, but again, make even these overt. (continued)



"As a new faculty member, the prospect of teaching graduate students filled me with excitement and trepidation. I was excited because I hoped the level of discourse would be higher and the worry about grades would be lower. I was anxious because graduate students would be less satisfied with some of the oversimplified answers we might provide an undergraduate, and the necessity of intellectual backpedalling might seem to indicate I didn’t know the 'right answer.'

Teaching junior colleagues is just as rewarding and difficult as I imagined. I now view the act of teaching graduate students as an act of cognitive apprenticeship. I ask students to look at their own reasoning about research and compare it to my own. I can say we have all learned a few things."
—Paul Atchley

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