Discipline-Based Teaching

Discipline-specific Teaching Resources

This collection of teaching resources is catalogued on an external Social Bookmarking* site called delicious. These resource links have been selected and curated by experienced Teaching Assistants in each discipline and by our TATP instructors. Each resource has a short description of its contents and is "tagged" with keywords. Please start exporing these resources by clicking on any of the tags below and then select any of the resources or other tags that interest you. Alternatively, you can start by viewing our tag cloud, or using the search function in the top right corner of our site on delicious. There are over 600 excellent teaching resources for you to discover!

* For more information on Social Bookmarking and tagging, please see the 7 things you should know about... guide from Educause.

Disciplines :

Anatomy
Biology
Chemistry
Economics
Electrical & Computer Engineering
Engineering
English
Philosophy
Physics
Psychology

Online Resources for Teaching English

TUTORIALS ACTIVITY IDEAS

General

How To Get the Most out of Tutorials (U of Melbourne)
Site defines and describes the basic functions of a tutorial, including how to prepare for and participate in tutorials. Useful review for tutorial leaders and resource for students.
Questioning Strategies (U of Delaware's Centre for Teaching Effectiveness)
Advice on leading discussion through questioning. Gives practical suggestions on how to form teacher questions and how to encourage students to question as a learning strategy. See 
 

Literature

Norton Literature Online
Browse the corresponding anthology page for supplementary historical, cultural, and textual information. Also find crosswords, quizzes, maps, and timelines for lectures or tutorials.

MERLOT: Multimedia Educational Resource For Learning and Online Teaching
Find peer reviewed online teaching and learning materials on a range of language and literature texts, authors, subjects, and literary periods. Diverse resources for learning activities.

Edsitement – Literary and Language Arts
Lesson plans on wide range of major authors, fiction, poetry, drama, autobiographies, folk tales, etc. Plans often contain audio and image files, & links to archives or web resources.

Teaching Literature: Critical Lenses
Compiled list of general descriptions of and web resources on a range of different literary theories and criticism. Formalism, new criticism, reader response, deconstruction, poststructuralism, discourse analysis, feminist/queer theory, Marxist, new historical, etc.

Writing

ENGL 020E Web Resources For Students (Dept. of English, Western)
Resource page for ENGL 020E students. Gives essay writing (tips), sample essay, methodologies for research, evaluating web resources, and avoiding plagiarism.

Services for Faculty and Teaching Assistants (SDS, Western)
Have a representative from the Writing Centre visit your tutorial, or download over 40 effective writing handouts (form, structure, style, grammar, mechanics, etc.) for tutorial prep or review. Handouts are currently becoming available by podcast.

Writing Resources for Faculty and TAs (U of Toronto)
Advice on how to grade papers, design assignments, deter plagiarism, respond to and evaluate students, help ESL students, etc. Large section containing more resources on teaching writing.

Writing About Literature (The Purdue Online Writing Lab)
Navigate to “Literary Analysis and Criticism" section for information on introduction to teaching literary theory as well as writing analyses of/on poetry, literature, and theory.

 

CLASS MANAGEMENT

Participation/Discussion

Designing and Leading Seminars and Discussion Groups (Oxford Brookes U)
Guided questions, general principles, and activity ideas for tutorial/discussion leaders. Considers question-asking, room layout, learning materials and handouts, and the importance of tutorials and discussion for learning.

Leading Discussions (Cornell U)
Guide to fostering good classroom discussion. Offers techniques for creating class rapport, encouraging participation, facilitating discussion, and using small groups effectively.

Difficult Class Situations

Resolving Difficult Situations (U of Texas at Austin)
Examples of and suggestions for dealing with “difficult” situations, such as nervousness, non- participation, web surfing, sleeping, incorrect answers, technology failure, and disturbances.

Special Interests/Students in Distress

GLBT Classroom Resources for Faculty (U of Minnestota)
Practical advice for managing “hot moments” in the class, providing ground rules for positive discussion, dealing with disruptive students, and confronting identity issues in the classroom.

Responding to Distressed Students (U of California, Santa Barbara)
An in-depth resource for responding to student issues, including academic concerns, anxiety, depression, demanding behaviour, grief, hate crimes, learning disabilities, harassment, etc. *NOTE*: REFER ALL STUDENTS to Western's Ombudsperson office: UCC 251

 
ASSESSMENT

Grading and Feedback

University of Victoria Writer’s Guide (Dept. of English)
Standardized marking symbols and grade explanations. Interlinked explanations of grammar and mechanics rules, literary terms, essay format, structure and style, and documentation.

Grading Class Participation (U of Virginia)
Guidelines on why participation is useful, what participation behaviours to look for and how to give participations marks. “Criteria” chart can be adjusted to for different marking schemas.

Popular Cheating Sites (U of Alberta)
Check popular sites for cheating ideas and/or plagiarized papers. Contains other resources for preventing and detecting dishonesty (see right-side menu).

Rubrics

Humanities Core Course Grading Rubric for Writing
A rubric for grading writing assignments in the arts and humanities. Uses six key features of writing: concepts, rhetoric, thesis, development and support, structure, and language.

The Trouble With Rubrics (Alfie Kohn, English Journal)
A meditation on evaluative rubrics and their effects on learning. Geared towards teaching English in schools but critical points may be valid for university writing rubrics as well.

Teaching Feedback

Teaching Assessment: Practices for Graduate Student Instructors
Information on what is teaching assessment, why mid-term TA assessment is valuable and useful, and how to use teaching feedback to improve teaching. Also contains a number of self- evaluation, student evaluation techniques, checklists, forms, and surveys.


TEACHING AND TECHNOLOGY

Information Technology Services (ITS) at Western
Check the ITS webpage for information on student computer labs, Western Workplace Technology, instructional support, WebCT, Western Directory, and turnitin.com.

Teaching English Through Technology (Western Michigan U)
Streamed video introductions on using technology in the classroom; detailed strategies for teaching with technology, resources on how technology is re-shaping literary studies, and electronic resource and wiki links for teaching writing.
Digital Arts & Humanities - English Literature and Languages
Feed that lists a range of digital arts and humanities projects, articles, call for papers, tutorials, and other resources.


GENERAL RESOURCES

Online

The Voice of the Shuttle: Teaching Resources
Large web bibliography for humanities teaching resources. Scroll for General, Technology, Syllabus and Archives, Centres/Organizations, Journals, and Conferences teaching resources.

English TA Handbook (U of California, Santa Barbara)

Journals

Active Learning Bibliography: Humanities
Print resources for active learning, relating to audio-visuals, co-operative learning, computer aided instruction, debates, field trips, library assignments, role playing, and writing activities.

Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice (TALTP)
[website under construction]

English Teaching: Practice and Critique

English Discourse in Composition

English Education (National Council of Teachers of English)

Language Teaching ( Cambridge)

Pedagogy
An innovative journal that aims to build a new discourse around teaching in English studies. 

Research in the Teaching of English (National Council of Teachers of English)

The Writing Instructor [converting to online]

Books

Teaching and Learning in English Literature by Ellie Chambers and Marshall Gregory (Sage Publications)

Tools for Teaching by Barbara Gross Davis(Jossey-Bass Publishers)
Portions of this book are available online. Improve your teaching performance with the help of these advanced strategies for enhancing students’ classroom experience.

A TA’s Guide to Teaching Writing in All Disciplines(Bedfords/St. Martins)



TEACHING METHODOLOGIES

Think | British Council | BBC Teaching English
A Four Stage Methodology for teaching critical reading skills (David Willis)

Why We Teach Literature (and How We Could Do It Better)
Meditative article by Michael LoMonico


SYLLABI AND OPEN COURSEWARE

Free course materials online, including lecture notes, syllabi, problem sets and solutions, reading lists, exams, and even video lectures in some instances.

Course Syllabi on American Indian Literatures

Early Ibero/Anglo Americanist Syllabus Exchange

MIT Open Course Ware, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Open Educational Resources (OER) Commons

Open Learn Learning Space, The Open University

Utah Open Course Ware Alliance [scroll for English courses]

Utah State University Open Course Ware

Webcast/courses.berkleym ENGL 117s Shakespeare


INFORMATION AND ASSOCIATIONS

Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE)

The Teaching Professor

The Humanities and Arts higher education Network (HAN)
Association of educators and researchers into the arts and humanities committed to the improvement of teaching and learning in those subjects.


CONFERENCES

The International Conference on College Teaching and Learning

Improving University Teaching


FORUMS

English Teaching Forum
A quarterly journal published for teachers of English as a foreign or second language

Prepared by Elan Paulson (PhD Candidate 2008)
April 2008, Department of English, University of Western Ontario