MANAGING

TIME FOR

TEACHING

Dr. Julie Sievers, Director

The Center for Teaching Excellence

Works Cited

Robertson, Douglas Reimondo. Making Time,

Making Change: Avoiding Overload in

College Teaching. Stillwater, OK: New Forums

Press, 2003.

Boice, Robert. Advice for New Faculty

Members. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn &

Bacon, 2000.

First Things: Know Thyself

How are you actually spending your time?

Perception ≠ reality

. . . go research yourself! Gather data.

Track Your Hours

• “to do” list with time stamps

• calendar

• Log or diary

• Time map spreadsheet

• collect 2-3 weeks info or more

Observe Your Habits

•How do you deal with distractions: phone calls,

student emails, internet browsing, meetings,

hallway chit-chat?

•When do you start and stop working?

•Where do you work with greatest focus and

efficiency?

•What time of day do you work best?

•How much sleep do you get most nights?

Articulate Your Values

At its most fundamental level, managing time intentionally is about consciously choosing between two (or many more)

good things. It is about making difficult choices and committing ourselves to those choices. Most

profoundly, using time intentionally is about values conflict, discernment, and commitment. Time is a resource: we must learn to invest our time in what we value—and to say ―no‖– in correspondence with our deepest priorities.

- Douglas Robertson

Identify the Major Areas of Your Life

Include areas you value but neglect

Assign times for each area

There are 168 hours in a week. Work: ____ hrs / wk

Community Involvement: ____ hrs/ wk

Family: _____ hrs / wk

Health / Exercise: _____ hrs / wk

Sleep: _____ hrs / wk

Identify the Major Areas of Your Faculty Work

Assign a Weight to Each Area

Do the Math (for weeks, months, semesters,

or years)

For example: Work: 52 hrs/week*

Teaching and advising: 70% = 36.4

hrs/wk

Service: 20% = 10.4 hrs/wk

Professional development: 10% = 5.2 hrs/wk

Keep doing the math

Teaching: 36.4 hrs/week

-5 office hrs

-4 courses x 3 class hrs/course = 12 class hours

= 19.4 hrs for preparation and feedback

/ 4 courses

= 4.9 prep & grading hrs / course / wk

Translate Values to Your

Calendar

Use a “Sunday Meeting” to block out your week.

Kerry Ann Rockquemore, The Sunday

Meeting

1. Block your time commitments on weekly calendar (hard commitments + values)

2. Create Your To-Do List

3. Map Your Tasks Onto Your Time

4. Make Hard (but Conscious) Decisions

5. Commit to Executing Your Plan

. . . with time to spare

Preparing to Teach

Why Less is More

Good teaching ≠ covering as much content as

possible

If your primary goal is to be comprehensive,

you will probably:

Generate more material than you can actually

cover

Present material at a pace too fast for student

participation or deep engagement

Spend lots of time in painstaking preparation

Some numbers, from the

research: Faculty who focus primarily on providing

comprehensive content tend to spend 10-15+ hrs / week per class (includes prep, teaching,

ofc hrs)

Or 40-60+ hrs / week for a 4-course load

3:1 - 4:1 ratio of prep time to classroom teaching time

In spite of this hard work, these faculty often encounter: Unengaged students

Poor student comprehension

Mediocre student ratings

Personal distress

Traits of “quick starters”

According to Boice’s studies, successful new faculty achieve:

2:1 ratio of prep time to class time

High levels of student involvement in class (taking notes, asking questions, engaging in discussions)

Moderately paced lecturing that allows students to take notes and comprehend points

Brief, tentative lecture notes

Work without rushing and busyness

More time better

teaching

In fact . . .

Too much prep can diminish the quality of your

teaching.

Note to self:

Conscientious teaching

does not require

constant exhaustion.

Strategy 1: Prepare Reflectively

“A growing reflectiveness, especially in terms of audience awareness, helps simplify teaching materials to their most memorable and connectable essentials. As teachers grow more calm and contemplative, they more often organize lectures and discussions into a few central points they hope to make for the day. They replace the additional points they were tempted to make with more examples and applications of the central points.” (Boice, Advice for New Faculty, 23)

Distinguishing the essential from

the inessential

Draft learning objectives (see Nilson)

Reflect on your learning objectives

Consider how they apply to the material at

hand

Consider ways to “cut to the chase”

Solve the “right problem”

“Research distinguishes expert problem

solvers as people who take time to pause and

to consider alternatives, who make sure they

are solving the right problem or answering the

right question.” (Boice 24)

Bonuses:

“A slower, more deliberate style of preparing

and presenting leaves teaching materials less

rigidly structured and more creative, exciting.”

(Boice 24)

Simpler teaching notes, organized around

essential points and directions, lead faculty to

spend less time looking at notes, and more

time eliciting student involvement and

comprehension.

Reflective teaching can lead faculty to say

things more directly , simply, or memorably.

Strategy 2: Prep early and

informally

In Boice’s studies, quick faculty engage in early, informal prewriting, preplanning of classes:

Use pauses in other activities to think about teaching ideas

Begin collecting and connecting materials long before formal planning begins: put notes into files, rearrange ideas and categories in files, look for comparable or illustrative cases, tentatively arrange materials for classroom presentation

Do prewriting or preplanning activities, like creating rough drafts of conceptual outlines, then successively revising these

Talk through their ideas with others or into a tape recorder

Set early deadlines for completing preparations

Outcomes of early, informal

starts

“[efficient] participants translated their

prewritten and pre-diagrammed notes into

class notes well before the [inefficient]

nonparticipants began preparing their classes

of similar dates.

[These] participants [spent] less total time [ . .

.] getting ready for class, usually a savings of

at least half the time spent preparing by

matched nonparticipants.” (25)

Strategy 3: Prep in brief, regular

sessions

Efficient faculty achieve optimal output and well-being by:

Doing teaching work in brief, regular sessions

“Initiating early work in sessions so brief they necessitate no major scheduling of days (i.e. they work at first on early teaching preparations during interstices of already busy schedules). Only later, when early preparations are habitual, are they more formally scheduled.”

Starting and restarting “early, before feeling in the mood, while reminding themselves that once underway, they will feel better about working. One common way of instilling momentum is freewriting; another is rewriting the last part of notes or conceptual outlines produced in the prior session.”

“Brief regular sessions, because brief and

unhurried, help exemplars prepare for

teaching in ways that keep efforts

unpressured, reflective, constant, and timely.

Brief regular sessions keep teaching prep

limited to durations that do not interfere with

other important activities during the rest of the

day, such as exercising, social life, and

scholarly writing.”

Brief regular sessions avoid the three main costs

of delayed, long, and uninterrupted work sessions: (1) the scenario of working under pressure and excitement

until hypomania and its sequelae of sadness and disinterest

set in,

(2) the inefficiencies of preparing materials beyond the point

of diminishing returns, and

(3) the inconstancy of working that bingers evidence” (Boice

40).

How to fit them in? Allot daily time for brief regular

sessions. Schedule them if necessary. Put in

calendar, “to do” list, alarm clock, etc.

Think:

• How do you manage time spent prepping for

class? Name one strategy that has worked for you.

• What is a challenge you face?

Pair up with your neighbor.

Share your success and your challenge.

Think / Pair / Share

Managing Student

Interactions

Don’t Hoard Responsibility

Use Non-teacher instructional feedback – 32

Make students responsible for obtaining

course materials – 41

Require students to monitor their own

completion of course assignments and

Require students to prepare their own study

guides

A Time and Place for Everything

Create a place befitting each activity - 48

Be able to block access to you (leave the

office!) -49

Stick to Your Knitting: Refer to

Others

You do not have to be a:

Counselor – 67

Writing consultant

Computer support desk

Librarian

Short with Many, Long with Few

Use asynchronous communication (email,

voice mail) in ways that control your

interactions with others. (

Don’t always be available by the door, phone,

email : limit immediate access to you- 61

Teach your students your communication

system

Create a time and place to process

asynchronous communication

Limit emailing, etc to the time available

Think:

• How do you control the time you spend interacting

with students?

• What is a challenge you face?

Pair up with your neighbor (the other neighbor).

Share your success and your challenge.

Think / Pair / Share

Grading Efficiency: A Menu of Tips and Strategies

•Walvoord and Anderson, “Making Grading More Time-Efficient”

•Sinor and Kerney, “Ten Simple Strategies for Grading Writing”

•Barbara Gross Davis, suggestions on peer feedback from Tools for Teaching

Using Feedback Rubrics to Provide More Feedback in Less Time

•samples from Stevens and Levi, “Grading with Rubrics”

Grading Efficiently