Prof. Kristin Stephens-Martinez

When I learn about an amazing new teaching practice, I often get excited about the wonderful possibilities it offers to improve my students’ learning. However, as I dig into the details, doubts start to creep in. Is this practice possible for me to pull off? How would I do it with my N students? How would I do it if I only see the students M hours per week? At some point, I might give up because I can’t think of a way to make it work, which leads to my last step of self-doubt: “maybe there is a way, but I’m not creative enough or a good enough teacher to think of it.” I have lost count of how many times I have felt this frustration and self-doubt. [ Also posted on Medium. ] When we share teaching ideas, we often omit basic context. That makes them harder to interpret and apply than they should be. Moreover, it places a heavier burden on the recipient of the idea to determine whether they can apply it in their context, because the teaching idea is often shared via one-way media such as ...

TLDR: This post is a behind-the-scenes look at a task tracker I’ve developed over years of managing teaching teams (from 3 to 36 teaching assistants). I share examples of the task lists we use each semester, plus templates for modules, exams, and weekly tasks. You’ll also get insight into how I design the tracker to streamline work and support my team. [ Also posted on Medium. ] I’ve written two blog posts about how I track tasks: my to-do lists and my teaching team’s to-do lists . But both are kind of abstract. I write about the things that go into them, but no concrete details. And I did this because I didn’t want to presume others’ contexts. However, that abstractness never fully sat well with me because, when it comes to learning, sometimes concrete examples or case studies are essential. So, this blog post introduces an example course teaching staff task tracker in a Trello board . Screenshot of some of the lists in the Trello board. This post is an experiment to see if peopl...

 While going through my mid-semester survey this semester, I discovered an expert blind spot in myself. One variation of an expert blind spot is where an expert forgets to convey information that is vital for a novice to understand something. In my case, my survey reminded me how important it is to help students connect the dots by explaining why we are doing certain things in class. And one way to do that is by going over the class plan for the day. [ Also posted on Medium. ] So, I thought I’d write this post to remind you all of this little teaching practice. Perhaps you already do this, so here’s a reminder of why. Or, perhaps, you do not, and this is your invitation to try it since it does not take that much time to implement. The Practice: Class Plan for the Day The practice is where you start class by summarizing the plan for that day in a single slide. I do this practice with a slide called “Plan for the week/day” in my large (N = 80–120 students) elective data science ...