Teaching Opportunities

Part-Time Teaching Assistant Position, General Biology

Location: University of Massachusetts, Boston Campus (UMB)

Time Commitment: Fall Semester 2008 (September 2 through December 19, 2008). Opportunities will also be available for Spring Semester 2008.

Duties:

• Teach one three-hour section of lab to 20 - 24 students. Lab sections meet during the week, Tuesday through Friday morning, as well as Wednesday night.
• Grade pre-labs and lab reports.
• Grade the three-hour exams and final exam (usually Mondays 1PM - 7PM).
• Assist in the writing and editing of the exams.
• Attend weekly TA meeting (usually Monday morning).
• Attendance at lectures is not required.

Course: General Biology I (Biol 111) is the first semester course for Biology Majors; for details, see the course website (http://intro.bio.umb.edu/111-112/). The lectures are designed to provide the content; the labs show students how to apply the material. Most of the labs are problem-solving sessions and computer simulations; there is only one 'wet lab'. The TA's role is as a discussion leader. TAs also provide important feedback on the labs; this feedback is used each year to revise the course. The course instructor (Brian White) is faculty coordinator for the TEACRs project, the 2008 recipient of the Chancellor's Award for Distinguished Teaching, and an active educational developer and researcher (http://intro.bio.umb.edu/BW/). The course director will also sit in on lab sections taught by TAs to provide feedback on their teaching technique.

Contact: Prof. Brian White, Course Instructor, brian.white@umb.edu

Facilitator, Problem-Based Learning Program, Tufts School of Medicine

The Problem-Based Learning Program provides 3 semesters of contact for pre-clinical medical students to work in small groups with a faculty facilitator. These small groups of either 1st or 2nd year students meet for 2 hours each week for a total of 11 or 12 weeks during each of the first three semesters of medical school. Each group is assigned a Facilitator, drawn from TMC staff, TUSM faculty, and from a select group of 4th year medical students. All facilitators are required to participate in a 2.5 hour Training Workshop and encouraged (though not required) to attend occasional faculty development programs throughout the year. This is an opportunity to develop skills in small group teaching and learning.

The program involves exploration of clinical cases that cut across a broad range of basic science and clinical topics that parallel the content being presented in corresponding semesters of the curriculum. Cases are presented to students in a manner that requires them to investigate health-related subjects from multiple perspectives, including biology, behavior, population, and healthcare system. The Facilitators do NOT function as content area experts. Rather, the Facilitators function as experts in the Process of Problem-Based Learning, focusing particularly upon guiding development of skills including working collaboratively with others, communication, and critical thinking. Thus, the work of active learning is carried out by the students, who determine the directions they will explore, the learning questions they will research, and the process by which they will discover, critically evaluate, and then present new information back to the group.

Contact: Ralph Aarons, MD, PhD, Program Director, Problem-Based Learning, ralph.aarons@tufts.edu.