Training and Orientation
Thank you for teaching at UC Irvine Extension. We hope that your teaching experience is both rewarding and fulfilling. In order to help you be more successful, we have created an online orientation program that will introduce you to UC Irvine Extension, the services we provide to our instructors, and important administrative procedures. In addition, we have several online training opportunities to acquaint you with Moodle (our course management system that we use for online courses as well as for disseminating course materials to on-ground students), teach you how to develop and teach online courses, and introduce you to other technologies that you can use to enhance both your online and on-ground classes to give your students an exceptional learning experience.
Instructor Expectations
Teaching a continuing education course can provide numerous rewards. Of course, instructors are compensated monetarily for teaching, but that’s not the main reason they teach. Most of our instructors are interested in “giving back” – in helping their students gain new knowledge and skills that will allow them to reap the rewards and pleasures those instructors have found in their own careers.
We greatly value our instructors’ energy, enthusiasm, and commitment, and we rely on these characteristics in order to offer high-quality programs and courses to our students. In addition, our most successful instructors bring innovative approaches to the classroom that distinguishes their courses from those of other institutions. Based on the performance of these instructors we have come to have certain expectations of all our instructors that help ensure high quality throughout our programs and courses. Here they are:
Facilitate Student Learning
Your primary job as an instructor is to facilitate student learning. This may involve some teaching in the traditional sense, but is mainly comprised of helping students discover new knowledge for themselves and encouraging them to learn from each other.
Most of our students are professionals with a wealth of knowledge and personal experience. You can tap into this knowledge and experience to enhance everyone’s learning. You’ll be surprised what you can learn from your own students.
Of course, it’s your responsibility to determine how best to approach your course. A highly technical course on database optimization might have more lectures and computer demonstrations while a course on creative writing might have more discussion and sharing of creative ideas. In all cases, it’s good to get students involved in some way – after a long day at work, it’s tough for evening students to sit for an additional three or four hours without getting up and interacting with each other (or participating in an interactive online exercise) as they practice what they’re learning. Also, most of us learn better by discussing or practicing the topics than by simply hearing or reading about them.
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Bring the Real World into the Classroom
The best part of an Extension course is that students can learn from people who have real-world experience. Anyone can read a book about project management or screenwriting, but only a seasoned instructor with personal experience can bring that material to life and provide practical insight in how to handle day-to-day situations that are not addressed in books.
As you prepare your lectures and online materials, think back over your own career and experiences. Find examples that support – or refute – commonly-held ideas about how things should be. For example, a book on Microsoft computer programming can certainly provide details of how things should work, but an instructor who has actually done Microsoft programming can point out problems that the books don’t mention – and show you how to circumvent them!
When you develop and facilitate your course, always think in terms of what students should be able to do after they finish it. Don’t think in terms of what they should know – focus on what they should be able to do. Facts and figures are available from many sources. What is difficult to find – but worth paying for – is an instructor who can provide knowledge and understanding in a way that lets students do something useful with that knowledge and understanding.
Student objectives should always be performance-oriented. Knowing the principles of appraising antiques doesn’t mean much unless you can do it! So, a good student objective would be to “be able to conduct accurate appraisals of the monetary value of antiques.”
Finally, course objectives should be measurable through exams, research papers, in-class presentations and exercises, or other means. For example, a course on Project Management in which one of the learning objectives is to develop a work breakdown structure should actually require students to develop and submit for grading a work breakdown structure!
Most of the other expectations we have are common sense: we expect effective, courteous, communications and a professional demeanor when interacting with students and Extension staff members and, perhaps more importantly, we hope that you have an enjoyable time helping your students change their lives through education.
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