Just started lectureship - difficult teaching. Experiences?

[MKDons]

I just started a lectureship in a science subject.

The university is great and I have a greatly reduced teaching load but the module I'm running is not in my area of expertise and I'm going to have to revisit topics that I haven't touched since A-levels to brush up enough.

I am hoping that I will be allowed to change the learning outcomes and assignments so I will stand at least some chance of teaching this to an acceptable standard.

I am going to have a meeting with my departmental head and discuss my concerns as well. I'm hoping to just get it over with this year and then be moved to something else, something more appropriate.

I'm just here for a bit of re-assurance and to hear that I'm not alone in this. Have you been given difficult teaching as a new lecturer?

You will be expected to prepare to teach the course as advertised. You need to be able to teach to the learning outcomes and assignments. This module may well feed in to something else next year and the students will need the core of your subject.
Definitely meet with your department head; you may be able to fudge the peripherals but I really doubt you'll be able to significantly shift the expected outcomes.

I also taught a course which was out of my zone when I first started as a lecturer.

At our institution, and pretty much most I suspect, you cannot change learning outcomes or assignments now. The students have signed up to the module as it is and (for legal reasons) the students have to have that delivered in the way it was described. All changes are put through 6 months or more in advance, it used to be more last minute, but we have a committee now who look at module specifications and last minute changes are not possible.

It is kind of part of the deal that the non-filled courses are taught by the newer lecturers/temp staff/where extra time has been given. It's a pain to have to revise stuff before you teach it, but most lecturers have done it, where you literally do the stuff yourself the week before then present it the next week. If it's not a new course, there should hopefully be materials online and textbooks already decided on so it's not all from scratch.

I have been an academic for 20 years on and off. It is very common to teach modules which are not right in your comfort zone. Brush up on it and crack on. You will be fine.

I'm afraid it's too late to change the learning outcomes and/or the assignments. You might be able to make some tweaks, spend longer on some topics than others, but you are rather stuck in the short term.

Gird yourself, take a deep breath and start revising where you need to. It's extremely unlikely that the students know more than you. If you get a question on something you don't know the answer to immediately, just acknowledge that it's a good question, say you need to look into it, and come back to them next week the answer. Are there previous materials you can rely on?

I'm not sure whether it's a good idea to speak to your HOD. I would think that nothing can be done, and I wouldn't start my academic career by presenting yourself as not capable of rising to a challenge.

This is par for the course, I'm afraid. At least you are being light-loaded. It was straight into it with a full load ten years ago! As others have said, teaching out of your comfort zone is part of the job.

You will know more than the students. And, often it can be easier to teach something when your level of knowledge is closer to theirs than to teach something on which you have a high degree of expertise - you're more aware of where the students are coming from.

I agree with NCA18 that sometimes it is slightly easier teaching less familiar topics - as you are re-learning the material you will be more aware of the challenges, be less likely to make assumptions about existing knowledge etc, better at pacing materials. That said it is daunting. It might be worth asking the departmental head about other colleagues who can offer support.

Is it a first year introductory course where you might be able to get hold of an adequate textbook to cover the basics? In my dept, anyone is expected to be able to pick up and run with a first year course because they're so simple foundational. And teaching out if your comfort zone (but broadly

(If it is possible to use a textbook, make sure to get one with decent accompanying lecture slides. And depending on the exam, good textbooks often have question banks of MCQ and other questions in the resources for instructors...)

Gah, sentence inexplicably got cut off.

... teaching out of your comfort zone (but broadly in the same subfield) is normal across all years.

I completely understand that it's usual for new lecturers to pick up unfilled courses the shit no-one else wants

It's a third year module so very advanced so no real chance of learning it all from a text book.

My issue is that I simply cannot teach this material. It's not just that it's outside of my comfort zone where I could revise and wing it, the students will most definitely know much more than me!

I'm meeting with the department head tomorrow about general starting stuff anyway so I'll mention it there.

The module doesn't begin until January so I'm hoping there's scope to do some changes. I don't know when students sign up to modules that start later on in the year.

In most universities module curricula and assessments are set in Feb or March of the previous academic year and cannot be changed at this point.

Students normally sign up to all modules before the start of the academic year. They can often change module choices until just after the start of each semester but universities would be very reluctant to cancel/change significantly a module that students have already enrolled on.

A more feasible option is that they will move you to another module.

It's a third year module so very advanced so no real chance of learning it all from a text book.

I don't think most people would consider third year material in a science subject as very advanced. In departments I've worked in, I would be expected to teach pretty much all the third year material offered. It would indeed often be outside my own specific research expertise but there are usually past notes/assignments/exams to work from.

It's my first academic post so I'm not really aware of the timescales of these things.

It's an odd set-up. Basically we are three disciplines in one department. There are some people who are at the edges of each discipline so can work across disciplines then there are others (like me) who are firmly in the middle of a discipline so research only in that discipline and only have training in that discipline.

So it's a bit like having physics, chemistry and biology all in one department. Physics and chemistry are linked and chemistry and biology are linked but biology and physics are really quite far apart.

It's like me being slap-bang in the middle of physics being asked to teach biology. I did biology at A-level and just about scraped a B. I know nothing about the subject and the students are being taught at third year level so have two years of teaching which the module draws on.

** Not the actual subjects obviously, a massively over-simplified version of the departmental set-up

There are past notes, of course, but they might as well be in Latin!

They draw very heavily on the material students were taught in years 1 and 2 so only make sense if you understand that basic stuff, which I absolutely don't.

I wonder if this is my dep't. I would struggle to teach some out of discipline courses at any level, simply completely unfamiliar with any of the concepts or material. I would talk urgently to the HoD, the best course of action is for the module to be reassigned, it seems odd they gave it to you if it is completely unrelated.

I could teach pretty much most courses within my discipline at a push (and for a job!)

They gave it to me because it needs covering.

The module doesn't need to be as biology-based as it is because it's quite inter-disciplinary in its title so could be much more in my area.

It's been covered by biologists for the last few years so they've adapted the content, learning objectives and assignments to fit their approach, which is completely understandable.

I don't mind teaching it necessarily but I want to take out a lot of the biology material and replace it with physics stuff. However, if I do this then the content of the module wouldn't reflect the learning objectives which is why I want to change the learning objectives.

When I say I want to change the learning objectives, what I mean is that I want to replace two out of eight bullet points that are explicitly about biology, with bullet points that are about physics. I'm not suggesting ripping up the learning objectives and starting again.

All you can do is ask. At our institution, if you acted quickly and grovelled a lot as you have just started, you might be able to make changes after the deadline. In the vast majority of cases, though, once the ILOs and assessments are set, that's it for the year.

Whatever happens, it’s worth suggesting to your department that the learning objectives are revised and made less discipline-specific for future years, so that the module can be picked up more easily by newcomers. We learnt our lesson the hard way on this in my department, and now keep things deliberately broad when writing new module proposals.

This is par for the course - you'll get used to it but it is daunting at first.

I have been an academic for 20 years on and off. It is very common to teach modules which are not right in your comfort zone. Brush up on it and crack on. You will be fine.

This. And if I can be very frank, if a new lecturer came to me and asked what you're preparing to ask, I'm afraid I wouldn't be impressed.

It's very tough competition to get lectureships now, and one of the big shifts when you start in your first lectureship is that you have to get used to teaching outside of your specialist area. In fact, I get quite fed up with new (and relatively junior) staff being precious about only teaching their research area when as a professor I'm expected to fill in around them. No on.

I don't mind teaching it necessarily but I want to take out a lot of the biology material and replace it with physics stuff. However, if I do this then the content of the module wouldn't reflect the learning objectives which is why I want to change the learning objectives.

Unlikely that you can do this a week before term starts. Really, you'll have to suck it up. We've all done it.

In fairness, the OP did say this was for a Jan start so it might be worth a quick discussion.

I know people are saying she should just get on with it, but it's a pretty crap way to teach students, isn't it? Surely people should be teaching the areas in which they have skill and knowledge, rather than having a subject just dumped on you. (And I've taught for decades, so don't assume I have no knowledge.)

I was at uni a couple of years ago and can say that students noticed when someone wasn't clued up on the subject.

We had a lecturer who read off the slides that they had inherited from the previous lecturer who had not long left. They weren't familiar with the terminology, couldn't answer questions or elaborate any further than what was on the slide.

We got through the module but only by the skin of our teeth.

It's frustrating for both sides.

But t00dle00 this is not what is being suggested.

An academic is expected to prepare in sufficient depth for a course that they can explain terminology, answer questions and go further than course notes/slides. It is normal to teach outside your own research area: it is not usually possible for a department to have everybody teaching their own research and simultaneously cover a broad curriculum. What you are describing is somebody who has not prepared adequately for the course and who is not delivering it to an acceptable standard.

The OP may indeed have been asked to teach something so far outside their specialisation that it is an unreasonable request, but this is hard to tell without identifying details being given.

Just like OhtheHillsareAlive, I have experienced quite a lot of junior staff being unwilling to teach things that they are expected to teach.

Thanks for the comments everyone.

Just to be clear, this isn't me being precious about teaching something outside of my research area or comfort zone.

I'm being asked to teach material which is outside of my discipline.

I absolutely don't mind teaching stuff I'm not terribly familiar with. I absolutely don't mind winging it. I absolutely don't mind pushing questions I can't answer back on to students. I absolutely don't mind spending Sunday afternoons revising ready for a Monday lecture.

But this isn't the case here because the material that's been taught in years before is a completely different discipline than the one I work in. I haven't touched material even vaguely related to this stuff since I did my A-levels and even then I just about coped with it.

I'm meeting with the Head of Teaching later this week to discuss changing the Learning Objectives. From a brief chat with her in the corridor this morning, she seemed pretty okay with me doing this because the course doesn't start until January.