I've been asked by my department to prepare and deliver a module to 2nd year undergraduates. its in a 8 x 2 hour 'seminar' format (in the humanities) - so there's an expectation that the seminar's are interactive. has anyone else had experience of this kind of teaching? and any ideas for teaching methods and exercises would be much appreciated!!! thank you!

Hello Weetabix!

I was a seminar leader at the start of my second year. I thought two groups of undergraduates (20 in each group approx) during 24 weeks of teaching (2 terms). I marked essays, I was an exam invigilator and marked their presentations and gave them an unannouced seminar test. Short of it, I hated it and dreaded each week. It involved loads of preperation (which took me away from my PhD), dealing with problematic group work with disruptive uninterested students (spoiled it for everyone else really) and one particular mature student who liked to try it on with me-ie question the material I was teaching, saying stuff like, oh thats not what we were taught in the lecturers! ggrrrrrrr. Most of my students would not say very much, so it involved lots of coaching to get them to speak and offer their opinions! I was a complete nervous wreak in the first term, but I got used to it eventually! I found being in that position of power very very strange to deal with! Working within a department and being bottom of the food chain to suddenly being in a position of power, was strange for me!

I divided my teaching into two components 1) a review of the lecture material: question/answer format; 2) discussion of seminar topics/reading material. I wasn't as tough on them as other seminar leaders were. If they couldn't be bothered to read the material, then I was going to spoon feed them. They had an unannoucned seminar test as well, so I managed to catch them out if they didn't read the material! ie mark of ZERO :)

I also intergrated lots of group work, I gave them tasks each week (printed and noted on handouts) to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of seminar reading (in terms of methodology) and got each group to give a presentation of the material.

There were some positives though: break from PhD, develop and improve on my communication skills, add something to the CV, extra pay, experience of running and leading a group (which was EXCELLENT preperation for my focus groups).

I'm not sure I would ever do seminar teaching again-but I guess it's not for everyone!

Good luck :)

thanks pineapple. the teaching that I'm going to be doing isn't attached to lectures, i.e. the weekly seminars are all the students get to learn the subject...so I'm going to be very dependent on them having done the reading for the week.... but I also want to think up as many kind of active teaching methods/ exercises as i can so that if/ when group discussion work does drie up I've got other things to do to keep the seminar going.  i' m also not sure if/ how much lecturing i should or shouldn't do????? in a kind of informal seminar setting, would it be inappropriate to read out say a 20 minute lecture??? and then go on to group exercises??? thank you again!

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The seminars I did were always a week after the lectures. I kind of reviewed the material discussed from the lectures so that they could revise some of it and also to allow them to ask me any questions.....may not have been the best way of running a seminar (it was my first go!) but the students in their feedback liked it!

I read about an 'award winning' exercise for school kids - but would work in this format I guess. It was to look at the Wikipedia article on a certain subject, then go and do the research to correct it/find evidence why it is already correct. might be something to try and may get them involved a bit. Good luck!

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When I was doing my PGCE, the tutors told us to remember two things:

1. The average student attention span is 15 mins.
2. The key to successful teaching is group work.

From experience (as a full time lecturer in a University), I have always found the best approaches to ensure students learn the material is through task or even scenario based group work, supplemented by short 15-20 minute lectures.  with this mix, I have always gained positive feedback from students and very high success rates in assessment.

hope it works out for you.