It seems a series on teaching issues is emerging here. The purpose of the series is to help you gain some perspective on how you spend your teaching time and whether there are things you could try that would give you a better balance between teaching and research while still giving value to teaching. My goal is to help you be the kind of academic you want to be without being overwhelmed and overworked. Read other posts in the series here.

Teaching takes more time than you think

One of the things about university teaching is that no one else in your life believes that it takes lots of your time.

On paper, it looks like you teach 6 or 9 hours a week.*

And that perception might be what causes the stress you feel. I hope you don’t think there is something wrong with you that you only have 6 hours of teaching a week and still can’t find time to do any research.

*Most tenure-stream faculty I’ve come across teach either 2 or 3 courses a semester.

Looking at contact time is a student’s perspective on teaching.

Most people have been students of some sort during their life. So their perception of teaching is a student’s perspective.

Every hour of contact time requires a few hours behind the scenes.

We’ve already talked about preparation time.

You need to prepare. It takes time. But go reread that post if you think maybe you are doing too much of the wrong kind of preparation.

I’ve also talked about grading.

You need to assess student’s learning. It takes time. But go reread that post to figure out if you could take less time and still do a good job.

Today, I want to talk about time spent engaging with students outside of the classroom — responding to questions, helping with problems, etc.

Being available

There are all kinds of reasons why you need to be available to students outside the classroom.

Some students will have difficulty understanding some parts of your course.

This does not mean that you are a bad teacher. It means that you can’t reach all of the people all of the time.

So you have various means of enabling those students to ask questions outside of class time:

• Fixed hours when you are available in your office for this purpose
• An e-mail address where they can contact you
• A space in the electronic course software your institution uses

You are allowed to limit your availability

You don’t have to be available to students whenever they want to come and see you. Students just need to know when you are available.

There are probably local norms (or even contractual obligations) about office hours. Do not exceed them.

Choose times that fit with your schedule but will probably work for students.

If you find that students tend to grab you after class, then schedule an hour after one of your classes and make sure they come to your office with you. This will train them to come to the office at specified times.

Be firm

Announce your policy in the first session and remind them part way through the semester or when there might be a flood of requests (e.g. when handing back assignments).

When you do this, you can educate them that you teach other classes, you need to prepare for classes, and that you have other contractual responsibilities including research, committee work, etc.

You are not apologizing, merely socializing them into an environment that is not the same as a school environment.

If students come to you at other times, firmly but nicely remind them that you are not available right now but will be happy to see them during your office hours.

Exceptions can be made for the rare cases that genuinely cannot make your posted office hours. But these cases are not students who just couldn’t be bothered coming to your office hour and want to see you now.

You are not a cardiac surgeon. No one will die if you do not solve their problem immediately.

Setting boundaries is almost always appreciated.

Boundaries make it easier for students to come and see you.

While a very small minority of students seem to think that your reason for living is to answer their questions, it is more likely that students are reluctant to come to see you for fear that their questions are stupid, that they are wasting your time, or that you will be annoyed with them.

Providing set times when you welcome students to ask those questions enables students who really need help to ask for it.

And training the small self-centred minority to respect other people’s time is a service to them in the long term. Sooner or later they will have to learn. It might as well be now.

E-mail doesn’t have to be instant

The same thing goes for e-mail and other forms of electronic communication.

You don’t have to answer questions as soon as they are asked. You just have to answer in a reasonably timely manner.

Set up a folder for each class you teach in your e-mail program and then make a rule (again in your e-mail program) to put all messages from people in that class in that folder. (If you need help with this, ask a colleague, administrator, or even a tech savvy student.)

You can even set up an auto-reply for those messages to let students know that their e-mail has been received and you will respond within a week (or whatever your time frame is).

Then schedule some time to go into those folders and read and reply to student queries. Maybe twice a week.

Again, make students aware of this policy in the first session of the semester. You might say something like “I am happy to respond to questions by e-mail. I endeavor to reply within 3 days.”

A couple of weeks before assignment deadlines you might want to remind them that it is pointless to e-mail you the day before the deadline because you don’t respond to student e-mail every day.

Their lack of planning does not constitute an emergency for you.

Bring common questions to the classroom

Whether they come by e-mail or in person, if something seems to be coming up a lot, revisit it in class.

View the students that make the effort to ask as the tip of an iceberg. If several of them are having the same problem, you can bet there are others in the class who would benefit from you going over whatever-it-is again.

If you have an e-noticeboard or a means of sending a notice to all students in a class, once you’ve decided to do this you can announce it so that others planning to e-mail you individually or come to your office hours don’t have to do so. That saves both of you time.

You could also send an e-mail response to the whole group so that everyone is clear.

If you decide to respond to a group of students together, make sure to put their e-mail addresses in the BCC line so they don’t know who else asked the question. You don’t want to be perceived as humiliating people by announcing to the class what they didn’t understand.

Other useful policies

It is also helpful to be clear, right from the outset, about what kind of support they can expect.

I used to be very up-front with students that if they didn’t attend class regularly, they could not expect more than cursory help in office hours.

You are not required to provide private lessons.

You put time and effort into preparing classes that you expect will help them learn the material. If they choose not to attend, they cannot expect you to provide that content individually.

The flip side of this is that if someone attends regularly and does the assigned reading and doesn’t understand, I was always willing to spend lots of individual time with them to help them with whatever difficulties they were having. Sometimes it just doesn’t click.

I am also strongly in favour of being firm about grades.

It is perfectly acceptable to say that you will not change grades. This kind of policy works better if you have clear criteria and if you moderate your TAs grading so that there aren’t arbitrary differences between markers. But you are assessing their performance on a specific evaluation task. That’s it.

That isn’t to say that you don’t welcome students questions about how they can improve their performance in future assignments. Or that you won’t clarify for students how the grade was arrived at.

Having time during class to go over the general issues, talk about common problems and the kinds of things that stood out in the best papers will also prevent a flood of individual queries.

Pick one thing

You don’t want to be one of those grumpy inaccessible profs. But you do want to be able to do all of your work in a reasonable number of hours a week.

If all of this feels overwhelming and difficult, then just pick one thing and try to implement it next semester.

You might want to start with the thing that you find most stressful.

For example, if students challenging grades really upsets you, then decide which things you could do to reduce the number of challenges.

But you could also start with the thing that would be easiest to do.

Yep, I said the easiest.

Maybe you find face-to-face conflict difficult. (Lots of people do. Don’t worry about it.) So the thought of being firm with students who turn up in your office outside of office hours causes more stress than actually dealing with them.

But setting up e-mail rules and scheduling time to deal with student e-mail feels manageable. So do that.

Start with the easiest thing. Implement it. And then the next semester you can add one more thing.

You have a 20 or 30 year career ahead of you. There is plenty of time to make this work better.

Are you within 12 – 18 months of finishing your dissertation?

I know that’s a hard question. And you can’t really know with any certainty.

But do you feel like you are approaching the end of this process?

One possible next step is a post-doctoral fellowship

SSHRC has a program.

Many universities have internal funds for this purpose.

The deadlines for this year have passed. But that’s okay, because I’m suggesting you start now to apply in fall 2010 and start a fellowship in summer 2011.

Even if you are closer to finished or have already defended your dissertation, you may still be eligible. Read on. It’s not too late.

A post-doc should not be a parking lot

A post-doctoral fellowship is a way to dedicate a year or so post-PhD to really establishing your program of research without the extra challenge of also trying to establish new teaching responsibilities, and participate fully in collegiate governance.

Now that you have a good sense of what your doctoral dissertation is about, you can start thinking about where you want to go next with your research.

• What are the big questions that interest you?
• What specific questions are arising out of your doctoral research that could be explored further after the dissertation is finished?
• If you were to examine more sources or collect more data to investigate those questions, what would those sources be?
• Are there any skills that you need to pursue your research questions that you didn’t gain during your doctoral research?

Pondering these questions will not only help you frame a solid post-doctoral fellowship application, but they will help you put a firm boundary around the doctoral project.

If you know what you will do next, you will be less tempted to squeeze extra stuff into your doctoral dissertation. And that means actually finishing it.

A post-doctoral fellowship is an opportunity to expand your training and gain new experience and insight

One of my clients did her PhD in a relatively traditional history department. But her research interests include public history and using new web-based technologies to communicate historical knowledge to a broad audience.

In our discussion we talked about using a post-doctoral fellowship to work with someone with strengths in digital humanities to improve her skills in this area and get her firmly on this new path.

Another client decided that his research program would benefit from working with established scholars who knew his field study area but brought knowledge from different disciplines to his questions.

He devised a post-doctoral fellowship proposal that is strongly based in a particular region. He’ll be collecting new data while learning to analyze different types of data and building relationships that will underpin a longer term program of research.

Building a strong fellowship application

Most post-doctoral fellowship funding requires that you work with a new supervisor in a different institution from where you did your doctoral studies.

And the evaluation criteria include the fit between your project and the proposed place of tenure. The reference from the proposed supervisor is also heavily weighted in the evaluation process.

Your past performance, including past awards and fellowships and the duration of your doctoral studies, are also evaluated but there isn’t much you can do about them apart from making sure you get your dissertation finished in a timely manner.

The other main evaluation criteria is the quality of the proposal, based on the likely significance of the contribution to knowledge.

Defining a next project

A post-doctoral fellowship is only 12 to 24 months in duration. That said, it is 12 to 24 months when you are primarily focused on research. You have no teaching responsibilities nor any significant service obligations.

The project needs to be more than just getting publications from the dissertation out, though you will also be doing that during the tenure of your fellowships.

It needs to advance your program of research and make a significant contribution to knowledge. Not earth shattering or paradigm shifting, but a contribution none the less.

You can frame the project in relation to the big questions that drive your research, but you need to focus on one specific question that you are going to investigate during the fellowship.

Initially you are likely to think of this in terms of what you want to do — data you want to collect or analyse, an article you want to write — but you then need to ask yourself why you want to do that.

What contribution to current debates in your field do you hope to make by doing the proposed research?

Finding an institution and supervisor

If you start planning now, you have lots of time to research possible supervisors and institutions. And to build a relationship with the researcher(s) that you want to work with.

That researcher might also have a strong positive contribution to make to the design of your post-doctoral project.

And if they turn out to be the kind of researcher that is looking for disciples rather than collaborators, you have time to change course and find someone whose approach suits you better.

Other sources of post-doctoral funding

In your search for a good place to work as a post-doctoral fellow, you may also discover other sources of post-doctoral funding.

The supervisor you would like to work with might have access to internal funds at their institution.

Or they might have a research grant that could be used to fund a post-doctoral fellowship.

Or they might be preparing to apply for a research grant in the fall with an objective that could include your project. It might be possible to work together on the supervisor’s grant proposal and include funds for a post-doctoral fellow in the budget.

This last option does not have to mean a loss of autonomy. It is not uncommon for a SSHRC Standard Research Grant proposal to have 2 or 3 specific objectives under the main objective. And one of those specific objectives could be a discrete project that contributes to the more general objective but is your project.

In addition, working with an established researcher on an SRG application is great experience for you that will serve you well when you do get a tenure-track position.

You have choices

Although the circumstances are not always of your own choosing, you do not have to relinquish control of your future to those circumstances.

If research is important to you… If you want a career in which research plays an important role… Then you need to define your research program and prepare yourself to take advantage of opportunites that arise.

Clarifying your research goals and building relationships with people who can help you achieve them is an important first step.

Even before you have finished your doctoral dissertation.

Need help?

If you think this sounds like a good idea but you don’t know where to start, I can help.

A 1-hour career coaching session is only $150.

In one session, you will be clearer about where you want to go and have concrete steps to take to get started.

We can also deal with some of your anxieties around the process so your job search is starting from a position of confidence instead of quiet desperation.

In my last post I suggested that teaching might be taking up more time than it needs because you are using more preparation to deal with anxiety.

In that post, I talked about the anxiety caused by insufficient or inappropriate training for this aspect of the job and ways to get the support you need to reduce the anxiety so created.

Today, I want to talk about another potential source of anxiety related to teaching — your personality.

Introversion/Extroversion

One element of personality that comes up in many personality tests and profiles is introversion/extroversion. As I understand it, this element is considered as a continuum and everyone falls differently along this continuum.

The key issue is whether you are energized by being with people or by being alone. Not whether you can do it but whether being with other people gives you energy or drains your energy.

I’m quite a ways down the extrovert end of the continuum. Putting me in a roomful of people actually gives me energy and allows me to access all kinds of stuff that’s already in my head. Any anxiety or worry I might have before I go into the room seems to magically disappear.

If I’m feeling kind of down and irritable and I have a party to go to, I know that if I just get myself out the door and to the place where the people are, I will perk up.

Folks at the introvert end of the continuum are probably horrified at the thought of doing any of that. For them, spending time with lots of other people requires mental and emotional preparation.

They might really enjoy teaching and other group activities but they need to spend time alone to get the energy to pull it off. And they probably need more time alone afterwards to replenish their energy reserves.

At a conference, an introvert might take advantage of the lunch break to go off for a walk by herself. Whereas extroverts like me enjoy the opportunity to socialize over lunch.

I’ve described extremes and you might fall in the middle. The point is to notice when and how interactions with other people trigger anxiety or drain your energy and then plan for that.

What does this have to do with teaching?

Teaching is an activity that involves lots of interaction with others. And most of our teaching is in rather large groups.

You might find that the size of the group matters. Facing a lecture hall of 300 students isn’t the same as a seminar of 15. And it isn’t just that the seminar is more likely to be on your specialized area of knowledge.

If you are more at the introvert end of the continuum, you might find that teaching requires particular kinds of preparation.

Yes, you will need to know the material and have a good sense of what you plan to accomplish (and how) in the classroom.

But you might also need to schedule time by yourself immediately before you teach, to emotionally prepare yourself and store up a bit of energy to take you through the class.

That time might not be focused on reading your notes or anything that you have come to think of as “preparing for teaching”.

It might involve things like:

• just sitting and taking some deep breaths with your eyes closed
• meditating in a more formal way
• doing a few yoga poses
• listening to some music
• going for a walk on your own.

And you might spend up to 30 minutes doing that. And maybe a similar amount of time afterwards.

It may take some experimentation but you’ll know what you need based on how you feel before and after a particular class.

I don’t have time for that!

I suspect that spending “work” time in this way will feel, initially, like “wasting” time.

However, focusing on your emotional and energetic needs in this way is likely to make the actual teaching in the classroom more effective. You will be more present and have more energy for the task.

It is also likely to reduce the amount of time you spend on content preparation. If you are overpreparing content to address anxiety, addressing the anxiety head on (through gentle attention to your needs) can reduce your preparation to what is necessary to get the students to learn.

Not to mention the time that being too worried and anxious to really get any work done takes up in your day.

How does this help me achieve my research goals?

You can’t achieve your research goals if you are spending all your time teaching, preparing for teaching, and worrying about teaching.

Having time for research is probably the most frequently mentioned barrier to achieving research goals that I hear. Even from people with relatively light teaching loads.

While “time management” sounds like some simple administrative task, difficulties managing your time usually arise for good reasons. With this post, and the last one, I am suggesting some possible sources of difficulty in limiting the time you spend on teaching preparation.

You can be a good teacher and still have time for research.

Teaching is an important part of your job. And you are committed to doing it well.

At the same time, you often resent how much time it takes. And feel like you really wish you had more time for research than you do right now.

It’s like the bookshelf problem.

You know, your bookshelves are packed so tight you have double layers of books and ones stacked sideways on top of other books to fill that space between the top of the books and the shelves.

So you decide that if you bought more bookshelves, there would be space. They’d be more aesthetically pleasing. Maybe there would even be space for a vase or something on one of the shelves.

You go and buy another bookshelf. And now you have more bookshelves that are completely stuffed with books. How did that happen?

Teaching prep expands to fill the time available

Just like the books. Once you have space for them, you acquire more.

And, just like the books, teaching prep is a really important part of your academic life.

But sometimes, there are books in there we no longer want or need. Books we could give away to make room for other important books.

Today I want to talk about some of the ways that you might be spending time on teaching that isn’t required for you to do it well.

How does teaching make you feel?

Seriously.

Do you look forward to it? Or do you dread it? Or something in between?

Here’s the thing. Sometimes we try to ease anxiety by doing more preparation.

It doesn’t always work. Which can lead to a vicious cycle in which you overprepare, the students don’t get it, your anxiety increases, so you do more preparation …

I saw this happen to someone once. The outcome was not pretty. She was stressed. The students didn’t understand. She wasn’t getting any research done, which meant her job was on the line. OMG. It was awful.

Sorry. Didn’t mean to increase your anxiety there. But spending more time preparing might not be the answer.

Nobody trained me to do this!

I actually got some training in teaching and learning. I started my first academic job in the mid-90s, a time when UK universities started providing some resources for new faculty. And I worked at a University where the course was run by an HE specialist in the education department.

Nevertheless, the dominant mode of thinking about teaching in higher education remains (even in the UK) that content knowledge is the most important element.

I find it astounding that comprehensive exams are often justified as important preparation for future teaching.

Given that kind of organizational culture, it isn’t really that surprising that people overprepare. And focus on content.

Sometimes less really is more. Especially when teaching lower level undergraduate courses, the nuance can confuse. Spending time thinking about how to pare down the content to the essentials can be more productive in the long run.

Your anxiety is completely understandable.

Stress is caused by uncertainty and perceived lack of control.

Your lack of training in how to teach creates anxiety about teaching.

Going into a classroom as an “expert” when you feel like you have no clue causes a lot of stress. And let’s face it, you aren’t always teaching in your area of expertise.

The fact that your job security depends on good teaching evaluations just adds to that stress.

To deal with the anxiety, address the anxiety.

Spending more time on content can be a diversion.

Getting support for teaching

Believe it or not, support is probably available in your institution.

Many universities now have a centre for teaching and learning or something. And those centres are staffed by people who can help you with your teaching process.

You are the content expert. Even in areas that are not your research focus, you have enough knowledge of your discipline to teach an undergraduate course well. Which is why ABDs and other folks with no PhD are teaching so many courses as sessionals and adjuncts.

The folks in the centre for whatever they call it, are experts in the process. They probably have books you can borrow, run workshops, and even do individual consults.

They probably have no formal connection to your department. So no one on your tenure committee is going to know you went there. Not that it would harm you chances or anything, but if that is a concern, don’t worry.

You can also create your own support.

You are not the only one who is anxious about teaching and having some difficulties.

Find a colleague who will be your learning partner.

Learn about effective teaching methods together.

Observe each other’s classes and provide constructive feedback.

Act as sounding boards for each other when things aren’t going well.

And celebrate together when things are going well.

Your learning partner doesn’t have to be in the same discipline. In fact, having someone from a completely different discipline can be eye-opening.

I have two friends who continued this practice for years. One was a visual artist, the other a chemist.

In your first year or so, teaching will take a lot of time

While you should be able to find a rhythm that enables you to continue your research program during term time, that might not be the case during the first year or two of a tenure-track job.

You have all new courses. You are living in a new city. You have to figure out how this institution works.

There are circumstances at the beginning of your career that legitimately take time.

However, you can make sure that time is spent doing things that will actually enable students to learn stuff from you.

And you can begin as you mean to go on, reducing your anxiety around teaching so it takes an appropriate proportion of your time.

So, I’m hanging out on Twitter the other day and this question came up.

My initial answer was “Because you are too close to it?”

In other words, when you have just written a whole book, it is perfectly normal to find it hard to summarize it in 30 words.

Why write a 30-word summary?

Probably this requirement is coming from your publisher. It might even be in a document called a Marketing Questionnaire.

The word “marketing” has probably already got your hackles up. Eww. Ick. Slimy.

It certainly doesn’t feel like a priority for you. Not very intellectual. And associated with a lot of questionable practices.

The first thing to do is to find another word or phrase for marketing so you can feel better about answering all those questions.

After all, you are in the enviable position of having a professional who works for the publisher doing a lot of the actual m******ing work. You are just giving them some good information to use.

Getting in the right frame of mind

Put the questionnaire aside. Take a couple of deep breaths. Make sure you have a pad of paper and something to write with handy.

More deep breaths. Relaxed?

Now, think about why you wrote this book?

Who needs to know about your research?

What other books are out there that left you feeling, “If only they knew about this research I’ve been doing …”

What kinds of conferences have been particularly receptive to your work? Who will be really excited to know that the book is now ready?

You’re writing down all the ideas that come to mind, aren’t you? Even half-formed ones?

Helping people find your book

When you write the summary, think of the reader.

You can’t possibly personally meet and recommend your book to everyone who might find it interesting and/or useful. Not at conferences, not on e-lists, not at book signings, though there won’t be many of those anyway.

I know it is hard to imagine that complete strangers might want to read your book. But you have read books by people you’ve never met, so why not?

What is this potential reader looking for that you want them to read your book to answer?

What keywords are they using in the library catalogue or other database?

If they are skimming the publisher’s catalogue, what words will grab their attention and make them stop and read more carefully?

A summary invites people to read the book

Of course it will lack the nuance of the longer analysis.

This is probably what feels uncomfortable as you write the summary. The nuance is important to you. That’s why you wrote a whole book.

And the nuance will be important to your reader once they are actually reading the book. That might be what makes them recommend it to others.

But the nuance isn’t what gets the reader’s attention. The general topic, the main theoretical approach, the key interpretive themes … these are things that interest people in reading the more nuanced version.

Someone else might find it easier

Even with the right frame of mind and a bunch of notes based on my questions, you might still find it difficult to write.

Don’t worry. This is normal.

Maybe someone else can help.

Your partner or a close friend has probably heard a lot about this book as you wrote it. You’ve chatted to them about the details, the difficulties, the importance … They’ve lived with you through the whole process.

But they haven’t been in the process the same way you have.

I bet they wouldn’t find it hard to write a 30-word summary at all.

Editing is always easier than writing the first draft

You know this from the writing process so apply it to the summary.

Ask your partner or a friend (or both) what they think your book is about. Either have them write it down or you write down what they say.

This is your draft. Now edit it.

Keep the audience in mind: a potential reader who needs to know if this is worth reading in general terms.

Take this new attitude to the rest of that questionnaire

No, the marketing folks are not interested in the nuance of your argument or the details of your empirical evidence.

They want to know

1. who you want to speak to
2. where to find those people, and
3. what words will get their attention.

Yes, they care because they want to make money.

But you care, too. Because you want others in your field to listen to your arguments and engage with them. You want people to know about the empirical evidence you have found. You want them to know what this might mean.

Good luck.