Northcentral University

TEACHINGTIPS In my nine years of experience teaching at NCU, I have been excited about and impressed with students' desire to learn. This impression of my students has had a great impact on my outlook as a graduate instructor and my belief that a good teacher has a responsibility to meet students "were they are" and identify how to best assist the individual student in reaching their course (and overall education) goals. To help me accomplish this, I keep and continuously update a list of helpful resources for each assignment in each course that I teach. Some of the references are aimed at supplementing basic understanding of the assignment concepts. I've found that these are truly helpful in helping students better understand concepts that they have either misunderstood or overlooked. For these students, I can provide my own feedback, but provide these references to illustrate what I've written. Other resources are designed to build on the assignment concepts. For students who have successfully demonstrated their understanding in an assignment, I use these supplementary resources in two ways. First, to provide more nuanced or detailed information or application of the concepts to further Michelle Ackerman, PhD Full-Time Faculty, Department of Psychology student learning. Second, to assist the students in seeing how the present concepts can or will be applied to future assignments (or to the key concepts explored in future assignments). While the bulk of my work with students still occurs through written feedback, having this list of resourc- es helps me work with students' current understand- ing and help them progress. I myself love examples and resources – I spent a lot of time during my graduate work identifying sources for myself. I would start myself with the basic resources (I love triangulating my understanding of a concept as described by one source, with the same concept as described in alternative sources), then identify more complex literature as my understanding grew.

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