Teaching Undergraduates


Teaching Undergraduates

 

Roger Dominowski’s book, Teaching Undergraduates, focuses on how teachers can best organize and plan undergraduate courses, as well as, deliver high-quality instructions to undergraduate students. Dominowski divides the book into four parts. First, he explores course planning and what goes into the process of: (i) determining course goals, (ii) choosing a course format, and (iii) planning a course timetable. The second section of the book examines issues of learning, memory and cognition. Dominowski’s focus here is on understanding the kinds of mental activities that occur during learning, so that teachers can plan courses to reflect the learning needs and mental processes of students. The third part of the book looks at the practical issues of selecting textbooks, preparing lectures and discussions, constructing writing assignments and tests, and choosing an appropriate grading system. Lastly, the book concludes with a section on professional issues and concerns. Specifically, this section looks at ethical issues that can arise in the classroom, as well as, handling special situations such as disabled students and academic dishonesty, and it concludes with a look at the use of evaluations and ways to secure feedback and improve teaching.

 

Overall the book seemed to be a very helpful guide to teaching undergraduates, particularly for beginning teachers. Dominowski structured the book in a comprehensive, and chronologically-organized, manner to walk readers through the entire process of teaching an undergraduate class from the initial planning of the course all the way to using evaluations and feedback at the end of the course for future improvement. Stylistically, the book differed somewhat from other books in its genre in so far as it is mainly written with full paragraphs, few charts, lists, graphs, etc., which I thought was a nice contrast and gave the book an air of greater substance and formality, while still clearly conveying the relevant information in an easy to understand manner.

 

 

Colin Donnaruma (5/13/08)