Essential Teaching Principles: A Resource Collection for Adjunct Faculty by Maryellen Weimer

by Maryellen Weimer

Adjuncts enter the classroom as subject-matter experts—but not necessarily as teaching experts. Many face the daunting prospect of quickly getting up to speed on teaching’s myriad responsibilities.

To compound the challenge, formal training for adjuncts is often scarce or spotty at best.

What is an adjunct to do, then, to acquire the skills and knowledge necessary for classroom success?

This book was created to meet that very need. It provides a wealth of both research-driven and classroom-tested best practices to help adjuncts develop the knowledge and skills required to run a successful classroom.

This helpful guide was compiled and edited to ensure student success by Maryellen Weimer, PhD, an award-winning professor emerita of teaching and learning at Penn State Berks.

Featuring contributions from an exceptional assembly of experienced educators,
it is organized into seven chapters, each focused on a core aspect of teaching:

• Mastering instruction essentials
• Designing courses
• Advancing student learning
• Creating an optimal learning climate
• Constructing meaningful assessments
• Giving students feedback
• Teaching online

Throughout the book, readers will find careful examinations of a wide range of issues critical to classroom success. These include:

• Build a syllabus
• Use active learning to keep students engaged
• “Right-size” course content
• Develop meaningful assignments
• Manage a classroom
• Develop a “teaching persona”
• Create a good climate for learning
• Develop effective exams and quizzes
• Protect academic integrity
• Make grading both meaningful and manageable

For those whose work also takes them into the online classroom, there is an entire chapter devoted to the fundamentals of teaching in that space as well.

Compact and reader-friendly, this book is conveniently organized to serve as a ready reference whenever a new teaching challenge arises—whether it’s refreshing older course design, overcoming a student’s objection to a grade, or fine-tuning assessments. And because each of its dozens of articles includes references and resource lists, it’s easy to pursue a given subject in even greater depth.

As an adjunct, enter the classroom as confident in your teaching ability as you are in your subject-matter knowledge. It’s an important step forward in any adjunct’s professional development.

Paperback

Published January 1, 1748

About the author

Editor-in-chief of Teaching Professor since 1987. Penn State Professor Emeritus of Teaching and Learning.
Received Penn State’s Milton S. Eisenhower award for distinguished teaching in 2005.

Past Director of the Instructional Development Program at Pennsylvania State University for ten years. Past Associate Director at the National Center on Postsecondary Teaching, Learning, and Assessment; a U. S. Department of Education research and development center.