Teaching Literature Club: Less gut feeling, more literature
Once a month, NBIS Application Expert Richèl Bilderbeek gets together with other people interested in teaching to discuss an academic paper. It is called the Teaching Literature Club (TLC), and the name kind of gives away the purpose of it: use teaching literature to get better at teaching.
“I started TLC to help me become better at teaching, and assuming I might not be the only one.”
The club is open to anyone. There are no permanent members, and people join when they can and when the topic happens to be interesting to them. So far, the group has been anywhere from one person (Richèl himself) to six, with four being the most common.
“Due to chance effects, we are sometimes left with too few and cancel the discussion for that day,” he says.
The meetings are online and fairly interactive. Richèl finds volunteers to choose a paper and lead the discussion, and keeps track of upcoming meetings, times, and papers on the TLC GitHub page he set up.
A good Zoom setup helps. Reading the paper beforehand? Apparently less so.
“We are quite interactive, and you will be asked for your opinions and ideas. Reading the paper, that is less important :-)”
Why is this club important?
Richèl’s motivation for starting the club is partly that teaching does not always seem to get the same evidence-based treatment as science.
“We should also use the academic literature in teaching, not just in the science we are involved in.”
He has also seen how easy it is to rely on your gut feeling when teaching.
“I’ve always been surprised that, in some cases, we are expected to ‘trust the science’ and familiarize ourselves with it, yet following our (misguided) gut feeling is good enough for teaching. And I know how often and how badly I have been wrong!”
This club is in short for people who want to avoid being misguided by teaching ideas, who do not know much about the literature, who want to test their own ideas, or simply want to meet other people who care about teaching.
During the discussions, Richèl is very good at keeping the conversation flowing.
“I am unafraid to interrupt a long monologue,” he says.
A little stream in the forest
Richel has a master’s degree in both biology and teaching and has worked as both a postdoc and a teacher. He ended up in Uppsala after looking for a position in an EU country with two main requirements: that he did not speak the language, and at a reasonably good university.
“Uppsala was the first to offer me a position.”
As for the future of TLC, he is not looking to turn it into something huge. Instead, “that it trickles forward gently like a little stream in the forest.”
There is no requirement to be an expert, or even to have read the paper beforehand. If you are interested in teaching, you can join.
Interested? Check out the TLC GitHub page and/or reach out to Richèl himself.
