As part of their work with the OTLT Center for Teaching, graduate teaching fellows design a pedagogical project based on their interests.  

In this Q&A, we feature Osama Khalid, UI Department of Computer Science, who opted to research, design, and facilitate a campus-wide teaching workshop. Join Khalid for their event, Learn from Your Teaching, on Tuesday, March 21, from noon to 1 p.m. in University Capitol Centre 2390.

What knowledge or skill do you hope participants gain?

The participants of this workshop can gain a range of valuable knowledge and skills that can help them become more effective and adaptable instructors as well as more versatile and adaptable professionals in general. These can include developing a deeper understanding of the transferability of teaching skills and how they can be applied in other contexts. This could include skills such as communication, collaboration, and problem-solving that are essential in many different domains.

Why did you select this topic?

A frequent misconception in academia is that teaching is something that is hyper-specialized and entails non-transferable skills. I wanted to use this workshop to challenge these ideas and illustrate how the skills acquired in teaching—communication, collaboration, problem-solving—are essential in a wide variety of domains.

Teaching is hardly an insular field. The skills we develop during our teaching are easily adapted and applied to other domains.

This reframing of teaching is an important topic for a pedagogy workshop since it not only fosters an interdisciplinary approach to teaching, but it also promotes innovation and flexibility in teaching practices, encouraging instructors to think actively and creatively and adapt their teaching strategies.

In doing so, it also helps promote a more inclusive and welcoming classroom environment that supports the diverse needs of learners from different backgrounds

Is there anything else you'd like people to know about the workshop?

There are many strategies and techniques that educators can adopt based on their needs. This workshop just focuses on one such aspect of teaching: being more interdisciplinary and inclusive. By the end of the workshop, I would like participants to be as excited and passionate about this reframing of teaching as I am.

Register for Learn from Your Teaching.