UC San Diego · Spring 2025

Teaching Methods: COGS 18 Teaching Staff Training

Spring 2025: Welcome to the COGS 18 Teaching Staff!

Learning takes as many forms as there are learners, and no single formula or framework will apply to every student. Across this diverse array of learning styles, though, patterns have emerged and been studied with decades of academic research. Some are widely accepted, and some are still being understood. The more we know about how students learn and how people teach, the better we (and our students) can approach both of these processes.

Teaching Staff Meetings

This training was created to be able to fit into weekly teaching staff meetings during a course. It has the following timeline:

Week 1 — 1 hour: The instructor holds a two hour staff meeting, one hour of which is general course logistics and anything else the instructor would like to cover, and the second hour of which is dedicated to the teaching staff training Week 1 materials on this site.

Each week — 30 mins: The instructor holds a one hour staff meeting each week, half an hour of which is for usual staff meeting discussions, and the second half hour of which is dedicated to the teaching staff materials on this site.

Then, there are to-dos assigned for each week. These should take each teaching staff member no more than one hour, with the intention that it can be included within their contracted hours (generally 10 or 20 hours per week for each teaching staff member, depending on the contract/appointment) with minimal impact on their other teaching staff duties.

Sources & Acknowledgements

This training has been developed by Annapurna Vadaparty with support from Shannon Ellis, with inspiration from the following sources:

Many thanks to Philip Guo, Sam Lau, Nancy Qiu, and Kumar Vadaparty for illuminating discussions about teacher training and help with the materials presented here.