Teaching Split-level Classes - Graduate Mentoring of Undergraduates |
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Some of my first attempts at teaching split-level classes were plagued by problems that I could have avoided had I been more deliberate in class design. For example, in my first split-level class I failed to manage enrollment so as to achieve a reasonable balance in numbers between graduate and undergraduate students. The graduate students outnumbered the undergraduate students by a ratio of over two-to-one. Most of the undergraduates were conspicuously silent in class discussions that semester and many reported feeling intimidated by the graduate students. Obviously if one is designing a split-level class, enrollment should be carefully managed. Andrew Katayama (2001) writes of the benefits of training graduate students to help facilitate undergraduate learning in split-level classes. He offered two sections of a split-level educational psychology class and analyzed student course evaluations. Katayama structured the class to include a mentoring program in which graduate students helped undergraduates. He found that undergraduates reported greater learning as a result of the mentoring they received from graduate students in the class. But Katayama also found that many graduate students showed ambivalence about their mentoring roles in the class, stemming largely from uncertainty about what being a mentor entailed. Teaching split-level classes has taught me to be aware of various possibilities for peer-level mentoring within the classroom and to try to be more deliberate in structuring my classes to take advantage of what students can teach each other as peers. One improvement that I will make the next time I teach a split-level class is to offer some formal training to graduate students on how to serve as in-class mentors for undergraduate students. Peer mentoring in higher education can take many different forms. Literature on peer mentoring (Colvin and Ashman, 2010) indicates that clarity about the mentoring role is key to a successful peer-mentoring relationship. With a little advanced planning, we can take advantage of the teaching that naturally occurs among students on an informal basis, and channel the power of informal mentoring in ways that benefit both undergraduate and graduate students. |