Teaching our students how to research is essential but often really hard. How can we present research as messy, circular, and iterative without causing our students to freak out and choose the easiest options? How can we help students develop a more holistic understanding of how to move between Google and library search tools? How can we frame research tools and strategies as skills and resources students can carry forward into other disciplines and future courses? These challenges, among many more, apply to teachers in all disciplines and at all levels and they are central questions to the Teaching Research in Undergraduate Education (TRUE) workshop series.
As a collaboration between the English department and the Library, Museums and Press, TRUE is an opportunity to hone your skills, learn new teaching techniques, and connect with an array of professors, postdocs, librarians, adjuncts, and graduate students from across the university.
The five workshops—focusing on how we approach teaching research, narrowing a research topic, search strategies, evaluation of sources, and synthesis of research—will feature guest speakers and interactive activities all geared toward improving our ability to teach research skills to our undergraduate students, skills integral to UD’s General Education Requirements. Attendance will ensure not only a learning opportunity that can be put to use in your courses, but also a great line on your CV, whether you are looking to increase your professional development or make a case for tenure!
There are two options for participation:
1) Become a member of the cohort! Your duties under this option are to come to at least 4 out of 5 of the workshops in the series and be ready to interact with your peers. Attendance of at least four sessions will result in a certificate of completion from the English department. This would be a great line on your CV under the Professionalization section.
2) Become a workshop leader! Do you have great ideas and lesson plans on ways to teach research in the undergraduate course? If so, this is a great option for you! Your duties would be to work closely with Allison Tharp and Lauren Wallis to develop an interactive activity for one of the workshop sessions and then to lead that session. This would be a great line on your CV under the Invited Lectures and Professionalization sections. (Note: workshop leaders can also be participants in the rest of the series.)
If this sounds like an opportunity of interest to you, either as an attendee or a presenter, or if you would like more information, please contact Allison Tharp of the English department (atharp@udel.edu) or Lauren Wallis of the Library (lwallis@udel.edu).
The tentative dates and times for these workshops are as follows: Wednesdays from 2:00-3:30 pm: February 27, March 6, March 13, March 20, March 27. All workshops will take place in Morris Library.
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