Start page / Being a Teacher / Teacher's Manual
Studying Student Admissions Information for current students Study Guide Academia FAQ Cooperation Staff Being a teacher Open positions Bookstore Enter the store Contacts Contact information		Enchiridion Praeceptorum - Teacher's Manual 1. What does it mean to be a Praeceptor (teacher) in Academia Thules? -De officio Praeceptoris. The position of the Praeceptor (teacher) is a crucial one within the Academia organisation. He/she is the one who is in daily contact with the students and it is he who usually plans, prepares, teaches and grades the courses and students. His closest superior is the Decanus Facultatis (Dean of faculty), who gives the guidelines for the courses and can assign a Scribae (assistants) from the Facultas to assist the teacher in his work. What makes a good teacher? There is no short answer, but he has to be a fluent communicator, an expert in the field he is teaching in, he has to have some ideas about education and pedagogics. The Praeceptor has to be willing to help the students to finish the course he is teaching. As he usually has quite an extensive responsibility in the planning of the course(s) he should have the ability to see how individual courses link up into a meaningful wholeness. As it is usually he who writes the lessons for the course he has to be prepared to spend some time in this work which is usually more demanding and time consuming than the actual teaching. A good sense of justice is needed when he has to grade the students after the course is finished. The good side of being a Praeceptor is that the possibility to work quite independently in the course and teaching it can be a very rewarding experience. The downside there is the burden of responsibility and the amount of work a Praeceptor has to do. To help him to do his job the Decanus Facultatis should try to offer him any help he needs, within the limits of reason that is. 2. How to plan courses? -De designatione scholarum. Before getting into the actual work of planning a course, the Praeceptor has to be aware of how the Academia works. 2.1 How do the Facultates work? The courses in the Academia are included into different Facultates. For example there is a Facultas Historiae, which includes the history courses. The Decanus Facultatis is the dean of the Facultas and under his supervision work the Scribae and the Praeceptores. Scribae (assistants) are there to help in the planning and preparing of the courses and the Praeceptores are there to teach the courses. 2.2 Ideas and tips for planning the course Where? First take into account how your course is situated within the Facultas, and what requirements the courses before/after your course put on your course. Get yourself familiar with the other courses of the Facultas to build up a coherent course. What? Think what your course's outline will be. How many lessons and what each lesson will contain. Write these down and review the entity they make; does it still look good? How? Think about how to say what you want to say, and what kind of students will you have. Basic-level? Advanced? How much information and details should every lesson contain? Is there something you can put in as additional material? After you have made an outline take some time to review it with the Decanus Facultatis and other Praeceptores in your Facultas. After you have a ready plan, start writing the lessons. It is easier to write one lesson at a time and after it start to write the next. Remember to make sure that lessons make up a coherent entity. When writing the lessons you may at the same time write down a list of possible additional material for each lesson. You should also start to think what questions/assignments you will have for the students and what answers You expect from the students. Write these down somewhere for yourself, they will come handy when rating the students' answers. After you finished writing and have done a couple of rounds checking and have asked opinions from the Decanus Facultatis and other Praeceptores, you have completed the planning and preparing of the course and it is now ready to start getting students for it! 3. How to teach? -De arte docendi Probably, one of the most important things to remember is the fact that every student is an individual. All these individuals have different experiences of life, different views, different ages, different educational backgrounds and there are usually students from many different cultures and countries. The teacher has to be a positive authority over all this, someone the students can trust, someone who they feel they can ask freely about the course's subjects. 3.1 The teaching The teaching itself is both straightforward and complicated. Basically the teacher only has to send the lessons in time, answer questions, ask questions, give assignments and rate them and the student. But as every course is a unique experience there may be quite surprising situations if something goes wrong. Patience, politeness and clear articulation are the most important elements to avoid troubles. Remember that even though you as a teacher are an expert in the subject, there can and will be students who are not and sometimes it just will take some time and effort to make everyone understand the lesson's point. 3.2 Rating and grading Rating other people's work is always difficult, there are always those who are better and those who are not. Academia has given you some guidelines about the distribution of the grades in the courses. Remember to take enough time to consider your judgements and do not do this work in hurry or when you are tired. It is easy to miss a point from an answer of a student who does not write perfect English. And remember, you may always take a private contact with the student and ask him to tell more about his answer. Another important thing to take into consideration is that the students' efforts must be rated based only the work he has done in the course, it should be very clear that political standpoints, personal differences etc. cannot play any part in this work. 4. What to do if something goes wrong? -De angustiis docendi As we are humans there is always the possibility for errors and unpleasant surprises. In these situations politeness, patience and other Roman virtues will help you to manage the situation. You should also be aware of your duties, rights and powers as a teacher. If the student disturbs the course, you can ask him to be expelled from the course. Decision about this is taken by Rector. This course of action should be choosen only in serious circumstances and you have to be prepared to present good reasons and proofs of why it should be done. A student may issue an official complaint about you to the Rector, a Concillarius (member of the CAT/BoD) or the Praescriptor. If this kind of complaint is issued these instances will decide what will happen next. Before getting into any official action it is recommended that you try to solve the trouble with direct private discussion with the student. In case of uncertainty you should always contact your superiors privately and ask them for their views! 5. Some practical things When the course has been accepted by the Academia to be taken into Academia program (that is usually done after the course materials have been prepared) it is time to prepare the course to be offered for the students. The first thing to do is to build the course page to the Academia Thules CMS, that is all the materials the teacher wishes the student to offer for the students. The teacher may build the pages on his own or ask for help from Academia administrative staff. Naturally depending on the amount of material this process might take several weeks. Secondly when the course page is ready, information about the new course needs to be added to the public web-site Study Guide. The teacher needs to ask his Decanus Facultatis about the details how to do this, or the Academia Web-master if the Decanus Facultatis isn’t available. Thirdly, when both the course page and the Academia public web-site are ready it is time to announce the course and open it for student subscriptions. Usually the subscriptions should be started one or two months before the course starting date to give the students enough time to prepare themselves for it, this is especially true in the courses that require the student to buy books. The subscriptions are usually open for until some days after the course starts. Fourthly, when all the students are added to the course, it is time to start teaching!