The Graduate Teaching Program: coordinator's report - 1995

Abstract

November '96 marks the end of the two-year pilot stage of the Graduate Teaching Program(GTP). Four programs have now been trialled, each lasting a semester and each involving significant variation and experimentation in content and methods. As of November 1996, ninety ANU PhD student tutors and demonstrators have successfully completed a semester-long program of concurrent teaching and training, 56 of them Faculties-based scholars, 34 from the IAS (three of these CSIRO). All Faculties and all Research Schools and Centres have now participated in the scheme, and virtually every teaching Department (including the MBA Program) has had at least one tutor or demonstrator undertake the program. The two-year pilot scheme had three basic objectives: i. to test the level of demand among students and of support among staff for the introduction of a program of teaching support for graduate students; ii. to determine the kinds and level of support (the human and other resources) needed to mount an ongoing program of high quality; and iii. to explore different ways of designing and mounting such a program, with the eventual aim of settling on a model that best fitted ANU conditions.