Chris Martin. Welcome to this Kosmos Online podcast. I'm Chris ...

was particularly useful was writing recall questions in the margins of the notes. So that’s
probably why you’re providing the notes to the student was particularly useful.
PM. They have something that they can both track the lecture and add their own point of inquiry
to.
CM. It helps them for studying. Do you find that it’s helpful to be very clear about the
prerequisites to your class in advance, for example the mathematical preparation?
PM. I do, I do. Especially that first session of the class, because you’re really setting the
standards of what you as the instructor expect of your students, and also what the university’s
interaction with this particular class is, where does it fit into their program. Setting out those
kind-of ground rules on the first day of class, and I’m not saying bring in your syllabus and go
through it point-by-point, but have some sort of structure in your content that sets those ground
rules out there, so the students should know what they should be expecting, you have them on
the same page of what you are expecting of them.
CM. Very helpful. Well Phil, we’ve covered sort of our four topics. Are there any sort of final
pointers that you want to give to any listeners out there, maybe getting ready for their first class,
anything particular to watch out for?
PM. I’ll say it is a learning process. You will encounter problems that you probably never
expected. The best way to deal with those is don’t become flustered by them, sidetracked by a
problem as it emerges, but figure out how it can fit in and prepare for the future. It’s really
learning by doing.
CM. Well Phil thank you very much for your time. We haven’t covered all the vast realms of
issues, but we hope that we’ve identified a few issues that will be helpful for those of you who
are starting out teaching or maybe have been teaching for some time. So thank you again, and for
more career advice, feel free to visit Kosmosonline.org. Kosmos: connecting the network of
liberty-advancing academics.