Time Savers: delegation as a win-win
Using delegation as a winning strategy for everyone
Delegation does not have to be a one-way street. Thinking carefully about how others may benefit from carrying out certain tasks, or swapping tasks with colleagues can yield possibilities beyond time-saving alone. Do keep in mind, however, that the end responsibility lies with the delegator and does not shift to the delegatee. Below, are some ideas for using delegation as a win-win.
Delegating to students within courses
Student presentations as teaching opportunity
Presentations can be used as a form of peer-to-peer teaching. It can be enlightening for a teacher to give small groups of students ownership over a part of the course content each week, as it brings to the surface potential difficulties well in advance of the exam. For students, there is added responsibility when their presentations become relevant for the exam preparation for their peers. They often enjoy the appeal to their creativity in finding ways to familiarise others with novel and engaging content.
Of course it is important to plan some time afterwards for adding any points that may have been lacking in the presentation, or for further correction or clarification. Preparing a quick checklist in advance, and some note-taking during the presentation should suffice for the teacher, however.
Peer-to-peer feedback
With the help of a rubric, get students to give feedback on each other’s work, before the work is officially submitted. This gives students the opportunity to improve their work with each other’s help. Have feedback-giving students provide written comments in the rubric, with references to pages or quotes from their colleague’s work, where appropriate.
The filled-in rubric is submitted together with the final version of the assignment and functions as a starting point for the teacher’s assessment of the work. Most teachers will recognise a poorly filled-in rubric, and give greater scrutiny to the submitted assignment. In the majority of cases, however, the ground-work will have been done, and the rubric functions as a road map to the assignment. Any new quick comments the teacher adds to the rubric can refer to more elaborate comments already there.
Delegating to Master students
Interlinking courses
Sometimes it is possible to co-design an advanced and beginners’ course on the same topic in such a way that certain teacher tasks of the beginners’ course become assignments for students in the advanced course. Although this does take some intricate planning on a design level, there could be a large pay-off once both courses are up and running.
For Master students, this allows to practice translating their knowledge into an accessible form, whilst gaining confidence about the knowledge they have acquired. Bachelor students may find fellow students less threatening than teachers, and closer to their own lived experiences. Opportunities for Master students to be involved in Bachelor courses as part of their own learning process are plenty. Think of coaching and feedback tasks, presenting specific cases to go with basic theory, creating a rubric, an original assignment, or providing further-reading lists or other documents for the course website.
Master thesis students and delegation
Possibilities to delegate teaching tasks to thesis students in a way that is beneficial for the thesis student will vary greatly from faculty to faculty. However, it stands to reason that you will want the thesis student to carry out tasks that are within the field of their own expertise, and that these need to bring some kind pay-off for the student and their thesis.
It is generally wise to be cautious with delegating to thesis students: the thesis itself takes absolute priority is this stage of their studies. It would be unfair to come to rely upon them for teaching activities, even if these do benefit their work.
Delegating to PhD students
Guest lectures and presentations
When topics are within the area of expertise of a PhD student, it is often fine to ask them to come and give a short guest lecture or presentation. These forms of knowledge sharing are not heavily interaction-based. For the PhD student, this is an opportunity to talk about their expertise to a larger group. For students, a PhD student can offer a current research perspective that they may not experience in every course.
More comprehensive teaching tasks
Although PhD students may be eager to do more teaching, the degree to which there is structural support for them to do so can vary from faculty to faculty. This is also true for the degree to which teaching is a requirement within a PhD programme. Generally, from a teacher perspective, delegating complete classes or lectures to PhD’s should not be considered a time saver. They need (and deserve) your feedback on their preparation and their teaching.
Other win-win tasks
It can be very useful to pick the brains of PhD students when it comes to finding recent academic articles or other texts to use as course materials. A PhD student may like to help formulate an exam question, or suggest a case study. These kind of small requests do not tax them too much above and beyond their research, and can connect them and their work to teaching in a meaningful way.
Swapping and delegating with colleagues
Share your preferences
Of course it is not always possible to swap teaching tasks with colleagues, not in the least because of differences in our expertise. However, for courses that are taught by more than one person, or courses that revolve around the staple knowledge in our fields, it often is. Tasks that we enjoy doing and are good at are often done more quickly.
For each multiple-teacher course, it could be useful to have an overview of likes and dislikes of tasks involved. More generally, the same may be insightful on departmental or programme-group level. (Do note, however, that responsibilities do not shift. So keep a close eye on who does what, and write down any agreement, however informal.)
There may be a preference for correcting certain types of questions, or for certain subtopics within a course. Or perhaps you want to swap invigilation tasks for peer-reviewing the exam. Whatever the task is that you happen to take a specific liking to, it helps to let your colleagues know. Even if swapping does not save you time, it will make spending that time more enjoyable.