Kendall Belopavlovich, PhD, (they/them/theirs) is the assessment and curriculum coordinator for Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa Community College, located in L’Anse, Michigan.

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve received regarding the continuous improvement of teaching was as an undergraduate student, when I didn’t even consider teaching as a possible future function of my career. It was in the middle of a discussion with a humanities professor, where we were both reflecting on our experiences of participating in a course he had taught for the first time. In my role as a student, I greatly enjoyed the course and the challenging reading material: it turned me on to the idea of grad school and possible areas of research. For him as the instructor, it was a blunder through continuous spurts of adjustment and gaps of pedagogical experience.

My professor loved the content he was teaching but remarked that he often didn’t know the right questions to ask the class, or how to properly synthesize the readings into digestible talking points for lecture. So, during that reflective conversation with him about the course, he told me: “You need to try out a course once before you have an opinion on it, and then again to start getting the hang of things, and then a third time to really hit your stride.” I nodded and agreed as though I understood at the time.

I did not then, but I do now!

For the past three years, I’ve taught Introduction to Public Speaking and Multimedia—HU2830 at Michigan Technological University—which is akin to most introductory-level communications courses. Reflecting on my experience of teaching public speaking with the support of W. W. Norton and Contemporary Public Speaking, I’ve realized that, while my professor’s advice rings true, so does the fact that the level of instructor-based support I’ve received from Norton all this time has helped me hit my stride much sooner than year three. Despite being a first-time instructor of public speaking in 2023, I was awarded a notification from my previous institution that I had attained student evaluation feedback scoring in the highest 10th percentile across all campus units, which includes more than 1,000 unique course offerings per semester. I have Norton to thank for that, and now some resources to direct you to.

I would encourage any instructor using this textbook to discover for themselves everything offered for instructor support, because it’s a lot! However, the remainder of this blog post will be dedicated to highlighting the resources I personally recommend to first-time instructors. They will help structure course planning, provide guidance on assessment, and offer activities to reinforce student learning.

1. Norton Teaching Tools Website: This repository of resources is like having a dedicated, passionate team of experienced instructors all sharing their best practices with you at once. There are many resource types, including a set of five sample syllabi from previous instructors who’ve adopted the textbook (myself included). One of my favorite resources are the chapter lecture slides, which provide a quick and easy way to structure a lesson plan around a short lecture. Finally, I recommend reviewing sample assignments and rubrics, which can be a tremendous resource in course preparation and planning—especially if it’s your first time!
   
2. Testing Materials (InQuizitive, Plagiarism Tutorial, Test Bank): These materials should make you want to relax . . . a lot. Each textbook chapter has an associated InQuizitive activity, an online adaptive learning tool that tests student comprehension of the material and provides answer-specific feedback for all responses. Furthermore, each activity is customizable, allowing you to select learning objectives, the number of questions, and assignment due dates, and you can view activity results under the Instructor Dashboard. By assigning your class an InQuizitive activity prior to a lecture, you can assess what content needs to be addressed the most during class. For example, I assign Chapter 1’s InQuizitive activity before the second day of class. I can see in my LMS Canvas how many students have completed the activity and, by going to the Instructor Dashboard, I can identify where students are struggling with textbook content, leading toward more focused classroom lectures and activities. Students are expected to reasonably complete the assignment within 30 minutes after reading the assigned chapter, and activities are generally worth 5 points each.
   
   By extension, the plagiarism tutorial is a one-off activity that is best delivered when students are reading Chapters 6 (Topic and Purpose), 7 (Evidence and Reasoning), and 8 (Research and Citation) of the textbook. This tutorial refreshes students’ familiarity with composition’s plagiarism guidelines, and expands on new content particular to conventions used in public speaking, saving valuable class time for activities to try out verbal citations. Finally, the test bank provides a greater degree in flexibility and control in testing by allowing the instructor to handpick and edit over 1,000 questions (essay, multiple choice, and true/false). This can be a great strategy for importing tests into your LMS or delivering them during class time.
   
3. “Try This” Exercises and “Learn More” Tutorials: By now, Norton’s tools have helped you create a course syllabus and schedule, design lesson plans, and generate assessment tools. “Try This” exercises are convenient, low-stakes activities that can be used in a variety of delivery formats to help further engage students. Personally, I assign these exercises as either participation credit for completion, or as part of a major assignment group where appropriate. I highly recommend any new instructor begin with the Strengths Inventory Worksheet of Chapter 1 (Your Standpoint and Strengths), which makes for an invaluable foundation of understanding for each student as they progress through the course. If you plan to deliver an audiovisual presentation assignment, using the “Learn More” tutorials of Chapter 14 (Online and Mediated Presentations) is an excellent time-saver on classroom instruction. This chapter’s suite of tutorials covers recording, editing, and delivering multimodal presentations in audio, video, and live online presentations.

I hope that these recommendations alleviate some of the stress you face as you prepare to teach for the first time. For me, certainly, they were the difference between making and breaking many memorable courses.

Ready to explore Contemporary Public Speaking for yourself? Start here: https://seagull.wwnorton.com/conpubspeak2.

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