The tenure track often feels like it demands perfection from your research, teaching, and service. However, due to teaching’s time constraints, teaching can easily consume your entire schedule. In this post, I will share ways that you can leverage your textbook and your textbook resources to ensure that you provide a strong course without needing to allocate all of your time towards planning, implementing, and grading.

I come from a family of passionate teachers. For most of my life, my mom taught middle school mathematics, while my dad taught high school mathematics. I watched my parents spend nights and weekends planning lessons and grading assignments. When I started my tenure-track position in Fall 2021, I did not think that I—as my parents’ daughter—would spend too much time on teaching preparation. I was wrong. 

If you are anything like me, you are incredibly passionate about teaching. You enjoy teaching, and you want to do it well. However, teaching is one of the few parts of a tenure-track position with consistent deadlines: for example, you have to show up each week to teach your classes. As a result, it is easy to prioritize your teaching over all other parts of your job. Since you don’t have unlimited time, you must find a balance between research, teaching, and service. In this post, I share ways you can leverage your textbook and textbook resources to ensure that you provide a strong course without needing to allocate all of your time to planning, implementing, and grading. 

Your Textbook. Let your textbook be the foundation of your course. For my Principles of Microeconomics course, I wanted a textbook that covered the typical introductory microeconomics content but also used interesting and inclusive examples. Additionally, I wanted a textbook that I could continue to use until I went up for tenure, ensuring I wouldn’t need to redevelop my course content over and over. Principles of Microeconomics by Mateer and Coppock was exactly what I wanted: a textbook that covered the usual content but presented it in an interesting and inclusive design. Furthermore, because it is published by W. W. Norton, I was confident that I would not need to find a new textbook the next year, because the content would be updated regularly enough to maintain relevance. 

Your Lectures. Let your textbook guide the structure of your course, while you use your textbook instructor resources to develop and personalize your day-to-day lectures. Lectures can take a long time to prepare, especially the first time that you are teaching a course. To save yourself planning time, you can use your textbook’s provided slides. For example, Principles of Microeconomics comes with complete, editable lecture slides, as well as art and image slides. For my first year on the tenure track, I used the lecture slides with minimal changes. After my first year, I started adapting the slides to make them my own. I incorporated review slides from the previous class material, added my own media, or created new practice questions. Using or adapting your textbook slides is a way to deliver high-quality course content without having to spend a lot of time planning and implementing it. For example, my textbook slides are Title II compliant, contain fun examples, incorporate clicker questions, and provide in-class activities. Norton has ensured that I have an accessible and engaging course, which allows me to allocate that extra time elsewhere. 

Your Assignments. Take advantage of your textbook resources to create assignments. I decided to use a textbook that no one else in my department had been using. As a result, I was worried that I would need to create all of my assignments from scratch and had no idea where I would find the time. My Principles of Microeconomics course enrolls 100—200 students a semester; these larger lecture classes make grading difficult—even with a Teaching Assistant (TA). To save yourself (and your TA) planning, implementing, and grading time, you can use your textbook’s homework system. For my first year on the tenure track, I used the default Smartwork homework assignments. After my first year, I started adapting the homework assignments to make them more in line with the content I found most important and the types of questions I asked on exams. The best part of Smartwork is its versatility. You can add and remove individual questions, you can set up how many tries students have on each question, you can provide hints on each question, and much more. Did I mention that Smartwork grades itself?!? You can integrate Smartwork into your LMS, so that homework assignments are automatically graded and displayed. This feature ensures that assignments are graded quickly, while also ensuring accurate and consistent grading across students. 

I have also taken advantage of my textbook’s test bank, which I use to create exams, as well as review guides. In the test bank, you can look for questions by chapter, learning outcome, difficulty, and Bloom’s Taxonomy level. Additionally, you can use the test bank to generate different versions of the exam, each with their own answer key. For my first year on the tenure track, I used the test bank questions as written. Now that I have more time and experience, I will go in and edit them to contain more personal or engaging examples for students, like my name or a local business. You can still adapt the base content to your style and teaching goals. 

Your textbook and its resources can be such an incredible way to provide high-quality course content for your students while minimizing the time you spend planning, implementing, and grading. Remember: you can use these resources as much or as little as you want. You do not need to use every single textbook resource—use what works for you and forget the rest or slowly incorporate resources over time. The goal is to make your teaching preparation less time consuming, so that you can allocate that time elsewhere and balance research, service, and other projects. Remember, on the tenure track, teaching is only one part of the job, and your textbook can make it easier. You got this. 😊

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