This guide breaks down teaching in the disciplines at three different levels of instruction: introductory, intermediate, and upper level. It includes a range of sample assignments and resources for the humanities, social sciences, and STEM disciplines, and discusses how you can improve course and assignment design when you know how your course fits into the broader curriculum. Knowing what you can expect from your students and which learning outcomes are most valuable for them will help you tailor your course to existing skillsets and needs and make your teaching more effective.

Ideas, skills, and pedagogical approaches will certainly flow across levels of instruction: students in introductory courses are often already expected to do research and engage meaningfully with a discipline’s methodology, while students in upper level courses are continuously learning new disciplinary ideas. But, generally speaking, one can expect the learning goals for each level of undergraduate instruction in the disciplines to correspond to the approaches below.