Since I am more of a lecturer, I implemented more class discussion and demonstrations to help reinforce the course materials. This has really helped me to get a better response from the students. Who said learning can not be fun? :)
Brent,
I like this approach because you are letting them use their newly acquired professional knowledge to select articles and learn more about the field. This gets them to start looking around for applications of their field in different settings.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Rodriegus,
You are helping to connect the dots between course content and application. This is a critical part of learning for students and the opportunities you can provide them to do such the greater their knowledge and expertise is going to be.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
I always discuss students with previous instructors. They normally can provide any insight into students who have difficulty learning from certain styles. I like to utilize different teaching styles and methods to keep the material fresh and exciting, as well as appeal to as many students as possible.
I do the same thing. I like to give them examples of when they would apply a strategy in their personal lives, as well as their academic and work lives.
I have had massage students find 2 journal articles that pertains to the anatomy and physiology we were studying. I asked them to explain why they chose the article and how they can use the information to either educate their clients or to help them in assessing or massaging their clients.
Relevant course material content that i have used to help students learn have been to actually talk abotu real examples of things that have happened as well as show videos of things that related to the topic being lectured about.
Sharon,
This is how all courses should be taught. Students need to see how the course content is integrated into their career training as well as every day lives. You are doing such with your accounting integration.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Sharon,
If possible I would suggest adding more illustrated examples of the concepts you are teaching. So after sharing content do role playing or case studies to help them integrate the content into their working memories even with their struggles with English as a learning language.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
I always break my classroom presentations in to no longer then 20 minute sections. After each section there is a team activity to apply the concepts we have discussed. Afterwards we discuss the results of the activity. I happen to teach in a face to face environment that is culturally diverse. My challenge has been teaching technical concepts to those in which english is a second language.Although I enocurage audio taping, I am unsure how to best engage these students.
I teach accounting and attempt to link activities they are required to perform in business (i.e., creation of budgets, requisition for capital expenditures, travel expense forms) to accounting. Often people perform business functions because it is required of them without any explanation given as to why they are performing these functions. It is most gratifying to hear a student exclaim that now they understand why they are required in business to do what they do. Perhaps previously they considered the task busy work and never realized the greater importance of the activity. Now that they understand the bigger picture, they put more thought behind (and ultimately provide better information for) these once rudimentary tasks.
Brandon,
Good ideas for integrating action and movement into more theory based courses. Activities like small group, role playing and playing games all help to incorporate the tactile aspects of learning into the class.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Tiana,
This is a good way to approach the classroom. You are offering your students a variety of learning venues in which they can follow their learning preferences and this will increase their engagement.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Overing both auditory and visual learned is easy with the prevelance of PowerPoint in the lecture hall but the tactile learner remains difficult. Sometimes tacticle manipulation is not easily done for a given subject but you can still get students up and moving to improve engagement durring auditory and visual learning--say, getting students talking in small groups and shuffling the groups periodically to demonstrate some aspect of group dynamics in a social psychology course.
I use a combination of teaching styles. I lecture, give demonstrations, have hands on exercises, and critical thinking sessions.
Hi Larry: I use my own experience in the professional field and bring its relevancy to the lecture topics.
by Sandra Drab
Roger,
Congratulations on making your content come alive. I love hearing stories like this because you are connecting the dots for your students between what they perceive as irrelevant content to application of viable content. This is what teaching should be about.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Nancy,
This has been my experience as well. They want to be able to connect the content with their lives and futures. This give value to what they are learning.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Amy,
What are some strategies that have worked well for you as you incorporate these different deliveries?
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Sheryl,
This sounds like a informative and fun way to start off a class. I am sure your students really enjoy this introductory time.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
