Students should feel comportable asking question in class. Making our students feel secure in our classroom they do become more engaged in class learning.By encouraging all stedents to ask question will increase participation by everyone.

It is very importent to identify the learning style for each student and have the right tools and materials to help them.

Just the way you greet your students every day is KEY!In order to be a great teacher you must be able to act.You have to connect with your students! some of our students here at stratford ct. were never told they did a great job on a task,they were told they were a loser.POSITIVE ENERGY.

I think when you end the class you should tell them what they will be doing the next day

your presentation is EVERYTHING!!

I'm 50/50 on lesson plans being a must. I think they are fantastic and a must for someone starting a class for the first time. I am at the point now that I have taught the same class roughly 4 or 5 times. I find that I don't need them. I know all the material verbatim and have the stories to interweave with them.

I alluded to this in another thread in this forum. Recording a lecture, of just a monologuist in front of a camera, will take up at least the time it takes to deliver the lecture. But preparation of the set, like lighting, camera placement and focus, takes enough time on its own, plus any post-production, like editing false starts or lost tracks. and if there were enhancements, like cuts to close ups of demos, there is even more time invested. And wisely. The students need to see something that works right and is easy on the eyes or they are not coming back for a second look. There needs to be a decent level of presentation, which I find sorely lacking when I look at some much of the YouTube stuff. It is rare to find things well done. So flipping a class would probably take the same amount of time to prepare it as to teach it. If administration does not see that the teacher needs to be compensated for the time put in, and not on their own dime, most would be reluctant to proceed. I used to be full-time, now adjunct, and I would not flip a class unless I got paid for the time I would have to invest outside of the F2F meetings as I have other money-making schemes to attend to. But I would jump at the chance to write an electronic textbook implementing flipped lesson if the price were right. I have a Master of Education in Technology in Education and plenty of photography experience, if anyone is listening!

I like to open the first few minutes of the first class as an introduction. I am lucky to have smaller class sizes which facilitates this nicely. I like to gauge the student and their abilities prior to the class starting. I then normally give a quick background of myself. This has proven useful due to my perceived age. I tend to have older students in my class and this lets them know that I actually know the material. I have had issues with older students in the past but this has seemed to work.

I am quickly approaching my 4th year as an instructor and I still have classroom jitters for about the first 5 minutes of a new class. I am an extreme introvert so it takes me that 5 minutes to remind myself that they are here to listen to me regardless what I have to say. After that... I am good to move on. Not sure how many others still experience this.

Instructional style is extremely important at delivery. I try to build rapport with the students through humor. It has worked really well but I am curious how much of it is related to how close in age I am to the majority of my students.

Since we’re whipping out the good old Bloom’s Taxonomy, why not think about what John Dewey would have to say about flipped learning? I think he would be all in favor, as he as stated “The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these. Thus the teacher becomes a partner in the learning process, guiding students to independently discover meaning within the subject area.” Sounds exactly like the raison d’etre of flipped learning!

I occasionally have students who are so afraid of participating in class that they would rather lose a significant percentage of their grade than say anything. Participation is a required component in all grades, so foregoing it is not an option. I always talk privately with these students about their reluctance to participate, but that is successful at best 50% of the time. Any thoughts?

I've been teaching for a while but I am enjoying revisiting procedures for the first day - it's good review and has given me some ideas for the next semester.

I find a lecturing from a lectern in a class of less than 8 very impersonal and always try and integrate into the class and bring the class closer together.

I have found this coarse very interesting. I didn't realize that when i asked my students "is there any questions", that I was putting them on the spot. I have changed my tactics. The way my students are paticapating has already changed. I ask a lot of closed questions, then make them open questions by asking why, how, etc. I am now making up different tests to include more and better open ouestions . For example: Explain how a canned cycle works and why we use them instead of direct programing? It lets me know if the student really understands the concept. I can't wait for my next class to start so I can apply my new approach to asking questions.

The very first semester I taught went exceptionally well. The second semester I taught was at a completely different university but to a similar group of students as the first (creatives.) The course was also slightly different, but it was one in which I felt more knowledgeable and comfortable with. The second semester class was also half the size of the class from my first experience. The difference was night and day. Everything that about my second semester teaching seemed to be a challenge! From my ability to articulate the material, to the practical application the students were able to develop. It was an eye (or perhaps, "I") opening experience. I'm now preparing to teach both courses at the two universities for the second time and I can't wait to apply what I've learned on a technical, personal, and professional level. I'm excited to see what will manifest with the new groups of students and eager to jump into action to solve problems when they arise.

Any advice for young instructors that may, at times, have students older than them. As far as keeping it professional.

I was thinking about my 4 current preparations as to how I could flip them. For my math book I use Mathematics: A Human Endeavor by Harold Jacobs and it is an avatar of the self-paced learning days of the early '70's when I student taught. But that doesn't mean it is out dated; I have found no better text of mathematical problem solving that would be of interest to art students. Intro to computers more than likely could be flipped. Students could find presentations on-line for the skills for that week's project, and then do them in-class with myself as their guide by their side. So this one is definitely flip-feasible. The Physics of Light class I teach is a very "sage on a stage" experience. I schlepp literally a ton of demonstration objects from my basement prep room to my classroom over the course of a semester, and just turning on a video of these demos seems like a good idea. But it isn't the real thing! You can make all the demos run smoothly after multiple takes, or totally fake them, or worse yet, totally computer graphics and have nothing real! But because the students can see someone sweat actually trying to make something happen, and then do it themselves, and look through optical contraptions and what-not, makes this class not amenable to flipping. History of Photographic Technology also has its share of process demonstrations in class, and viewing of antique specimens, so it is similar to the Physics class above, although there are plenty of demos and tutorials on the process topics on-line. What could be useful for the student is to have a good selection of historical videos to show what life was like in each of the different photographic eras as far as how people lived and the politics of the time. Which brings up the most depressing point of relying on on-line media; what I have seen in the fields of optics is that most of it is not very well done! Maybe Khan Academy should hire me to do their optics units!

On the first day of class it is very important to try to touch on all teaching methods. As well as to discuss this at the end of class. Asking what helped them the most and what point of the class made better sense to them. Then to actually ask them if the are visual or kinesthetic learners.

What a great point! 15-18 minutes is not very long. My lectures tend to be very long and intense. Once I see my students fading, I like to stop and walk around to help them one on one before going on to the next topic. Sometimes it is difficult to cut a topic/lesson short, especially when it is a intense software program. I have learned that sometimes it is better to finish, even if it is long and cover it again for those who got lost. This reinforces the advanced students learning while catching the rest of the students up.