I could spend more time observing other instructors in order to draw from them and see if their technices fit mine. also I can set a benchmark in class and try new ways by seeing how students react
As a new instructor, my techniques are constantly changing. I try to listen to my students and their needs, and adapt my style to further my students' success.
I like to stand in front of the class. I also like to speak loud and clear trying to look around the room to make sure i have their attension
Showing Passion to students, motivate students from your passion and what you do every day, and eventually, enjoy what we do -teaching each day. One of important thing to do to approach this is non stop developing and review the techniques, and always study and explore new techniques.
In my own educational journey, I have most enjoyed instructors who were enthusiastic and knowledgable about their subjects and were able to impart information in a comprehensive manner. I have also benefitted from those instructors who were able to find a balance between moving forward with the material and showing concern for the students that may have had difficulty grasping the subject.
In my current position, I enjoy getting to know the students and their expectations for the course in the first class meeting. I make an effort to share information with my colleagues and learn from those who have taught the courses that I am presently teaching. Finally, I make sure that I am well versed and familiar with the material that I am presenting, draw from my strengths in the classroom setting and continue to recognize and work on areas of weakness.
Thus, the techniques that I will employ to enhance my instructional style include: Knowing my students, Knowing the subject, Knowing my Colleagues and Knowing Myself.
I think the students be serious about the class content,but to have fun,encouraging questions throughout the total class time while in session,also to break down the material,make it easy to understand,with the use of examples,and to make it fun!
I believe that staying current in your chosen professional career field is essiential to being a good instructor. Maintain professional certifications and memberships and staying current about new technologies which affect your field are just a few ways to further develop yourself.
My Grandfather told me once, “If you love what you do, you will never have to work a day in your life”. I must say, I would agree with this statement. I don’t view my job as work but as a privilege and a joy. I teach courses with regards to Communication Studies. Some of the courses I instruct include: Public Speaking, Gender and Communication, Interpersonal Communication, and Organizational Communication. The concepts, theories, and ideologies presented in these courses are applicable to students’ everyday experiences. They relate to the material in a very tangible way. It is an honor to be able to teach wonderful course subjects that students seemingly enjoy. I believe in order to further develop, refine, and enhance my instructional style, I need to be willing to self-assess and reflect on my own instructional style. It is important for me to continuously receive feedback from students. I need to remain aware of my ever-changing audience. For instance, my current student’s live in a fast past, technological, advanced world. Therefore, my power-point presentations offer stimulating visuals, video and audio, as well as, substance within the material. I include diverse activities that involve individual work, partnership, small-group, and at times the class as a whole. Synergy is very important in maintaining a positive climate in the classroom, as well as, stimulating learning. The students need to be recognized, acknowledged, and endorsed in order to feel confirmed and achieve synergy. I am always finding new ways to produce a higher level of confirmation for my students. Calling them by their name, providing prompt feedback to their work, and being available to them before, during, and after class are some of the ways I confirm their importance. As a person and as a professional, I love to entertain new ideas for growth. Participating in these learning modules and forums is yet another way to increase my growth and knowledge. Thank you for your support, Jill Warhol
You bring up a good point and that is the human side. We need to remember that we do not know all the answers and we do make mistakes at times - especially as new instructors. It is critical as models and professionals that we acknowledge this and grow from it. Our students will respect us more if we say that we do not know but will find out, or that we have made a mistake. That is the behavior I would want from them. The human piece is always important and does connect us as individuals which sets the tone for learning as well.
By learning my students needs , and changing with those needs will help me to maintain understanding with the students. also showing my human side allows me to be felxable and maintain a bond .
I agree that observing the learning styles of my students will be critical. In our setting, we will be using case-study as a regular format for discussion and learning. Will also use demonstration as I assess my students in the clinical setting as they interact with clients. I would also consider the use of video/media as a way to illustrate the presentation of mental health diagnoses and a forum for discussion based on the observations in the videos. Mini-lectures will work well in this educational setting because the 8 hours need to be divided into many strategies to maximize student learning and maintain interest and motivation.
I will utilize modeling by observing a veteran instructor so that I can learn from her experience and better develop my goals, plans and techniques. I hope to then model for my students the behaviors I expect from them as professionals.
Working closely with my fellow instructor in the theory portion of the program will enhance the learning for the students as we reinforce the material in both areas with various techniques and methods.
These are a few of my personal goals in the process of becoming a successful teacher. I hope to develop competent nurses with the same passion that I possess for this profession.
By observing the learning style of students including any special needs they may have, I can make modifications in how I present the information so it is retained by the students.
By observing the teaching styles of fellow instructors I may learn a technique that works better in a particular situation than the technique I may be currently using for the same situation.
Designing a professional development plan based on areas I want and need to strengthen and keeping to the timeline.
By being myself and letting my excitement and love of the topic I am teaching shine through.
I say this frequently, " Teaching is a lifestyle not a job. You may have the knowledge but not the heart and drive to teach."
If you have genuine passion for your topic and teaching, the students will pick up on this and themselves become passionate.
Some of the techniques I plan to utilize include: developing my goals for the class,selecting and creating valuable support materials, observing peers in the same setting who have many years of experience as clinical instructors, assessing the text book to find the features that will best help the students read and understand the content, meeting with the theory instructor to determine her weekly lesson so that I can reinforce that information in clinical, familiarizing myself with all specific information regarding established university expectations for the course and student course-specific information. These are the first areas I plan to work on in beginning my role as a clinical instructor.
To develop my teaching style I can reflect on my previous experience and how certain things worked or didn't work with my students. Each lesson is an opportunity to try something new and expand on techniques that have worked in the past. Each class has a different dynamic, therfore as I go I will be able to identify the different learning styles of my students. As I become better at identifying these styles, I will be able to adjust much faster to each scenario. I know that I am never done learning and can use that as an opportunity to expand my knowledge on the subject and expand my repertoir with my students. For me personnally, my biggest challenge is lecture, therfore the more studying I do on the current lesson, the better delivery I give. My industry is constantly changing so it is necessary to keep up on current techniques and trends. Magazines are good for trend keeping and it is always good to know people who are currently working in the field. My supervisors are always a good resourse for advice on teaching style, as well, and so I should never hesitate to seek their knowledge.
Being knowledgeable in my strengths and weaknesses in my instructional style is the first step. The Insights profile and subsequent training that we have integrated campus-wide (staff and students) have had has asisted me in that area.
I would like to enhance my instructional style to incorporate more items for the visual learners. Being an auditory and kinesthetic learner, the visual part can be limited sometimes, as I tend to lean towards whole-group and small-group discussions and hands-on activities rather than the traditional college lecture/notes technique. Researching and developing new/modifying existing activities to further meet the needs of the visual learners will enhance my instructional style. For example, PowerPoint presentations can be an area I could start with.
Also, tapping further into my passion for helping students be successful can always enhance my instructional style.
I need to work on certain parts of my lecture delivery. I'm comfortable with speaking and using visual materials, but I'm terrible at making eye contact. I have to consciously scan the room and work at it, or else I tend to lecture "into space". I also have to work at moving around, to change the students' point of focus.
Stephen
Hi Karen- I agree about the challenges of trying to teach dry topics. One thing I try to do is relate a real world or industry problem, and then use the material as a tool to solve the problem. I find that if the students can see it as ameans to a desirable end, rather than an end in itself, it becomes easier to learn. This also ties in with the fact that most of my students are adult learners and need to see importance in what I'm asking them to learn.
Stephen
I have been working on my doctoral degree to expand my understanding and to learn how to better present to the younger generation that is in my classroom. One way is by reading books like “Geeks & Geezers” to understand the generational difference I'm dealing with. Books like the “Ground Swell” and “Wikinomics” helped me to better understand the role of technology in the workplace and classroom. For me reading is the key to learning new things (low budgets at my school limit what I can do). I try to pass this on to other instructors and here is a partial e-mail I sent on what I learned from the book "The back of the napkin" on visual learners so others instructors could learn more about how to visual present.
Part of the preparation is understanding how our students learn and are able to engage. V.A.R.K. is an acronym that helps understand explain the different way people can learn. VARK stand for Visual, Aural, Read/write, and Kinesthetic. Traditional classes use primarily aural (hearing) as the primarily learn mode for teaching and schools traditionally use Reading/Write to assess students understanding of the material. Our student chose us over traditional schools because they prefer learning methods are typically Visual (you need to show not tell them how some this done) and by Kinestetic (student actually doing it them selves). While we can all learn by any of theses methods it important to undusted we have preferences (easier way for us to learn) with certain methods and so we need to strive as instructors to provide learning activities that use all these channels to teach and asses our students. A good instructor increases the engagement of the class by using all the channels of learning in nontraditional ways so student can easy grasp the knowledge and then make the student work hard than traditional classes to demonstrate a mastery of the skills listed in the performance objective in the course Syllabus. We need to use more simulations, activates, story telling methods to convey our message using Visual components and hands-on exercises.
Ask yourself as you prepare for class the following question to help you prepare for class and create visual learning systems:
1. Who/What are you talking about? Create and show a portrait of who/what you’re talking about using qualitative information. Portrait = Who/what.
2. How much are we talking about? Create a chart that shows qualitative representations to explain. Charts = How much
3. Where is it that you’re looking at? Create a visual map showing the position in space where you are focusing on. Where = Maps
4. Ask yourself when is this taking place? Create a visual timeline to explain how it all fits together. When = timeline
5. Ask yourself how does it work? Create a flowchart to visually explain the cause and effect process. How = Flowcharts
6. Ask yourself why does it work? Create a multiple-variable plot and use deduction and prediction to answer why something works. Why = Multiple-variable plot
By using the visual codex above of who/what, how much, where, when, how or why as the coordinates of your graphs it makes it easier for visual learners to understand. You must also ask yourself how to best show this data that can be examined by using SQVID slide bars that look at five factors in showing the data.
1. How Simple vs. Elaborate should I make the pictures?
2. Am I looking Qualitative (non-numerical) vs. Quantity (numbers) information?
3. Am I creating a Vision to understand or an Executable plan to follow?
4. Are you looking at an Individual item or a comparison of many items?
5. Are you looking at the way things could be (change-Delta symbol) or the way they are currently are (as-is).
Remember, the difference between being a great teacher and a failure is actually quite small. One degree difference is not much but when water is 211 degrees, it’s hot. At 212 degree it boils and with steam you can power a locomotive. In the same way a little more effort in preparation for your class will make all the difference. The average margin for victory in the Indy 500 for victory for the past 10 years has been 1.54 seconds. On average the winner took home $1,278,813 and the second place racer took home only $621,321. It’s the small things in preparation for your class that make all the differences in your success in the classroom. Remember it your classroom and you’re responsible for your results. For inspirational video check out http://www.simpletruths.com/movies.asp website.
Resources:
1. The visual idea for this presentation came from the book “The back of the napkin” by Dan Roam.
2. A resource for learning more on how to organize your information so people remember is the book “Made to Stick” By chip Heath & Dan Heath.
For more on VARK visit the website http://www.vark-learn.com to learn more and down load a free VARK test to see your own preference for learning.
I was one of the youngest people in the room when I began teaching as well, but you will be amazed that if you continue to be a role model and be an enthusiastic instructor you gain respect and they no longer see your age, they begin to look beyond and see your knowledge.
I need to develop some hands-on activities for the students to take away the monotony of a lecture.
I need to ask questions that lead to a discussion and more class participation.
