Instruction Style
Over the past two and a half years I have taught several business courses both pre and post graduate. I have a lot of experience in business and marketing and I have used this experience in the classes that I teach. I advise students that I do not teach out of the book. I teach each session based on an upcoming assignment and I use real life experience as examples rather than text book or hypothetical examples. My students have told me time and again that they like this style of teaching and it gives them a sense of the real business world, not just a class room perspecitve.
Hi, Sabrina-
I agree that using real life models is the best way to explain a new concept.
Task instructions are not always clear to the students, especially written ones. I find that it helps to show them an example of what you are expecting to see in their work.
Do you add comments to the Task List instructions? This also helps clarify the details, as students don't always read those instructions.
Hi Sabrina,
One of the ways is to from learning groups. By having a balance in the abilities of the group members you can use the students as resources. Each member can contribute to the group by bringing in their life experiences and sharing them with each other. This way the weaker students can benefit from the stronger students while the stronger students can benefit from sharing information with the weaker students. Take care that you are not pointing out the differences in the abilities of the students but are assigning them to work groups for a specific purpose this way no one will get his/her feelings hurt.
Gary
I recently taught a Retail Management class, and found that taking the students on field trips to various retail settings really brought together what they learned in class with real world situations. They found this very valuable.
One of the great things about teaching online and still working in one's chosen field is: I have new work situations for every new class. I teach in the healthcare curriculum and working at the hospital adds interest and examples to the classroom discussions.
I am new to teaching, but I have found that real life situations are the best way to teach. I teach for the upcoming task. However, I have found that I have students at all different levels so sometimes I think I can just explain the instructions for the upcoming task...when in reality, I may need to go back and review. How do you balance your instructor style to benefit students at different levels of learning or experience?
Hi Joseph,
Real live work or case studies based upon live situations are extremely valuable to students. They, as you say really like the opportunity to think through situations and solve problems that are factual. They are soon going to be doing this as graduates so the more expertise they can develop the better prepared they are going to be.
Gary
