I find that engaging students in discussions, which often incorporate humor captures the students' attention.
Malek Dieb
I feel a good way to effectively better my instructional style is to learn my student's learning styles and focus on those styles to ensure they are grasping the knowledge needed to advance them throughout their college career.
Shadow other instructors and possibly incorporate some of their methods into your teaching style. Take additional courses to enhance my teaching methods. I also learned a great deal from others when I took graduate courses and was in a classroom with other teachers who had years of experience in the field.
Chase,
All good ideas for having an ongoing professional development plan for yourself. Keep up this good effort as your students are benefiting from your dedication to instructional improvement.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
The techniques I can use to develop and refine my instructional style further would be to take classes at another institution. I can also go back to my college professors and speak with them about the techniques that they used. I can also incorporate active learning into my lecture plans.
Reynaldo,
You are right about the phones being used like clickers. There are several apps that can be integrated into a school's system so they will function as clickers. This will expand even further the use of phones as well as other forms of technology.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
The use of clickers I think is a good idea. I am planning to use clickers in my classes in coming terms. However I think that phones eventually will take over and replace the clickers
Keeping up with the technology, and following the recommendations of this course.
Preassessments at the beginning of each course
m going to start preparing my lesson plans using feedback from students as well as Advisory board members and professionals from industry
doing a small lab activity on the first day gives me an idea of the students learning style.
the first night, as a class, we develop our strategy for lessons to be learned, lessons are taught using as many different strategies as we can think of...hands-on - lecture - group work - independent study, etc. It gives my students some control over their education.
Create a formalized growth plan with goal dates clearly listed
I believe in this concept. Furthermore, I believe it is very important to know your students.The first class is certainly the foundation. I can't stress enough how important it is to know the students.Students learn differently. The task at hand is finding a strategies that meet the needs of all students.
I attempted to usepolleverywhere.com but the execution was not what I was expecting. I guess it somewhat depends on the type of text/data plan the student has as some of the responses would not register or process at all.
I like this tool also. I need to know how the students learn best so I can incooperate teaching to cover learning styles.
Michael,
By sharing this information with your students you are increasing the value of your course to them. They through this information start to see that if they apply themselves, get their license they have the potential to earn a good income and have a successful career. You are helping to make their effort be worth it.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
My personal approach is to encourage ongoing participation throughout the entire class. Our classes span 4 hours each and I am always seeking out new and different ways to engage the students.
I also sprinkle each session with "real world" examples of how the materials being introduced apply to real jobs.
While I use many techniques to teach my MLT students the information that they will need to pass their license exam, I have found that if I share with them some recent salary trends and what different options that are out there when they have completed their studies they stay much more engaged and motivated. I have even found that many of the students start asking career related questions that career services can't help them with.
There are a lot of emerging social media type sites such as Edmodo and flipquiz.me that could be used to help develop my instructional style especially since a lot of students are really into facebook and twitter.
