Personal experience
Everyone wants to know your business. keeps their attention and creates relevancy.
Richard,
I agree with your comments about the need for experience in the field to bring a practical approach to the content. This is a common compliant in colleges and universities. Theory is great as long as it is kept in the college classroom. When theory is in the field it can be proven or just as quickly fall a part. By having experience in the field the instructor knows what will and won't work and this increases the validity to the content being taught.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
One of my pet peeves with being an instructor is seeing other instructors in my field(Criminal Justice) with little or no real experience working the jobs that they are teaching. An example of this would be a teacher teaching criminal investigation when they were a civil attorney before they got into teaching. Just because you read a teachers edition of a textbook doesn't make you an expert on the subject matter. Doing the work and gaining experience in your field is what makes you credible.
Robert,
Stories from the field help to engage students and keep them interested in the topic being covered. They see relevancy to what they are studying through the stories.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
