"So your boss walks in and asks you a question..."
One of the challenges that I face is how to engage the class. I try very hard to get down to their level and pull them into whatever activity that I’m doing. There are some common rules that I follow that I would like to share.
Bring the activity into the real world. One of my pet peeves as a student was busy work. If I’m doing an assignment that I know (or think) it was only given to fill time, I’m not a happy camper.
Bring the assignment into the real world by playing the role of the boss and giving the new “worker†an assignment related to the job.
Example:
“Today we are going to learn how to do pivot tables. Just to give you an idea of why this will help you down the road; it will take a massive amount of data and analysis it 100 different ways in seconds. If you work for a car dealership and your boss asks you to dig up a large amount of marketing data for a new sales approach, you can! Take all the buying data in the database pop it in a pivot table and it can start to tell you some interesting things.â€
This goes a long way to an adult student when you introduce the idea of a real world application to the project at hand.
I emphatically agree with you. Not only do I compare real world scenarios to the theory in the textbook, but my written assignments consist of real world business problems that the students (sometimes, as a team) must solve; even my multiple choice exams are real world situations with potential solutions for the situation, one of which is the correct solution.
Hi Wesley,
I concur! Students need to and want to know how the course will benefit them in the workplace. We need to make learning as practical as possible. Students get it better when we make learning apply to the real world.
Patricia Scales
