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Show your interest in the material and the students
- Demonstrate enthusiasm, preparedness, thoughtfulness, organization, and flexibility in your presentation
- Learn students' names early in the semester
Use gestures and other body language effectively (from Kendall Zoller of Sierra Training Associates)
PDF file with slides from workshop at Boston University on 8/29/07
Handout from workshop at Boston University on 8/29/07
Keep students emotionally involved in the class (from Anatoly Temkin)
- Use humor
- Challenge students ("I bet that none of you can figure out the answer to this question in 3 minutes")
- Make liberal use of analogies and examples that relate to their lives
Give attendance/participation credit that is pedagogically meaningful
- Discussion credit which gives feedback on students' participation performance
- Daily/weekly one-question quizzes on homework material or previous day's content
Provide organization to the day's activities
- Organize the chalkboard
- Put outline on the left, material in the center, and assignment reminders on the right
- Provide objectives or questions to work through during class
- Verbally assess progress toward objectives
- Organize class time into segments
- Intro; material; summary
- where were we last time, what are we doing now, where are we going next?
- Divide lecture material into 15-min segments; spend 1-2 minutes summarizing the segment
Design activities to challenge students
Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives ( Bloom, B.S., ed. (1956) Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. Handbook I, cognitive domain. New York: Longman)
Level I
Knowledge & Comprehension |
Level II
Apply/Analyze |
Level III
Synthesize/Evaluate |
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Describe
Name
List
Outline
Brainstorm
Sort
Remember
Take notes |
Organize
Plan
Graph
Categorize
Suggest
Interpret
Explain
Summarize
Generalize
Illustrate |
Develop
Devise
Construct
Counsel
Compose
Critique
Judge
Debate
Invent
Design |
Design activities to engage students
The Learning Pyramid (National Training Laboratories, Bethel, Maine)
Classroom Assessment Techniques (Angelo TA and Cross KP (1993) Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers . San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers)
- Focused Listing or Brainstorming
- Categorizing Grid or Defining Features Matrix
- Minute Paper or One Sentence Summary
- Content, Form, and Function Outlines (who, what, why, when, where, how)
- Student-Generated Test Questions
- Human Tableau, Class Modeling, or Role-playing
Other active learning techniques
- Think-pair-share
- 3-minute summary during lecture
- Fishbowl discussion
- The Teaser - what profession would a historical character have today? Where would we be today if we did not know the structure of DNA? Or current events
- Pop allusions - how is the musical score to "Lord of the Rings" like an operatic score? How was Scully's use of Western blotting appropriate to solve the mystery? Was it realistic?
- Debates; develop hypotheses/predict outcome of demonstration; what information would support a hypothesis; class voting
- Play devil's advocate - what would the opposite outcome mean?
- Case studies
Additional resources
Slides from presentation by Professor Doug Zook of the Boston University School of Education on how to challenge and stimulate students.
Blythe H. and C. Sweet (1998) It works for me! Shared tips for teaching. New Forums Press: Stillwater, OK.
Blythe H. and C. Sweet (2002) It works for me, too! More shared tips for effective teaching. New Forums Press: Stillwater, OK.
Derek Bok Center, Harvard University (1992) Twenty Ways To Make Lectures More Participatory (Tips for Teachers).
Davis BG (1993) Tools for Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Graduate Teaching Center, Yale University.
McKeachie WJ (1999) Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company.
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