Teaching+Tips

What is one tool you use or one teaching tip you have that could benefit other faculty?

A tip: Whilst teaching an Art Appreciation course I found engaging the students was very difficult. But I happened on a situation that I want to share. I normally try to get to class about 15 minutes early and set the computer up to include having some music playing in the background. Then once I start to lecture I would turn off the music until it was time for an exercise and then back to music. One one particular evening instead of turning off the music I just had the sound just enough to be heard if someone concentrated enough. The students stayed engaged throughout the course time. The next class I decided to do an informal study by allowing the music in the background and then turning it off half way through the lecture portion of the class. The students stayed engaged while the music was being played but as soon as the music was off the students disengaged. I also tried this with various genres and the results were the same, even if Bach was the background, I had engaged students. Made for a better class.

A tip: Attending a national business educators conference one of the presenters had a slide that wanted a poll of the session's attendees that required each to use their cellphone to complete the poll. The slide provided a number and a response entry. As people dialed in and posted their answer the slide changed to show the results. That is when I was introduced to Poll EveryWhere. A recent article about "Texting in the Classroom" identified what are some of the issues of cell phones in the class. Some of those are that the phone might be the 'legal pad and yellow pencil' for the student. As we might allow a laptop in the class, we might need to allow cellphones as well for the same reason. The article comes from edutopia and can be found here. I would recommend reading this for some insight for your own class.

A tip: Whilst teaching an ethics course the students would be engaged in some serious "discussions" that could last the whole evening. I found that I could "park" the discussion on Blackboard and have the students attend to the discussion after class. To my surprise I found that there were a couple of those quiet students that would really get involved in the written discussion and added so much to the topic. I did talk to these individually and found that they were very uncomfortable to verbally engage either from shyness or an issue of trying to formulate their ideas on the cuff. I always have that option in all my classes.

A tip:

Be sure to check out the "links" on the side for access to some additional tips.

~ From a blog on Teaching Online - Teaching Online