Teaching Tip: Ways to successfully teach course content
January 27, 2015
How exactly do you impart the knowledge of your course content to students in the short time period that a semester spans? Do you throw them in the deep end and hope they swim? Or is there a way to scaffold success?
One teaching method is to begin with simple tasks and skills, relative to your course, that build on small victories. Later in the semester you introduce more complex tasks and increase the responsibilities of the students as learners and content creators.
What about using fear as a motivational tool? As Peter F. Drucker once noted, “No one learns as much about a subject as one who is forced to teach it.” Consider divvying up projects and reports to students in groups and have them be responsible for presenting to their peers. Many students dislike this approach, because it forces them to work in groups. But, it also forces them to understand what they are presenting. In order to succeed they can’t be passive.
Go to iTeachU.uaf.edu to read the full tip with more ways to teach a course your students won’t forget.
-- Teaching Tip by Dan LaSota, UAF eLearning instructional designer