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Personalizing
Pedagogies
Good Teachers & Good Teaching: Variety of Teaching
Gifts
Full Text (PDF Version)
Steven W. Gilbert, President,
The TLT Group
September, 2002; Rev. Oct. 2007
Can you help identify technology
applications to support the kinds of good teaching described
here?
There are many
different kinds of good teaching and good teachers.
Most faculty members can use or exemplify only a few of these
at a time.
That is usually enough.
Keep trying
See every new academic year, every new course, as an
opportunity to improve your teaching and your students’
learning. [And
take pride in your previous efforts and accomplishments.]
Organize subject matter effectively
Use your scholarly expertise to organize the content of
your course(s) in ways that reflect the structure and
methodology of your discipline. Use your instructional
expertise to select teaching/learning resources to support
your decisions about content.
Connect with students
Enable students to feel more fully a part of the
institution or community. Engage students’ interest
and energy on a personal level. Demonstrably care about the
students as learners and human beings.
Solicit and use feedback from students
Collect information via “classroom assessment,”
anonymous online surveys, listening to students, and other
techniques for getting a clearer picture of learners’
progress and reactions. Use as much of that data as you
can – consistent with your own principles and your
institution’s educational mission.
Use media
Use different media skillfully to create
and offer effective communications.
Use principles of good
“instructional design”
Know and use well-established “instructional
design” principles for planning, testing, and improving
entire courses or individual learning modules.
Create a “safe” environment
Help students overcome their fears of
learning, of school, of teachers, of competing for attention
in a classroom, of failure. Convey and engender confidence in
students’ abilities.
Be charismatic or entertaining
Engage students' attention and focus their energy through
presentations that are dramatic, humorous, and intellectually
stimulating. Build students' interests in the course and
the subject through their interest in you as a performer,
professional, and person.
Be an attractive role model
Serve as a role model – personally or
professionally – by demonstrating depth of mastery, wisdom,
knowledge, skill, character, and enthusiasm for the subject
and profession.
Work with different-sized groups
Work effectively with students in small,
informal groups or one-to-one. Skillfully generate and guide
discourse with and among learners via face-to-face or online
sessions. Ask provocative questions that engage learners
intellectually.
Develop self-study materials
Create self-study materials that enable
learners to progress at their own pace and assess and
demonstrate their own progress.
Select cost-effective teaching
combinations
Understand enough about teaching,
learning, and technology to decide when and how to use the
following techniques most cost-effectively: face-to-face time;
synchronous interaction at a distance; asynchronous
interaction at a distance; and independent learning options.
AND WHAT OTHERS HAVE I OMITTED?
Apply the “Seven Principles” of
good practice in undergraduate education
They are:
1. Encourage contact between students and
faculty.
2. Develop reciprocity and cooperation
among students.
3. Encourage active learning.
4. Give prompt feedback.
5. Emphasize time on task.
6. Communicate high expectations.
7. Respect diverse talents and ways of
learning.
Arthur W.
Chickering and Stephen
C. Ehrmann have written a
valuable, widely-used article, “Implementing the Seven Principles:
Technology as Lever,” suggesting ways information
technology can support the application of the Seven
Principles. See:
http://www.tltgroup.org/programs/seven.html.
Can you help identify technology
applications to support the kinds of good teaching described
above?
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