I have found that giving the students a list of true/false questions after a lecture and telling them they can use any resources in the room other than the answer sheet and the instructor (we can answer process questions but not answers to the questions) promotes a team environment. The instructor can check each student’s answers one time. At this point the instructor can indicate the number right with no indications of which ones are correct. Students who have a hard time participating are now drawn to the team as small groups turn into one large team of all class… >>>

Pretesting performs a number of positive result, especially if there are prerequisite involved. The class I typically teach has two prerequisites, and we have found that a student review can refresh information and processes that haven’t been performed recently. The students are given time to answer the questions, then they are given time to work in small groups. The last step is to review the questions by randomly calling on groups of students, one group at a time to answer the review questions. The review packet is long and the process takes about four hours to complete. It consists of… >>>

Generation Y student seem to be the most difficult students to deal with, especially in classes that have all the generations represented. In settings where there is no technology allowed such as cell phones or laptop computers or any way to record the discussions, Gen Y students find it hard to adapt. This creates challenges less common in other generations. Gen Y requires directions repeated a number of times, and are not very good at taking notes. They seem to have a shortened attention span, and retention of processes is low. Group settings seem to help, and allowing them to… >>>

Learning groups for lab work,works well as long as the groups remain small. A maximum of three people per group works well in our industry. It is important to emphasis that each student must perform all required tasks. I find that quizzing each group member verbally while the learning teams are performing help to evaluate the effectiveness of the team performance. Team learning groups based on lecture or additional self study is more difficult because the atmosphere is more relaxed. Giving each team a question to answer based on the lecture seam to work because it gives the team a… >>>

Using questions as a means of analyzing what the student had retained, works well. I have found that some students look forward to questioning as a good means of reviewing material from class. Unfortunately some students dislike being questioned in front of the class, even to the point of panic. I have found that having more than one student responsible to answer the question, relieves the tension created by singling out a student. Because our classroom is set up with tables (three students to a table) I can call on students by table. They can confer and come up with… >>>