In presenting a lecture I have items to present to go along with the topics. (a mini show and tell, before the labs) I try to present the material so that hopefully all sences will be met for the difference in the way students learn.

I like to lecture for the first part of class and then move to a small group for lab. It seems to work for the hands on part of the course and the students participate more in lab. After a break (in which some become tired) my students appear more interested in the material.

Moving around the class room helped me with eye contact and interaction with my students. The 2-3 second rule is a good one to make sure they were understanding the material. Moving about also helps with interaction with students, I felt they participated more and were asking questions.

The first meeting is always the hardest for me, I wish I had an easy way to get past the first day.

I have taken a test myself that allowed me to see which CATs best helped my students achieve the course objectives. I think the CATs are amazing to use but it is helpful to think about what your objectives are when utilizing them.

How do we cope with a student who denies an obvious disability? If they are struggling and refuse help, how do we get them to relize they need it?

Motivation is tied tightly to solid, professional relationship building in the class. It is my experience that once trust is established and once there is at least comfortable familiarity between the instructor and the student, motivation is significantly enabled. How? first, a relationship of trust lends itself to the student choosing to respond affirmatively to motivational activities. there is more "buy in." Secondly, with an established relationship, the instructor is in a much better position to learn the specific ways and means to best and most effectively motivate the individual and the whole class as a group. Motivation works best when it's foundation is personal relationships of trust.

In the past, I have roamed around the classroom to keep conncetions with students. However, recently I have been teaching in much smaller classrooms and roaming is not as easy. In fact, movement around the front almost seems as if I am just pacing back and forth (only about 6 steps each way.) Any suggestions?

Just wondering if anyone had some good suggestions as to how to handle things when a group absolutely does not get along. I hate the thought of breaking them up and reassigning them. However, keeping them together leads to poor contributions and sometimes outright hostility.

Motivation and enthusiasm is important in the class room

I have found that PowerPoint is overused and presented poorly in instruction today. There are so many other ways to teach. I like to use mindmaps, discussion trees, guided worksheets, and case studies to teach my classes. By varying how I present the material, I am better able to keep the students engaged and keep the class fresh.

I find that ice breaking activities are helpful the first day. Unfortunately, we (teachers) often fail to continue using activities to create group cohesion and togetherness. Imagine if you are in a class that meets once or twice a week. By the time your next class rolls around, you've already forgotten most of the people in class and you may be experiencing apprehension anew. I find that a quick 3-10 minute activity really helps accelerate class cohesion. Doing this for the first two or three class periods streghtens the group. Taking a few minutes out of class is a small thing when we consider the long-term benefit for students.

I have taught in corporations, public universities, career colleges. My experience with planning and preparation has been different depending on the venue. One of the consistant parts of planning is making sure the time allotted for class matches with the current material presented. Students can tell if I am stretching or streamlining material. That is why I feel planning and preparation is so important as an educator.

Teaching a medical profession means using a lot of vocabulary with latin prefix and suffix. I try to point these prefixes and suffixes out with each term so that the students can become familiar with them and start to apply them to other terms-hopefully then they will be able figure out a disease based on the prefix/suffix. While I have found this helpfull with the majority of the students, I'm not sure how helpful it is to an ELL student

This is the first time for me to teach the class I am teaching this quarter. Sometimes things happen because of outside scheduling that doesn't correspond with my outline for the class. I'm a little frustrated with how often I have to change things up. I'm hoping the next time I teach this class, I will have my timeline figured out a little better.

I feel that PowerPoint lectures are the student’s gold mine of information. When I preset a PowerPoint lecture, I always give the students a copy of the lecture that has fill in the blanks spots so that the students keep their attention. It all falls back on the old teaching styles, see, hear, touch and do. With PowerPoint presentations you give the students a chance to meet all of their learning styles. I have received fee back from my Dean that my classes quiz and test scores are above regular for the class size. So, I support and defend PowerPoint lectures.

I am not sure if this has been covered in another thread, but at what point do we as instructors move away from the test banks that we are given and go to a test created by ourselves for evaluations?

When getting ready to teach a new class, I print off a list of study aids that will help the students be successful with assignments, quizzes, exams, lab work and in class discussions. Every time I teach a class the students are very grateful for the study helps. I make sure the students know that they can e-mail or call me with any question that they have. Every student understands that I will help them understand the material but the student does their part. It is always a two way street. James

I teach Math at a technical college. I used to give in-class quizzes that covered the material that we had learned that day. I found that many students struggled with this. I changed my format and started giving take-home quizzes to do over the weekend. I like the fact that they have PLENTY of time to do the quiz. My students like this a lot more but there are some problems; 1. I don't know if each student is doing their own work. 2. If someone doesn't do it then I'm not able to go over it in class. I've thought about giving the quiz at the beginning of class when they come back from the weekend but again there is that issue of "time" that scare a lot of students, like if I give them 10 min to complete the quiz. Any suggestions?

I give students a 5-point quiz based on material covered on the previous day or assigned reading at the beginning of each class. This serves to: 1. evaluate understanding to date 2. keep students up-to-date on reading assignments 3. reinforce learning for summative evaluation 4. discourage tardiness!