I am relatively new to the teaching profession and wish that I would have had more of this information when I began. Although most of my time was spent just developing curriculum early on this would have saved me some reworking of my methodologies toward welcoming students. My experiences in industry gave me credibility with my students and they were eager to absorb what I had to give them. Fortunately they were all good about my circumstances and maintained some flexibility. Much of this seems like common sense but it is nice to have it down in a structured format… >>>

I have just begun implementing a simple version of critical thinking into my curriculum. I use the critiques of assigned design projects to try and get students, (and myself), to approach a viewpoint by looking through a different window of analysis. The window may be one of economics, or it may be the window of manufacturing processes or politics etc. It may also be the window of the end user. Most of what I use is based on Bloom's Taxonomy. Bloom and his colleagues (1956) produced one of the most often cited documents in establishing educational outcomes: The Taxonomy of… >>>

Hi ED101, A couple of things I'm always looking for on the first day of class are 1) are there any "ringers" in the class 2) what is the motivation of each student. Ringers to me are students who know alot about the subject already, or at least think they do. So I need to find out who these people are and how much knowledge they possess. That way they don't become a distruptive influence. Motivation of each student is finding out why they are here. Some students only want to learn very specific things, while others are happy to… >>>

I'm in a dilemma about the use of electronic material vs traditional hard copy versions in our courses. As an IT school, we tend to use mini-lectures and lots of hands on computer time to re-enforce the topics covered in those lectures. Books are rarely used during the actual class time, and support materials are used occasionally to reference tables of information or clarify a topic. Our textbooks are used by the students outside of class to look up ways of doing things but are not generally read cover to cover. So based on this I feel we could successfully… >>>

One technique I have always try to incorporate into my teaching style is using questions as a way to lead students to my point. Instead of using queries solely as a review, use them to illustrate reasons why we need to do things in certain ways, or to have them get their heads into a new topic. So I would be curious on how other instructors use the Socratic Method in their teaching, when is it appropriate and when is it not, and student responses to it. Also I found this article to be a very interesting test of the… >>>

What do you do when you ask a question and get... deathly silence? You could, of course, asnwer the question yourself, and sometimes it may be the quickest way to keep up your momentum. But answer too many questinos yourself and you're teaching the class that if they sit silent you'll do all the work. A technique I have used is to rephrase the question to make it easier to answer. Simpli-fying is one way (instead of asking for all four vital signs, ask for just one). Or association ("we did this on Monday just after our review"). Or connecting… >>>

What sometimes gets lost in discussing learning styles is that (with a few exceptions) we all learn through all our senses. It's just that the message is stronger when a preferred modality is used. And it's not an either/or situation. I find myself preferring the written word, but also respond well to visuals and (a bit less) to kinesthic. My weakest area is auditory. Perhaps we should think of learning styles more as a ranking than a single choice. And we should plan to appeal to as many senses as we can when planning our lesson. Write what we say… >>>

Lectures, as noted, need to be limited to about 15 minutes to keep the students' eyes from glazing over. However, many topics require expositioins longer than 15 minutes. One way I have found to break up a lengthy lecture is to periodically ask questions of the class. If I have just made a point, I might ask if anyone can think of an example from their own experience. Or, if there is a connection to something previously learned, I might ask them if "this sounds familiar?". Or I might probe for rationale by asking "why do you think this is… >>>