In my program, I have students that range from 18 to 61 in age. It is amazing to watch their social interaction. I pick lab partners for the class. I make sure that everyone gets a chance to have everyone as a partner. This ensures a familarity amongst the students and lively class discussion.

I work and teach primarily in an online course environment, which means interacting with students face to face is rare. Does anyone have any suggestions or "best practices" you've found to be most successful in getting to know and understand online learners when there is the absence of physical interaction? As a group, the online faculty at our school do a great job supporting online students...I'm just looking for any ideas that other online schools might be doing to reach out to their online students.

I like to use the competitive nature of my students to my advantage. I instruct a mostly youger male dominated class, and have oppurtunities to make challenging review games and lab learning in to contests. As stated in the ED102 discussion, not all students will want to compete. I find the majority do, and make sure there is always an activity for the students that do not want to compete. This helps keep them engaged in the contest. For instance I run a tire dismounting and mounting competition. The students compete side by side to see who can take a tire off of a wheel fastest and then mount it back on the wheel while following pre-set rules. The students that do not compete are asked to be officials to watch that the rules are followed, some are asked to operate stop watches and be time keepers, and other are recruited to record all of the competitors times and points. This style of relaxed learning puts together another one of the topics from ED102, FUN!

Would you care to make a comment about dyscalculia (math anxiety), especially with our older students who haven't used any algebra for centuries and see nothing but a rapidly approaching precipice over which they will surely fall- straight into the pit of math hell. Email is quick and a great way to help students. However, how do we help our algebra students with this very efficient communication system? I am referring to exchanging problem solving techniques within a mathematical framework. We just don't have the resource to write clear algebraic equations and to do that quickly through email. Try to demo with email and its very limited math symbols the solving of a simple quadratic equation using the step by step procedures embedded within the quadratic formula and you have some idea of the bottleneck to which I refer.

Every year it happens, a group of inmature students will enroll into my class. They are a great challege to the entire class, including myself. I'm forced to utilze my high school teaching methods: seating arangements, roll call, limiting class discussions and no field trips. The older students find this to be quite insulting and time-consuming. We are not in High School anymore, Toto.

I teach courses in the evening -- and not only are my students facing long days, with early mornings for daycare, transportation to and from work, and then finally at the end of the day to come and sit in class for 3-4 hours makes for many sleepless nights. I try to break up the classes into 25-35 mins of instruction and then break for discussion/application to help students find something in their daily life to "make it real". Some students look so sleep deprived that all I get sometimes are blank stares. Anyone else have similar experiences? If so, any ideas (besides frequent breaks, get up and stretching)?? -DD

Please give a specific example of how you do or could use Learnativity in your classroom/lab environment?

Do you see a connection between the Human Factor and the instructor competency of Customer Focus? If yes or no, please explain.

What is a couple of ways that you use to motivate your students to achieve and be successful in regards to their career goals?

What are some good ways of keeping evening students motivated? I have noticed it to be a bit difficult, especially comming in from a full days work, then to sit in a 4-hour class.

Some times as an educator we get in the groove of doing the same things over and over. Just like our students we need an alternative means of stimulating our brain a recharge if you will. Often times doing the same classes over and over we become set in our ways and resist the urge to think out of the box.

As a tech before an Instructor, I like to discus with my students some of the jobs that I have done in my career before. The students become more open when there is life stories that they will see in the felled and they become excited about their schooling and become more interested in what we are learning.

I currently have a class with only one student. This is very difficult because most of the time it feels like tutoring. It's difficult to keep her engaged and motivated because when I ask an open ended question, she repeats exactly what I said. There is neither group discussion nor learning from peers. Activities and projects are indivual assignments that can come across as busy work. Any suggestions?

I have a student who has a hard time focus in class. She has a good heary, and trys really hard. But she is always slow, and asks other students questions to catch up with the class speed. She makes other students distracted. But I cannot critisize her, because I know she may have some medical problems with focusing. Very frustrated.

Motivating students comes down to how much planning, preparation, expertise, energy and enthusiasm you convey to your students.

I believe it is a two way street; a good instructor must constantly be engaged with his students personalities, needs and learning progress, yet he must also be aware of his own instructional strengths and weaknesses, in order to provide the best learning experience for his students as possible.

I always attempt to get to know my students on the first day of class. This way I will be in touch with their personalities and needs throughout the course. I also make it known that I am approachable and available to them.

Keeping students focused is a challenge some times but if you try to change your tone and keep them in gauged by asking questions to the subject matter that seems to work.

I find that if you keep the students occupied in class and in lab they seem to be in gauged in class. Some students are harder then others but you have to approach them.

I tell the students in my clas to have a good time and keep it Professional. i think part of learning is to have fun in the learning process.