Gary Meers, Ed.D.

About me

I am an Education Advisor/Consultant for MaxKnowledge. I write courses that assist in the professional development of career college instructors. These courses range in content from the introductory level to advanced instructional development. I started my teaching career as an instructional technology teacher on the high school level, completed graduate school and then moved into higher education. I spent many years in the area of teacher training at the University of Nebraska. While at the University of Nebraska I stared working with career college instructors to improve their instructional delivery skills. As a result of these experiences I have been a consultant to career colleges throughout the United States and a number of foreign countries.

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Gary Meers, Ed.D.

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Expanding Your Instructional Abilities

Hi Susan, Pick your area of greatest need and work on getting it like you want it. It is like the age old question "How do you eat an elephant?" Answer--"One bite at a time." If you try to fix everything you won't get much of anything done but by concentrating on one area to get the handouts completed, media prepared and lecture formatted you will be able to move to the next area and so forth. Any questions on this or if I can be of any help to you let me know. Thanks. Gary

Gary Meers, Ed.D.

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Motivating Learners

Hi Donna, What are some of the ways you show your students how much you care about your field and enjoy teaching? Gary

Gary Meers, Ed.D.

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Your Instructional Style

Hi Loretta, This is a common situation for most instructors. A strategy for getting the students involved in the discussions and answering questions is to put them in groups of three-four. Present a question and have each group come up with solutions. Have a student report out on what the group came up with. Do another round and have another student report out from each group. Do rounds of this until each member of each group has presented to the class. This really helps to get the students comfortable in talking and interacting in the class. Granted some students will… >>>

Gary Meers, Ed.D.

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Teaching to Multiple Intelligences

Hi Patricia, Right you are. You are using a variety of approaches so the students can work in their preferences as well as learn how to be comfortable in the other areas. Each student can use his/her intelligences as they work through the projects. Gary

Gary Meers, Ed.D.

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Defining Instructional Professionalism

Hi Susan, Thank you for the good comments in your forum response. You have captured the needed blending of both the knowledge/skills and the soft skills in order to help your students to see what it takes to be successful in their careers. The key components of being trust worthy and dependable must be present if they are going to have careers them continue to grow throughout their time in the work place. Gary

Gary Meers, Ed.D.

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Application of New Knowledge

Hi Renee, Good approach to your instructional delivery sequence. You are helping the students to build a solid knowledge foundation and then moving up from there. This helps them to see relevancy and application to what they are doing and the skills they are developing. Gary

Gary Meers, Ed.D.

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Adapting Your Instructional Strategy

Hi Clarine, The benefit of your strategy is that you are offering your students a number of different ways to learn. By doing this you are going to give each student a chance to acquire new knowledge and skills in addition to keeping their interest in the content that is being shared. Gary

Gary Meers, Ed.D.

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Instructors as Role Models

Hi Marci, I wish I had a good answer to your question. I have been in education for many years and this saying has haunted us since before I can remember. The origin of the saying comes from years back when students set at the feet of teachers and the teachers talked with them about various topics. Only the less intelligent or poor did work with their hands thus they weren't qualified to teach anyone anything. Somewhere it got turned around to the point that the saying reflects on people who teach as being incapable of doing the work themselves.… >>>

Gary Meers, Ed.D.

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Application of New Knowledge

Hi Lisa, This is a good way to get students to complete the assignment while developing their written communication skills. I am sure they have fun selecting the topics they are going to write about because they the ones they select. This way they can focus on something that is of interest to them and write their projects discussing that topic. Gary

Gary Meers, Ed.D.

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Accommodating Learner Preferences

Hi Frank, Thanks for sharing this strategy with us. This is a great way to both measure whether the students have read the material as you mentioned as well as giving discussion questions that can become a part of the review process. This is a win win for everyone. Gary

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