Gary Meers, Ed.D.

Ken You have captured the essence of staying fresh in the classroom/laboratory. If we as educators continue to put ourselves in our students' shoes, if even for only a few minutes we will be able to refocus our efforts and intentions for student success. As instructors we have to make sure that we look for new and inventive ways of presenting our material so that we don't present our information in a repetitive and boring fashion. If we get bored with our teaching, we know our students have to be. We need a “heads up” approach to the classroom/laboratory each… >>>

Hi Ken, Even though you have worked through all four of the Modules, I thought it would be good if we could exchange some information about how to better serve our students. You mentioned that understanding learner characteristics can be a great tool to better instruction. What steps do you go through to become familiar with your students' learning characteristics? Do you use a check list, student survey, or some other device to collect your information? Fear is a big factor when dealing with adults in a new learning setting. They at all costs do not want to be embarrassed… >>>

Les Great ideas for making the courses and content relevant. Anything an instructor can do to get the students to focus on the course content and then see application of the content will greatly facilitate relevancy. In terms of Module 4, the use of different delivery methods and offering a variety of learning styles all contribute to relevancy. You are not missing the point at all, in fact you are very focused on it. You are observing that all of these different techniques of attempting to met student learning contribute to enhance student growth. Keep up your attention to detail… >>>

Since humans like to use different senses to receive, store and then apply new information the use of visual stimulus is another way of getting them to look at the big picture of where their training will take them. Sometimes students forget how far they have progressed in a course until they see examples of skills they now have. As in Cosmetology, they can see themselves moving from just understanding color to use of the color wheel in meeting customer needs. Sometimes the “forest and trees” syndrome takes over. The instructor has the responsibility to keep clearing away the “trees”… >>>