Barry Westling

Lydia, Great. Assessing prior knowledge would define the purpose of pretesting just about perfectly! Barry Westling

Toni, Understanding is a curious thing. Students will sometimes seem like they have a lesson point mastered, only to come in the next day and bomb the quiz. I think a real key is identifying true "understanding" from mere memorization or recall of facts. Barry Westling

Toni, Great! To me, the ability to ask virtually any question of someone from the career setting is a tremendous value plus benefit for students. I've found students will ask quests from perfect strangers they would not ask their instructor. Barry Westling

Lydia, I like rubrics too. For me, they help determine grading criteria both I and the student are bound by. It may also help guide some students in understanding what I feel is more important and therefore provide some insight the student would not ordinarily have access to. Barry Westling

Lydia, Great! Pretesting can help narrow the focus of a class as the result of pertinent prior knowledge the class cohort possesses. Each class will be a bit different, and one class may have more focus on some topics than a prior class did. Pretesting is a great help and benefit to the instructor in planning how best to reach their students in a given class. Barry Westling

Lydia, I have found some publisher supplied PPT's to be OK, but as you say, most are mere outlines of the chapter. I prefer to make my own slides with the information I feel is most relevant, although I may use images, charts, graphs, and illustrations supplied by the publisher. Occasional (short) videos also enhance the PPT's. I feel students can read the chapters and make their own notes. But there is only one "me", and I prefer to highlight and promote discussion from my own prepared slides. Barry Westling

maricar, Pretesting can help in many ways, including the method you describe. Although students are being assessed the benefit is most helpful to the instructor. Barry Westling

Lydia, Wonderful. And really, coordinating a list of qualified, useful guest speakers is really not that difficult. Too many instructors have valuable speaker resources right under their noses but fail to take advantage of them. Barry Westling

Lauren, Good plan. Even more frequent (if only informal) discussions of performance can enhance the students awareness of their progress. Time is probably the biggest factor that prevents connecting with every student more frequently. Barry Westling

Lauren, Clickers are great, in that they promote participation, are annoymous, and support instant anaylysis by students of an answer may be correct or incorrect. Barry Westling