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Learning by teaching

I love the concept of learning by teaching. I teach composition and literature courses, and I discovered in my first semester of teaching composition that I learned more about writing in that process of teaching my own courses than I ever did in taking composition courses myself. This is why I have tried, in both on-ground and online courses, to make collaboration and peer review an essential and frequent tool for learning. When students are responsible, at least in part, for another's success, as well as their own, they seem to invest more and to internalize and actualize course content more readily. I would love to "hear" everyone's thoughts on learning by teaching!

Thank you!

 

Best,

Beth Miller

I agree! I teach marketing and I learn MORE from my students and their career experiences than I ever could from reading about companies on the internet!

I also agree.   I find that teaching forces me to double check my work and in doing so, I learn much more in terms of validation and, in some cases correcting ideas that might be erroneous. To Jill's point, it is incredible how much you can learn from students, in particular their different perspectives based on their experiences. It really expands my knowledge base and encourages discussion.

I agree with you all! Every time I teach a class, no matter what it is, I learn something new. As the world of health care changes daily, I like to provide time sensitive materials that are occurring during the class that I am teaching. For example, the other day while researching articles for a management course, I learned that physicians can now dismiss patients who will not adhere to getting their children immunized. Every day is a learning experience if you are an instructor! I was also once told that we should actually post something that is not true in a course discussion just to see if anyone will catch it, and point it out. If they do, we can use this as a "teachable moment" by showing we are human and can make mistakes. We can also discuss what the correct answer should be and why. Finally, it promotes attention to detail. Great discussion!

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