Learning styles vary from student to student. It is challenging to teach a concept when many variables exist prior to learning to happen. We have to keep in mind that people's attention span is often less in terms of our lecture time frame. This is why we should vary our teaching style and acknowledeg the natural accurences happening to students while learning. Also, too much condensed information may sometimes hinder learning results. Having a lesson plan helps the student learn and helps the instructor stay organized and prepared. Just as a student learns, an instructor should always practice, practice, practice.
It is important to develop and learn competencies so that you can go and build your own instructional style. In your style there are many types of teaching/learniing that can be used. Having a lesion plan in the beginning will guide you along the way. Your delivery should demonstate competence, an interest, and an overall delivity plan. You plans shoud vary and attempt to engage the student in the content that is being delivered.
Be creative, competent and personable, adaptive, flexible and open in your teaching/learning styles.
As we all know each s tudent has their own learning style and as instructors, we should accommodate their own learning style.
I need to develop lesson plans that I am comfortable with so I look organized and understanding of my own discussion.
Lesson plans, lecture notes, ppp, tree diagra: this is the good path designing your classes.
I try to incorporate different learning styles into my lectures. My problem is all my objectives for the class are important and I never know which one to actually focus on. I have been learning to take 2-3 objectives and break them up into 15-minute lectures. Within each one, I then do a learning activity to drive home my lecture's purpose. In my online classes, this has been challenging. It is hard to keep students motivated. I have been asking a question in the chatbox to ease any anxiety for the class. I also make sure I am mentally prepared so they can sense my excitement.
I have learned that it is very important to change how you deliver the course content. I constantly stive to figure out what to utilize to keep the students motivated with the content. This section has helped tremendously with this.
Reply to Michael Taylor's post:
Michael... How clever, thank you for your post.
Thank you. The reality check is that TED presenters practice their delivery for many days in order to hone their words/tone and measure impact. No full time teacher has that luxury. At the same time, practicing the principles of quarter hour mini lessons, limited topics, and emotional connection can create a habit pattern that takes advantage of presentational science.
Reply to Michael Taylor's post: Thanks for the reference and data, even 3 things can get overwhelming if too many rabbit trails attached to them. A great reminder that it's about the student LEARNING, not finishing the teacher's list. My first lesson plan is WAY too long, thanks for the revamp before the students hear it!
Thank you Kisi. I think we all know that learning is a very individual process. However, mass education is still the norm, so we have to deal in what works for the masses.
I discussed this with a local guy, a PhD in Cognitive Training. He said that some people dispute the idea of a 3 idea maximum and push for 5-7. However in his research, the number of people who could handle even 4-5 ideas in their heads at one time was extremely small, so small as to be outliers. 6-7 would be an Einstein, or in moderns terms, Jeff Bezos. Leading with one main idea, and three supporting ideas per ~15 minute presentation (as a max parameter) seems to be the sweetspot.
Even more ideally, a pre-presentation research activity precedes the presentation to create a mind ready for further insight or discussion. At the end of that ~15 minutes, there should be a mental break, maybe a short quiz, activity, or lab, that reinforces the main idea. Once it 'sticks' to the neurons, the another 15 minute presentation can be added to further reinforce previous learning, perhaps one of the orginal three supporting ideas. That way, the 'rabbit trails' lead to an intentional outcome of the 'main idea'.
Change happens in a student's struggle for freedom from ignorance. We facilitate that by 'how' we teach. I have heard that if 'learning' is only academic and does not 'change' us in some way, maybe it does not qualify to be called learning. Bloom's taxonomy largely reinforces that idea.
I need to keep the length of my lecture in mind. I have a tendency to get into indepth explanations and loose students attention.
It is important to think through all types of learners when getting ready for a class and more important for online lectures. In addition, as faculty we need to prepare before and practice our lectures and demos limiting to 5 to 7 steps.
I do "suffer" something similar.
What I do in order to minimise this clear trend that I have as well, is to write some bullets as note pages. During my internal rehersals, I try to control the timings. Moreover, based on the rehersals & timings, I adjust these note pages and since then, they become a kind of my "key road map" to follow during my lecture.
Reply to Christopher Witt's post:
I trully believe that this is a great idea and approach. I will clearly consider this approach at least for some of my lectures.
There are many learning styles and everyone is unique in how they learn. Using varying teaching methods gives students an opportunity to learn in many ways. Being prepared before class and providing all materials is important.
This really helped me to understand different teaching methods to include in my classroom. I also will tape my classes so I can review myself teaching and fix any issues. I have also started to practice teaching certain concepts before I incorporate the content in the classroom setting.
Offer more variety, stick to 15-18 minute chuncks of content.
There are multiple learning styles: auditory, visual, tactical. Provide mini-lecture of 15-18minutes and ensure the lessons addresses multiple learning styles to help maximum learning for students.
