Colleen Harrison

One of the most powerful quotes from the Harvard Business School videos was, "great teachers transcend the message - they're believable."  The overarching theme of rapport and getting to know your students really comes through in this module.  By getting to know the students, a professor can hone in on how to motivate them to succeed.  That motivation and rapport through honesty and integrity are vital to student retention.

I really loved the acronym REFOCUS in this module.  The idea of unburdening was especially interesting to me, especially through the lens of potential burnout in both teachers and students.  I also loved the idea of a Crisis Game as a critical thinking and practical application of learning activity.

Both children and adults respond well to positive reinforcement.  By acknowledging a student's accomplishments, a professor can help adult students feel more confident in their learning.  Additionally, by outlining expectations at the beginning, students can draft a plan for success that can be reinforced by the professor.  Treating students like individuals, celebrating their successes, and building rapport can help improve retention.

Students are influenced by both intrinsic and extrinsic needs.  In order to help our students meet their highest potential, we must be willing to have conversations with them about their needs.  However, we must remember that we represent the university and cannot get "sucked into the complaint" with them when students become frustrated.  Student frustrations can limit their ability to learn, and by providing support to help students meet their needs while also maintaining professionalism is important.

Lecturing for an extended period of time is ineffective for many reasons, the least of not being that the adult attention span is only 15-18 minutes.  Additionally, lecture delivery rarely takes into account the needs of differentiated learners.  Even auditory learners need a break from a lecture, so by providing instructional variety, a professor can help to ensure students remain focused and engaged with the curriculum. 

Getting to know your students as individuals, and letting the students know who you are, will help to establish rapport.  As Teddy Roosevelt said, "Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care."  By establishing both credibility and rapport, a professor can help the students feel more at ease about taking a course as an adult.

Taking time out of the first class to not only conduct introductions, but also to introduce students to the course, is paramount.  It may feel like time that could be better spent with instruction; however, by outlining the course goals,… >>>

I appreciated the notion of objectives and lesson plans as presented in this module.  An alignment between the taught and tested curriculum is vital to student success, so having a clearly-outlined syllabus that addresses the goals and objectives of the course, coupled with learning activities that are both differentiated and have real-world application, sets our students up for success!

It's all about the students!  Teaching should be about learning - it's all about the students, not about a teacher showing off how intelligent he or she may be.  Showing excitement for the material is going to help the students become passionate about it, too.  By being a credible, candid, compassionate, committed, and clear teacher, we can model the soft skills necessary for success.

Overall, serving as a model, manager, and motivator, we can implement the 5 Cs listed above in order to create a meaningful learning environment for our students where they feel welcome, supported, and successful.