Incorporating both academic and professional experience into the class room.
Being an instructor can be very challenging in keeping the students engaged. Both teaching methods: as an on-line facilitator and a face to face in the classroom setting instructor must maintain the retention of its students. Therefore, the best way to do this is to incorporate both your academic knowledge with your professional experiences to enhance the learning experience.
This simply means as you discuss different topics give examples of how you would apply that situation/ application in the providers office; especially if you are teaching the medical billing and coding curriculum or medical assistance.
Discuss some tips that only come from experience and not from literature: textbooks, reference books etc. Your students will appreciate you sharing the personal professional experience of applied application in the related field.
I most definitely agree. Bringing some of those stories of personal experiences in our fields of expertise, certainly does make the learning more relevant to our students. I am sure that each of us can remember that instructor that just 'lectured' to us as students and yet did not include those stories - I'd bet we each have long ago forgotten his or her name. But that instructor that made learning fun with stories of relevancy we will remember that learning much more. I can remember a simply awesome instructor that did just that. He was my antomy and physiology instructor now over 30 years ago. I still remember him and his lecture style. It truly makes for a much better learning environment when there is interaction and relevancy brought into the mix.
Students tend to be more career-focused and motivated by instructors who share their "war stories". Having "real-world" industry experience fosters trust and discipline. When you share your professional experiences, students also tend to have more respect for their instructor because you have displayed yourself as a Subject Matter Expert.
Monica:
I have taught face to face and now I am teaching online. You are correct the challenge is to keep the student engaged. I have been in healthcare for 25 years and when I give a lecture I do bring in REaly world expereince into the class room, and some personal but just enough that is partaining to the lesson. This help to make the lesson exciting, the students sem to participate more in the class roomm discussion.
The online expereince as an instructor I do find this challenging, but the student is on the web, however, some personal expereince helps to bring a reality to the lesson, and discussion.
Hi Theresa,
You are correct the methods an instructor uses to keep the students engaged differs from face to face as opposed to on-line. I also teach on-line therefore, the methodology that I employ is availability.I have provided several ways for my students to reach me for assistance within the Blackboard arena; email, chat room, discussion tab as well as by phone. When an instructor is accessible to the students it gives them a feeling of comfort.
I also share some tips from working in the industry with my on-line students to enhance their learning experience.
