Three Steps to Improve Your Teaching
You can plan now to make your course even better. Research conducted here at the Center for Teaching and Learning indicates that instructors can take a few simple steps to make their classroom experiences more effective for student learning. Presented here are three things that you can do as you plan for future courses.
- Encourage active and practical learning.
- Make connections to real-world applications of the course material.
- Provide for hands-on activities (active learning) over straight lecturing.
- Facilitate in-class discussion groups and group work.
- Provide opportunities for students to be a mentor and to function as a peer teacher.
To access CTL resources to help you with teaching and learning strategies, click here.
- Provide for meaningful teacher-student interactions.
- Learn students’ names and demonstrate that you care about their lives.
- Listen to students’ concerns and respond appropriately.
- Be encouraging and quick to recognize students’ accomplishments.
- Spend more time with students and communicate with them personally.
To access CTL resources to help you with showing students that you care about their learning, click here.
- Make course expectations clear and based on learning outcomes.
- Make course expectations explicit.
- State the learning outcomes and make clear connections to the real world.
- Engage students in assignments that have a clear connection to learning outcomes, as opposed to those that are perceived as busy work.
To access CTL resources to help you with learning outcomes and course design, click here.
Don’t forget the value of conducting mid-course evaluations to track where you are right now.
-Based on research conducted by Whitney Ransom, Center for Teaching and Learning,
Brigham Young University