Always keep the guiding principles and commitments to help students build skills by adopting extensive real-world examples, solving problems and associating the lectures with illustrations, animations, and demonstrations accompanied with clear in-class discussions.
Use modern technology. For example, in-class access to Internet, videos computer-based activities, simulations, software, computer animation, and computer interfacing of some illustrating experiments.
Not only to stress on hands-on activities but also, the students need minds-on activities; encourage the students to learn how to solve conceptual questions and critical thinking.
Give space to class-talks and side-talks which create an effective means of communication and discussion atmosphere for the activities.
Urge the students to learn the material day by day; not to “cram!” which leads to the “hard time” in the course. Continuous reviewing and solving many problems help students to develop a deeper understanding of the concepts.
Do not do everything by yourself. The learning/teaching strategies emphasize the active role of students and their participation. Adopt the student-centered learning. It provides an effective way to offer an active learning environment.
“Success is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful education. It is the wise choice of many alternatives.”
- Wagih Ghobriel, Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, Department of Chemical and Physical Sciences
I typically use two related strategies. First, I introduce a hands-on activity where students practice a skill (for example, a short exercise where students answer a few questions about what a page of assigned reading in the course says and how the author chose to present this information). This can be done in the classroom or during a one-on-one meeting. In a 5-minute activity, students can learn a lot about the skills they have and, more importantly, those they need to improve. The second strategy is to cite published research demonstrating, often with empirical evidence, that a specific approach to academic skills development actually works. This research is often conducted in a university classroom and usually explains WHY such an approach is effective, so it resonates with students and helps to legitimize my advice.
-Tyler Evans-Tokaryk, Associate Professor, Teaching Stream and Director Robert Gillespie Academic Skills Centre