Effective Teaching

1. Effective Teaching Jay D. Hunt, Ph.D. CSRB 4D1 568-4734

2. Overview of Lecture • Preparation • Delivery • Examinations • Course Evaluation

3. Preparation • Know your audience’s level of knowledge • Undergraduate • Need to know facts and principles • Foundation for future learning • Graduate • Need experimental design and interpretation • How to gain knowledge • Professional • Need previous facts in context • Much more goal-oriented

4. Preparation • Organize your thoughts before you work on your lecture. • Create an outline of what you want your students to know. • Generate learning objectives: • Good: “Be able to recognize and draw the structure of each of the nucleotides.” • Poor: “Know the nucleotides.”

5. Preparation • Generate supplemental handouts when appropriate. • Particularly important for professional students • Do not replicate information in the textbook. • Examples of useful handouts: • Lecture outline • Learning objectives • Sample test questions • A review of your lectures • For graduate students: articles

6. Delivery • Two types of learners • Visual • Need to see slides, black board, overhead transparencies • Learns from reading the text and handouts • Aural • Need to hear you speak the lecture • Will ask more questions than the visual learner • May not even own the textbook • Tend to join study groups more than visual learners

7. Delivery • From the outset of the lecture, let the students know: • What you are going to teach them (outline) • What they are expected to know • Only the topics covered in the lecture, or • The topics covered in the lecture plus the textbook • That you encourage questions and interruptions • How to reach you if they have questions

8. Delivery • Questions from the students • If one student has a question, others in the class probably have the same question. • One can judge the class’ comprehension of the material from the questions received. • Questions sometimes point out weaknesses in one’s delivery. • Use questions to extend the lecture’s content.

9. Delivery • The same principles for giving a good seminar apply to giving a good lecture. • Pace your delivery to the class • Project your voice and do not talk to the board or screen • Do not read to the class except in rare instances where appropriate • When appropriate, involve the class

10. Delivery • When leaving a topic and moving to the next topic, always: • Briefly review the take home message • Tell the students what they are responsible for • Place the topic in context with the next topic (this may include, “What we will discuss next has nothing to do with what we just discussed.”)

11. Examinations • Prepare test questions immediately after giving a lecture (so that the information that you discussed is still clear in your mind) • Prepare the test questions before you give the lecture (so that you will cover the material covered in the questions).

12. Examinations • The types of questions will depend on the class size and the type of student • Multiple choice test knowledge of facts and principles • Essay questions test facts, principles, and application of same

13. Examination The best type of multiple choice question is the type in which the student must complete the sentence. • The best college football team on the planet is the: • Boston Celtics • Chicago Cubs • Dallas Cowboys • Pittsburgh Penguins • Tennessee Volunteers Alphabetizing the answers ensures there is no bias toward using certain letters.

14. Examination Avoid using negatives and confusing syntax in the question. • Each of these teams is not a college football team except: • Boston Celtics • Chicago Cubs • Dallas Cowboys • Pittsburgh Penguins • Tennessee Volunteers

15. Examination A better way to phrase the same question • Which of the following is a college football team? • Boston Celtics • Chicago Cubs • Dallas Cowboys • Pittsburgh Penguins • Tennessee Volunteers

16. Examination Avoid “All of the above” and “None of the above.” • All of these are college football teams except: • Boston Celtics • Michigan Wolverines • Ohio State Buckeyes • Tennessee Volunteers • None of the above

17. Examinations • Design essay style questions to test more than just facts. Essay questions with no one correct answer are fine: • Which college football team is the best in the world? Describe the process by which it became the best. Contrast the team’s strengths with last year’s weaknesses.

18. Course Evaluation • Always evaluate your course! • Ensure anonymity by using standardized, non-identifying questionnaires. • Encourage comments. • Do not collect questionnaires yourself. Have them mailed to a collection center (preferred) or have them placed in an envelope at the end of the final examination. • Use the data to constructively modify your course! • Do not take negative comments personally.