Teaching Strategies

The meta from today:

• I wanted to do one variation on the group work from last time to show how the same type of activities can be changed to keep it interesting enough that students have to follow directions and pay attention to what is going on in the room. You can also modify any exercise in a number of ways, so this was one example. The first one focused on the abstract and the group work was a way to draw similarities across topics. The second group activity focused on each group learning about one model and understanding it enough to teach others. It was much less about trends.
• The reason that there was a focus on how each taxonomy could inform your teaching is because they were all fairly abstract. This was to help the learners who need concrete examples and reasons why.
• I’m not sure that I’ll do this or not since we tend to be in paper saving mode, but with students I might print out the collaborative handout and pass it out at the beginning of the next class as a quick refresher before moving on.
• We’ll do something different in the next class. I don’t want anyone to get too settled in.

After an understanding of Instructional Design, we moved into talking about different models Instructional Designers use. As everyone indicated they had a high priority for learning more about active learning and group work, instead of a lecture (or even a facilitated discussion), we used groups to get to the content.

The layout of the class was:

1. Why models are important
2. Divide up into groups and pick models to investigate
3. Groups researched their models, created a PowerPoint slide (aka poster) on their topic
4. Each group sent a representative to present their slide and explain their concept
5. We talked about what the models have in common, how they inform our teaching, what we already do using these models (without knowing them), and how these models could improve what we do.

The main points (I had) for the group:

• Models give us a vocabulary for what we do and a framework to use when approaching a big task. This allows us to identify areas that need work and make improvements.
• ID Models can apply to a curriculum, a 3 hour course, a one-shot session, or even a handout. They’re macro and micro.
• The models are all really simple, so picking one and running with it isn’t a bad thing. I use ADDIE.
• These models are cyclical, so the evaluation from one phase feeds into the analysis of the next phase.

Interested in the posters? They’re here: