3
Effective Instruction
Overview Elements of effective instruction
SECTION 1 Diversity of Students and Learning Styles
SECTION 2 Active Learning
SECTION 3 Facilitating Skill Development
By the end of this chapter, you are able to:
• Concerned with student’s academic and non-academic problems;
Provide opportunities for open -communication to all students and
willingly assist students in respond to the diversity of their learning
performance, prior knowledge, cultural background and interests.
• Identify strategies teaching approaches to support the achievement
of learning outcomes and to promote inclusive and positive student
participation and engagement.
Elements of effective instruction:
Make class sessions effective
To keep students from being plunged into cognitive overload by
a nonstop flow of information….
• Make your learning objectives
and main points clear.
• Use active learning.
• Minimize distractions.
• Periodically monitor your
students' understanding of
what you have just presented.
Elements of effective instruction:
Make Pre-Class Assignments Effective
• Trim assignments down to essential
material.
• Include online quizzes with reading
assignments.
• Have students generate and submit
questions about readings.
• Have students draw concept maps for
assigned readings.
• Consider giving in-class quizzes on
readings, and then consider not giving
them.
• Don't be a slave to your session plans
Motivating students to do pre-class work by implement Just-in-Time
Teaching and Peer Instruction
Elements of effective instruction:
Keep improving your teaching
You can always teach better. Here are
several ways to do it:
• Post-class reflection
• End-of-course student ratings of
teaching
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Peer review of teaching
Midterm evaluations
Classroom assessment techniques
Expert consulting
Post-course reflection
Self-education
Section 1
Diversity of Students and Learning Styles
How diversity affects the classroom
• Instructors’ assumptions about what a typical student should know,
the resources they have and their prior knowledge are extremely
important.
• Students may perceive that they do not “belong” in the classroom
setting — a feeling that can lead to decreased participation, feelings
of inadequacy, and other distractions.
• Teachers may make flawed assumptions of students’ capabilities or
assume a uniform standard of student performance.
Level of Intellectual Development (Perry 1981)
Commitment
Relativism
Multiplicity
Duality
Students enjoys demonstrating his/her own ideas
and creative thoughts.
Students begin to weight evidence and method of inquiry.
They become active constructors of knowledge.
Students appreciate that the dualistic construct may not be
absolute and may experience dissonance due to varying
opinions and views.
Students are passive acceptors of objective clear cut
knowledge that is committed to memory
Diversity of Students and Learning Styles (cont.)
Approaches to learning, levels of intellectual development, and
learning styles have several features in common (Felder & Brent, 2005).
They are all context dependent patterns of behavior rather than
invariant human attributes and are based on extensive observation of
students rather than brain physiology.
Our goal should be to teach in an inclusive manner that
helps as many students as possible to succeed.
Responding to Student Diversity
• Treat students as individuals whose identifies are complex and unique.
• Encourage full participation while being aware of differences which may
influences’ response.
• Vary your teaching methods to take advantage of different learning styles
and to expand the repertoire of strategies tried by each student.
• Promote a respectful classroom climate with egalitarian norms and
acceptance of differences.
• Be aware of possible student anxiety about their performance in a
competitive environment such as Carnegie Mellon's but try not to
"overprotect."
Avoiding Common Problems
• Provide some linguistic redundancy
• Use diverse examples rather than ones which assume a particular
background or experience.
• Don't assume that students who don't talk don't know the material.
• Watch the type of humor that occurs in your classes to be sure it
denigrates no one.
Learning styles
• Approaches to learning,
levels of intellectual
development, and
learning styles have
several features in
common (Felder & Brent,
2005). They are all context
dependent patterns of
behavior rather than
invariant human attributes
and are based on
extensive observation of
students rather than brain
physiology.
The Experiential Learning (David Kolb’s model)
1. Concrete Experience - (a new
experience of situation is encountered, or
a reinterpretation of existing experience).
2. Reflective Observation (of the new
experience. Of particular importance are
any inconsistencies between experience
and understanding).
3. Abstract Conceptualization (Reflection
gives rise to a new idea, or a modification
of an existing abstract concept).
4. Active Experimentation (the learner
applies them to the world around them to
see what results).
VARK Modalities(Fleming and Mills, 1992)
Field trip
Read book
Pod cast
Fixing machine
• Visual Learner learn by sight
• Auditory Learner learn by
hearing
• Read/Write Learn by read and
write
• Tactile Learner(Kinesthetic)
learn by touch
Assumption of Learning styles
• “Learners have preferences about how
to learn that are independent of both
ability and content and have meaningful
implications for their learning.”
• “Learning can be improved by matching
instruction to students' learning styles.”
Research does not support designing instruction to match learning styles.