By Richard H. Miller, Global Campus
PULLMAN, Wash. – Show your passion; move around the room; break up class time and use daily assignments to ensure attendance – these are some of the dynamic instructional techniques imparted to Washington State University faculty recently by four of their peers.
The occasion was the fourth faculty-led workshop on teaching with technology, a collaboration between the Office of the Provost, WSU Global Campus and the WSU Teaching Academy.
“Our students have grown up with technology and relate naturally to it,” said WSU Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Erica Austin, who introduced the presenters. “Faculty are realizing there’s sometimes a disconnect between what they’re trying to communicate and the way students tend to receive information.”
The workshops are part of the WSU Cougar PAWS Initiative (http://provost.wsu.edu/initiatives/paws/), Austin said: “There are three parts to the paw. Support for students, support for faculty and technology support for all of us.”
Molecular biosciences professor Phil Mixter led off the event with this problem: “Students had trouble discerning credible sources from everything that search engines handed them,” he said. His answer is a bit of trickery that he calls a circular assignment: As a warm-up activity, he asks students to write a short essay defining a credible source, and to cite credible sources.
“They have to use credible sources to talk about sources,” he said. “I assess whether or not they apply their own criteria.”
Professor Andy O’Fallon of the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science talked about the importance of building rapport: have fun, engage students, show your passion, use different media. His tips included asking students to send an email if they’re going to miss a lecture, which encourages accountability, and recruiting your most enthusiastic undergrads to become TAs in later classes.
Music professor Sheila Converse gave a highly animated talk that illustrated one of her main premises: Be passionate about your subject.
“Move around the room,” she said, as she did just that. Her other advice included breaking material into 10-minute segments, having daily assignments that require students to attend and, when it comes to PowerPoint, “less is more.”
Psychology professor Samantha Swindell also advocated moving around a lot: “There’s no safe place in my class,” she said. She said she is always looking for new ways to present material, prefers a lecture style that encourages students to provide most of the information and averages about 10 clicker questions in each class.
“Clickers have fundamentally changed the way that I teach,” she said. “It allows me to assess learning on the spot.”
In the audience was Chuck Munson, business professor and chair of the Teaching Academy, which provides guidance on improving teaching and learning. Why did a longtime expert on teaching attend this workshop?
“You can never stop learning,” he said. “I don’t have all the best practices and best ideas—and students keep changing.”
To watch the video of the workshop, please see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECUa3IbkCIU&feature=youtu.be.