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Re: another question about designing an instructor-led course
Subject:Re: another question about designing an instructor-led course From:Keith Hood <klhra -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:tech2wr-l <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>, Becca <becca_price -at- yahoo -dot- com>, Becca <becca -at- di -dot- org>, Peter Neilson <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net> Date:Tue, 9 Apr 2013 20:04:47 -0700 (PDT)
This is kind of similar to one of the principles we followed in designing courses. Each module was supposed to end with a test that determined if the student had picked up the really important required knowledge. And the module in the course materials was supposed to concentrate on teaching the things that the student would need to know in order to pass that test.
--- On Tue, 4/9/13, Peter Neilson <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net> wrote:
From: Peter Neilson <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net>
Subject: Re: another question about designing an instructor-led course
To: "tech2wr-l" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>, "Becca" <becca_price -at- yahoo -dot- com>, "Becca" <becca -at- di -dot- org>
Date: Tuesday, April 9, 2013, 12:59 PM
> The student guide will contain readings and lab notes. Should the instructor's guide just be an outline with bullet points to make sure that the instructor teaches in his/her own words, rather than just reads the same text out loud to the students that they read the night before?
For every day's class activity, the instructor should have on hand a set of criteria to be able to determine if the students are actually studying and learning the material. The idea here is that there are certain key questions that can reveal whether the students are learning, or if they have fallen into the pitfalls that always get the lazy or inattentive.
For example, when teaching multiplication, a touchstone for progress is to ask for 6x9. The speed of answering reveals the depth at which the multiplication table has entered the brain cells. Why that particular question? Because it's easily confused with 7x8.
The instructor should already have (or should acquire the night before) enough knowledge to tell whether the students are learning solidly ("6x9 is 54"), not taking it seriously, but getting by ("um, ahh, let's see, that's ahhh, 54), just barely making it (fumbles with fingers, complains about unfairness, and says, "is it 54?"), or hopelessly lost ("56" or "47").
The specifics of the "touchstone" material should be hidden from the students, lest they be able to fake everything by spouting only a few key answers.
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