Teaching and Learning Centre

Teaching and Learning Centre

• Excellence in teaching and learning lies at the core of ACK's educational mission.

• The college places high importance on delivery of quality learning experience for all of its students and supporting its faculty who are essential for achieving this goal.

• We aim to collaborate with all the academic departments to promote an institutional culture that values effective teaching and meaningful learning.

• We aim to motivate students towards durable learning - learning that extends beyond the short-term and into the long-term retention of information that remains with students after the final exam.

Partnership between management, faculty, students, all departments and communities are essential to quality education and student success.

Synergy: 1 + 1 = 3

• Faculty Development

• Student Engagement

• Industry/Community Link

• E-Platforms

• Lack of teaching experience.

• Instructors need to be more culturally sensitive.

• Too many videos in a lecture.

• Poor resources.

• More practice across units was required.

• Better communication with students.

• Need more class engagement.

• Monotonous

• Just reading from slides

• Office hours flexibility

• Encourage students more

• Avoid too many jokes

• Teaching effectiveness

• Coordination between instructors teaching same unit

• Assessments clarifications (projects)

• Grading criteria

• Respect for students

• Over criticizing students

• Feedback time

• Email response

• Teachers who establish classrooms that are caring, supportive, safe, challenging, and academically robust help define a positive learning environment.

• Being respectful, supportive, and productive.

• Classroom engagement practiced by students.

• From the Latin movere, “to move”,

• Describes students desire to engage in learning and do well.

• Physiologists define it as the directing of energy and passion toward a goal.

• The students who did well in college were not necessarily those who had excelled academically. Rather, they were the ones who were optimistic, resilient, and socially adept.

To push the students to complete a task, teachers need to use strategies to encourage behaviors they want to see.

• The feeling of “belonging to the college” was a main factor that most powerfully and consistently protected against risk and distress.

• Find ways to value everyone, explicitly reinforce that each person is welcomed and valued in the school community. Encourage belonging within other social groups in the school.

• Valuing students on their own terms does not mean that the college should disregard its own institutional standards.

• In fact, research has shown that high standards and expectations give students the sense that the college staff care about them (Bergin and Bergin. (2009)). The challenge is then to maintain a continuous balance between high but achievable expectations, and students having the assurance that failure will not mean withdrawal of acceptance.

The findings of research suggested that students were motivated to take the extra academic step when they perceived their teachers’ feedback as a genuine desire to help them rather than as an expression of indifference.

The more effort we devote to getting students to pay attention to the teacher rather than daydreaming despite boredom and frustration,” says Alfie Kohn, in a commentary for Education Week, “the less likely we are to ask whether those assignments are actually worth doing, or to rethink an arrangement where teachers mostly talk and students mostly listen.

• Brainology, is a curriculum developed by Stanford Psychology Professor Carol Dweck who popularized the concept of academic mindsets.

• Dweck’s research shows that students can turn fixed mindsets—the belief that intelligence is finite—into growth mindsets—the conviction that the harder they work, the more their intelligence will grow.

• Rejected from 30 jobs including KFC

• Rejected from Harvard 10 times

• Failed School and College Exams

• Current Net Worth: $34.7 Billion

• For growth mindsets to really take hold, they must be embedded in all classes and ingrained in the culture of the whole college.

• Students with “growth mindsets”, believe that with effort, their ability and performance can improve.

• Students care when they feel cared about.

• Many students, especially those in distressed families, lack a consistent, caring adult; others aren’t able to connect with adults who do care.

• Students achieve at higher rates, and are less likely to drop out and feel more positively about college, when they have ongoing connections with teachers.

• The teaching of students in ways designed to help them become ethical, virtuous, honest, and civic-minded individuals.

• This will produce effective contributors to the job market and society.

Tell them about your background:

• How you first became interested in the subject.

• How it has been important to you.

• Why you are teaching this course.

• Genuinely convey your enthusiasm for the field and the subject.

By learning and using your students’ names, you can create a comfortable classroom environment that will encourage student interaction, and shows your care and awareness of the class.

• Give groups a small task, such as a brainstorming exercise, then place responses on the board for discussion and interpretation.

• To encourage team work before you set them out on a team assignment.

• Have the first one to finish class help you in supporting his colleagues.

• You might use the learning management system to create an online discussion forum where students can respond to each other's queries.

Read your campus newspaper, scan the dean’s list, pay attention to undergraduate awards and honors, and let students know that you are aware of their achievements.

• Give them your full attention.

• Be approachable – remember the positive power of a smile.

Make students feel free and comfortable to ask any question in class without the feeling of being judged.

For example, during class, ask someone with a laptop to do a Google search for a fact or piece of information that pertains to class discussion.

Relate major world events or events on campus both to your class and to the fabric of your students’ lives outside the classroom.

• Provide individualized feedback.

• Send an email to follow up with TAs.

• Write “Good job!” Take a moment after class to compliment students who are excelling.

• Celebrate student or class accomplishments. Give a round of applause.

This lets students know that you take their questions seriously and that their questions will contribute to the course in the future.

• Remember that not all of your students are as highly motivated and interested in the discipline as you were when you were a student.

• Slow down when explaining complex ideas, and acknowledge the difficulty and importance of certain concepts or operations.

• Be a role model in respect of time, team work and organizations. Never talk bout your colleagues even if you are not in agreement with in front of students.

• Refer students to proper complaint channel in case of any issue.

• First 10 minutes wrapping up on what was taken the previous class.

• Explaining the lesson in 30 minutes. Researchers found that in modern times biological attention span lasts no more than 25 minutes.

• 15 minutes practice.

• 5 minutes review.

• Active learning is based on the principle that students must do more than just listen to fully comprehend new information.

• They must read closely, write often, discuss ideas with peers, and think critically.

• By using active, rather than passive, modes of learning, you will increase your teaching effectiveness and your students' learning.

• It is the key

• Story of the lion

Bibliography:

Rewards and Consequences. (2018). Retrieved from Kempston challenger academy.

Dweck, D. C. (2018, September Tuesday). How to develop a growth mindset in your students . Retrieved September 2018, from Ministry of

Education, Guyana: https://www.education.gov.gy/web/index.php/teachers/tips-for-teaching/item/3960-how-to-develop-a-growth-mindset-in-

your-students

Hadden, S., & McKay, S. (2015). How can new research help teachers boost student engagement. Motivation Matters, 48.

Module. (2018). Relationships and belongings . Mind Matters, 18.

Wilms, J. D. (2003). A SENSE OF BELONGING AND PARTICIPATION. STUDENT ENGAGEMENT AT SCHOOL, 84.

Elbe, K. E. (1988). The Craft of Teaching: A Guide to Mastering the Profession and Art. 2nd Edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Forsyth, D. R, & McMillan, J. H. (1991). Practical Proposals for Motivating Students. In Menges, R. J., & Svinicki, M. D., eds. College

Teaching: From Theory to Practice. New Directions in Teaching and Learning, No.45. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, p.53-65.

Gross Davis, B. (2009). Tools for Teaching, 2nd Edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Ralph, E. G. (1998). Motivating Teaching in Higher Education: A Manual for Faculty Development. Stillwater, Oklahoma: New Forums

Press, Inc.

Wlodkowski, R. J. (1978). Motivation and Teaching: A Practical Guide. Washington, D.C.: National Education Association.

Bradbury, N. A. (2016). Attention span during lectures: 8 seconds, 10 minutes, or more? A Personal View, 5.