This TIP will assist you to become more comfortable and acquainted with presenting.
The Five C's for Business and Commerce Teaching
Connectedness
- Helping students make personal/social networks between students
- Making connections between own perspective, academic theory and practice/the real world
- Use relevant examples, current examples, and recent readings
- Do repetitions/reinforcements: repeated in different ways to ground it
- Connect with the students: use examples that relate to students' lives and look for common ground; popular media, sports, student life. But don't force it - be yourself
Conversation
- Make the class 'dialogic'. Make it like a conversation, not a lecture. Make it inclusive
- Have variety: sometimes monologue, two way, or multi-way exchanges
- Break down barriers by relinquishing control
- Invest time in questions
- Don't talk down to students.
Curiosity
- Critical thinking, teaching ways of thinking, not what to think
- Allow space for creative and original thinking
- Make it relevant to real work situations and 'light up' pathways to becoming reflective practitioners
- Keep readings, theories and examples up to date
- Life learning.
Consideration
- Respect students and their diversity
- Be aware of their lives and the pressures they are under
- Be aware of how intimidating we can be, and of the newness of it all
- Be aware of the loneliness in a big class and alienation at university.
Community/Culture
- Each class develops its own culture
- Create the atmosphere that you want
- Teach to your audience: each class of students is different
- The first class sets the scene: go through the teacher-student relationship and get an agreement/contract.
NOTE: Content is adapted from The Faculty of Commerce and Administration, Victoria University of Wellington
http://www.victoria.ac.nz/fca/teaching/advice-new-teachers.aspx
Whilst you watch the video, consider the following questions:
Basic Questions:
- Reflect on the characteristics of your own teaching. To what extent do they exhibit the qualities mentioned in the student comments?
- Thinking back to a time where you were a student and describe the attributes of a well delivered and presented learning session.
- List five characteristics of bad teaching.
Extended Questions:
- When do students learn best?
- Paul has difficulties delivering and presenting his tutorials. If you could talk to Paul, what questions would you ask?
- Focusing on communicating expectations, role-play the beginning and ending of one of your lessons.
- How would you determine at what pace and level to deliver content to students?
- What strategies would you use to facilitate skill demonstration or content presentation in a way that students can follow and remember?
- In teaching for understanding, teachers are asked to relate their lessons to pivotal ideas rather than on low-order information. This poses a dilemma between covering syllabus content breadth and teaching central topics in depth. Focusing on your teaching unit, how would you respond to this dilemma?
- Come up with a list of students’ learning styles and relate them to potential teaching activities in your unit.
- In learning with understanding, teachers are requested to relate new content to students’ existing prior knowledge. How would you deal with such a call if your students have little prior knowledge, are unfamiliar with certain content or find difficult to integrate new knowledge to their own?