Evaluation and Assessment | Teaching Practices |Teaching with Technology| Sample Course Evaluation Forms
Teaching Tools
2. Teaching Practices
2.5. Scope and Content
Overview of Teaching Goals and Strategies
Highlight important information
- Use clear cues to get students' attention
- point to key information on the board
- use phrases such as "On the exam, everyone should be able to..."
- Provide students with different ways of learning key points
- write down major ideas and say them
- paraphrase main points
- Allow students to check their own understanding
- use periodic summaries of the most important points at the end of a section of class
- Tell students directly what they are expected to be able to do with the course material on assignments or exams in order to help them test themselves
Make Information Meaningful
- Explain new material in relation to students' prior knowledge (or possible misconceptions) from previous courses or from everyday experience.
- Ask questions that require comparisons and elaborations to help students see how new information fits into what they already know.
- Show relevance to students' long-term professional goals and/or personal interests.
Organize information
- Highlight goals and subgoals in problems or emphasize hierarchies and parallels in complex concepts to help students recall the ideas in appropriate contexts.
- Distinguish clearly between similar concepts and between related problem types.
- Remind students of "the big picture" of the course and how each concept or skill is related to the larger goals they are trying to accomplish.
Check and refine students' understanding
- Ask lots of questions so that you know what students know and where they need more instruction.
- Provide feedback, as they work when possible, to help students incorporate new information in their thinking.
- Help students identify when to seek assistance by telling them, for example, when you are presenting material to be mastered as a foundation for the rest of the course or when you recognize common misconceptions that can be hard to unlearn.
Promote transfer and generalizability
- As time permits, expose students to multiple examples so that they learn to generalize concepts and skills across different contexts and applications.
- Relate course material to a variety of long-term goals for the types of careers you expect them to pursue.
Adapted from the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence at Carnegie Mellon University
