Teaching Gen X & Y: An Essay Part 2: Teaching Strategies

In the last essay, there was discussion of establishing one's self on the first day. This final essay describes teaching strategies. Teaching I would like to suggest that a "way" to teach is by doing as little lecture education as possible. Many of us grew up and old with the classic lecture. It is still used and with some, it is an outstanding success. However, for those who find this generation disengaged with even your most exciting presentations, I would like to suggest the following. In terms of the media, you are another "talking head." Gen X & Y have been exposed to thousands of hours of constantly changing images on cable television and the internent. If they have a remote with their cable, the images can change even faster by "surfing." My observation after teaching for 35 years, is that they have "short attention spans." Thus the following are based upon that assumption. The Ten Minute Lecture If the academic hour is 50 or 55 minutes, I would like to suggest that the first ten be spent where you lecture. You can only set the stage for the class. The ten minutes is a very long time in the media and for these generations, it is a long, long time. For what ever the topic, use your most exciting material to catch their attention and segue into material that they will be doing for the rest of the hour with their fellow class mates. The rest of the time will be spent doing something directly with the material or conducting activities that compliment the material. The Collaborative Lecture If you have an exciting lecture that is no; in the text book. Type it up, refine it, have it printed and distributed to the class for that day. Give the printed lecture to each student. They are then to teach each other and come as a small group to you and tell you about the lecture or ask any questions at that time or during your office hour. Further, they can e-mail you or call you on the phone. Once they have completed their task they are to teach others and then leave. Test frequently. You may want to test often, because you can soon know who needs a tutor, and numerous other parties want to know how they are doing in class work and tests. The Vertical File You may want to collect information on various topics, I subscribe to three dailies and five newsweeklies and have two file drawers full of information on the numerous areas that compliment various chapters. Students are to read a number of articles and in small groups report to you and others the information relative to the topic. This helps them in their rhetoric skills and provides team building protocols for them. This is valuable for our Skills 2000 program. This is an understanding between Kirkwood and numerous employers relative to the basic skills each student should know, before they graduate. The Rhetoric Day One day is set aside for them to give a speech to compliment one of the chapters. By giving them an article to report, they have the material to give the speech. Make this unannounced to maximize attendance and give them points to reward them for giving the speech. The Math Skills Day(s) Many areas in the social sciences and liberal arts require a fairly sizable amount of math. You can help by having them solve math problems that compliment the chapter that you are discussing. In all my face-to-face classes, they will have to know and calculate mean, median, mode, range, average deviation, standard deviation, chi square, ratios, proportions, and compound interest for population extrapolations, probabilities and factorials. All these math skills days are sprinkled in the curriculum throughout the semester. Students learn to teach each other, establish division of labor, and report to you in teams. The Computer Skills Day(s) Once again, students learn with others how to do use the infotrak in the library, how to print an article on the internet, how to use the word processor, how use a search engine, and the steps to do statistical analysis by micro case with U. …

Field of study: Education