I have visited exemplary faculty Professor Marilyn Teitelbaum’s class in her Introduction to Interior Design course and Professor John Dickason’s class in his Introduction to Marketing class. Both professors had unique teaching styles and I really enjoyed the approaches and techniques I was able to observe.
COMMUNICATION WITH STUDENTS – ADDITIONAL NOTES
Each professor had a unique way of presenting additional notes to the students. In Marilyn’s class, she wrote down some of the stats about grade scores for the class on the attendance sheet. The attendance sheet was passed around for students to sign in and they would have the chance to view the notes on the attendance page to see how they performed against the class average, etc. She wrote the note in handwriting which made it seem more personal which was a nice touch. In John’s class, he kept a list of important upcoming dates and classes on the left side of the white board. By doing this each week the students in his classes know to take a look at this area of the board to make sure they are on track and are up-to-date on the most important deadlines and class material.
TEXTBOOK WALK-THROUGH
In Marilyn’s class, she was trying something new for the first time. It was interesting to see her try something new in a class that she has been teaching for years. Textbooks are an important and expensive investment for students and sometimes students don’t see the importance or relevance of having/using the textbook. In Marilyn’s class she walked the students through the major parts of the course’s textbook, explaining how the chapters and material related to the course. It was also a technical textbook so this exercise also helped explain how to use some of the tools for measuring body size for custom made furniture sizes. I thought this would be great to use in some of my introductory classes to help show students all of the advantages and study tools the textbooks have available.
PHYSICAL AND HANDS-ON ACTIVITY
Getting the students up and moving was part of an exercise in Marilyn’s class. Students were divided up into pairs and they had to fill out some handouts with the measurements of their partner’s body proportions. This exercise tied in the textbook tools and showed students how to measure their future clients. She even showed students some tricks about how to use and hold a tape measure to measure things like ceiling height without a chair or ladder. These are directly applicable to industry specific skills.
GROUP WORK
Both Marilyn’s class and John’s class incorporated group work, which is key in most industries. As discussed above Marilyn’s class worked in pairs. In John’s class students worked in small groups of 3-4 students on an application exercise of the lecture material. Students had to navigate working with others, communicating to different people, and formulating ideas together. In John’s class especially, students also had to sort out issues group management issues such as students being late as the activity counted toward their participation scores for the course.
ON-GOING PROJECT
I like the idea used in John’s class format. The group activity incorporated the lecture’s material and in groups students applied the information to an on-going project. Each class of the semester, students work in the same group and then by the end of the course, each classes’ activity can be complied into one large final project. This technique continually engages students and made it important for students to attend each class. Also, seeing how the project builds week by week is a great demonstration of how the course material can be applied to industry practices. Each week students earned up to 3 marks toward their final grade from their contributions to the class activity. John was able to go around and monitor and review each group’s work, guiding them in each class, which ensures students are on the right track each week.
HUMOR
Finally, I enjoyed John’s class because it was funny! The students liked his approach and he seemed more relatable and approachable to the students. He first joked about taking the note off the board about the next week’s class being cancelled, so any students late this week, might not remember this point. He also brought in some great stories from his personal experience which were both funny and illustrated both successes and failures he had experienced. All were valuable lessons learned.