Reflections on Teaching
How can I develop my ability to understand how my students learn and the best ways to teach them?
The following strategies can help you customize your teaching approach and comprehend the learning styles of your students, ensuring that they achieve the course's specific learning objectives.
Choosing a Foundational Framework
With multiple design methodologies, you can take a systematic approach to developing and improving your courses. Listed below are some frameworks:
Inclusive Instructional Practices: Course Design, Implementation, and Discourse: A framework that aims to promote equity across STEM education by providing researchers and instructors across different STEM fields with concrete suggestions for implementing inclusive instructional practices in their courses.
Backward design approach: This approach applies to all fields of higher education, including business, the sciences, and STEM.
Inclusive ADDIE methodology: Created to extend the popularity of the ADDIE model and support inclusion in instructional design and course implementation.
Assessing Instruction Delivery
Reflective activities help you develop your practice and identify any barriers to learning that your students have:
The six Reflective Principles will help you get the most out of your teaching reflections. Learn more about Getting started with Reflective Practice from the Cambridge International Education - Teaching and Learning Team.
Assessing Your Teaching: Getting feedback beyond end-of-semester evaluations
How do I know if my students are achieving the specific learning goals for a course? To help students understand the course material better, assessing their needs and adjusting your teaching accordingly is essential. The Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) developed by Angelo, T.A. & Cross, K.P. (1993), are formative evaluation methods that serve two purposes: provide information about the effectiveness of your teaching and help you adjust your instruction to help students learn the course content. Not every CAT is appropriate for every situation, so faculty should weigh the pros and cons and choose the suitable assessment. Some of them are listed below:
Further reading and references
Getting Started with Reflective Practice - Cambridge International Education
Assessing Your Teaching: Feedback Methods Beyond the End-of-Semester Evaluation - Duke University
Foundations of Course Design - Stanford University
Teaching and Learning Assessment Overview - Univeristy of Connecticut