I was in the gym today and I had a boxing lesson with an awesome personal trainer followed by a 30 minutes abs session in which I am fairly certain she tried to kill me. This is excruciating learning in its purist form... I was learning... and it hurt. However, it got me thinking about why it was a good session and what I could take from it and put into my own 'teaching'. I use teaching in inverted commas because I don't teach, I build things which teach without me.
For example, my current project is to build an interactive tool to help medical students identify different types of study design. Hopefully they will learn something but I am not actively teaching them anything (which in this case is a very good thing because I know nothing about medical study design).
I have never boxed before and I am not sure I was even terribly good at it but that is not the point a good teacher will tell you how to do something in a way that is easy to understand a great teacher will make you want to keep doing it and I think this is the key. Throughout the whole session I was being encouraged and pushed to be better and I think this is the key to great teaching but how do you take that into an on-line environment? (I really don't know but I am going to keep thinking about it) How do you maintain student motivation through something like 50 questions on medical statistics? How do you make someone keep doing stomach crunches when everything about it hurts?
The final question I can answer because someone makes me do it every week - constant encouragement, manageable chunks and a bit of good fun. The 1st two questions I am not so sure about but I am going to make an effort to try and fit them in to my 'teaching' and hope that it will help the students keep going until they get to question 50 on medical statistics!
For example, my current project is to build an interactive tool to help medical students identify different types of study design. Hopefully they will learn something but I am not actively teaching them anything (which in this case is a very good thing because I know nothing about medical study design).
I have never boxed before and I am not sure I was even terribly good at it but that is not the point a good teacher will tell you how to do something in a way that is easy to understand a great teacher will make you want to keep doing it and I think this is the key. Throughout the whole session I was being encouraged and pushed to be better and I think this is the key to great teaching but how do you take that into an on-line environment? (I really don't know but I am going to keep thinking about it) How do you maintain student motivation through something like 50 questions on medical statistics? How do you make someone keep doing stomach crunches when everything about it hurts?
The final question I can answer because someone makes me do it every week - constant encouragement, manageable chunks and a bit of good fun. The 1st two questions I am not so sure about but I am going to make an effort to try and fit them in to my 'teaching' and hope that it will help the students keep going until they get to question 50 on medical statistics!
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