Teaching Skills BTTM_TEA
Teaching is the formal presentation of information for the purpose of helping students to learn new knowledge or skills. Our teaching program is based on a proven model for adult education honed in a career college setting, a format generally applicable in most business situations. The core knowledge is dependent on the subject matter; the presentation has to be adapted to the student demographics that apply. What this course covered are the basic concepts of how your presentation should be structured, and how you can engage the students so that they can learn more effectively. It is important to pay attention to the fact that most textbooks are written to accommodate students at a university level that have a full semester to master the material, as opposed to teaching the most important information in a much shorter timeframe and a context in which there is not as much opportunities for students to engage in research.
Teaching is a formal skill, that can be learned and practiced, but that requires experience to hone those skills. Even as an experienced teacher you will find there are many habits or approaches that may be more or less effective in getting the results you are after. To be most effective you develop a style that suits you and that ensures you are comfortable in the role. In many of our courses we use Excel™ workbooks to illustrate concepts, many of which have VBA applications logic embedded, which can be a bonus because Excel™ skills are in demand in the workplace. If you are not comfortable with Excel™ then this would not be an advantage for you. Perhaps you prefer to find video clips, or PowerPoint slides, that highlight concepts in a way that makes things apparent for the students who otherwise look at dry textbook materials.
Having selected the Excel™ tools for many courses means we had to create notebooks that use these tools as part of the explanation or illustration of subject matter. This works well, because most of our courses are short and to the point: we generally take 2 weeks (30 hours) to cover a subject that in a university might be stretched across a full semester. Obviously we cannot cover as much detail, but we found that by using the right illustrations and demonstrations we achieve a good general understanding of what the subject is about. The “a picture is a 1000 words” idea makes the difference in how we try to present the material, while the notebooks focus on what the students must master in order to learn enough theory. By exploring the techniques we use you may be able to develop your own materials for the subject matter you want to teach, so that your students truly understand that subject matter in the end.
Teaching adults does not mean we can ignore classroom discipline in the classroom – how you manage a classroom will directly influence success potential of a class. Unlike younger students, on average mature students we work with generally will either have substantial work experience, or they represent the “dropouts” that see learning as a last-resort path to a college equivalent level education. While teaching is always challenging, that combination of students with radically different expectations is extra difficult to prepare for, which means we need to be aware of the kinds of things that interfere with learning. It is important to understand adults at this stage of life trying to accomplish what eluded them in high-school, for example the encouragement to stick with the program and master ideas that may seem foreign to them. We will discuss strategies for structuring the learning process so that no students are left behind.
Whereas young students generally reflect a single age group, adults will range from 18 to 70+ years of age, which completely changes the nature of the classroom. Understand the challenges of connecting to all different age groups, and having them interact in topical discussions:
- Silent Generation = 1925 – 1942 --> devoted to family, honour, an expectation of traditional gender roles, willing to sacrifice;
- Baby Boomers = 1948 – 1964 --> economic prosperity, rebellious, challenge status-quo, love, peace, live in present, equal rights, loyal, hard-working employees, long work weeks
- Generation X = 1965 – 1981 --> skeptical, distrust authority, uses technology innovation, internet, lower work ethic, leisure focus
- Generation Y = 1982 – 1994 --> most diverse, largest generation (70 million – 40 million working), 1/3 non-Caucasian, 1/2 single parent family, 4/5 working mothers, 2%+ both parents in jail, 50%+ home internet access, huge spending power ($200 billion)
Academic Freedom is the ability of the teacher to control the presentation of the academic subject materials. Perfection is less important than compassion and enthusiasm: that will sometimes leads to mistakes – signs that show the teacher is not perfect. It is fine to correct yourself, or to admit to students that you had not thought of things from a particular perspective. My approach is to write a “notebook” for each course based on the best textbook theory, while offering the opportunity to introduce examples, presentation materials, and/or tools to make the concepts come to life. It is much easier to edit your notebook contents and to structure your course to fit the time-table than to teach from a textbook that may not suit your ideas about what to present and/or how to present these subjects. Of course, I make these notebooks available on via site, as part of the materials students get to work with.
With academic freedom comes a responsibility to make the material your own so that you can teach based on experience and insight that a general textbook cannot deliver. It takes time and effort to become a master of the subject matter, and creating a “notebook” that emphasizes how you will teach the course is a great way for you to establish that mastery and to develop confidence in your ability to share that knowledge with students. Teaching depends on clear objectives that must be satisfied within a limited number of course hours. It can be tempting to follow a preset curriculum and to interpret the textbooks as suggested, but you may find it hard to get the information across in a way that students can identify with. The key question is what they may be able to do of what is expected as part of the desired outcome: perhaps you achieve better results by using the outline as a guide to structuring your own approach to teaching that knowledge and those skills.
The most important skill in teaching is communication, which includes explaining ivory tower tomes into a more common form of English that resonates with the students. It all starts with making sure that the students understand the program they have signed up for to make sure their personal objectives match the program objectives. We may not do enough to confirm that students are fully aware of options and choices that can have a long-term impact in terms of future career opportunities. Textbooks written at a university level from an ivory tower perspective belong in a different domain than what we have to support in an adult career learning context, upholding ideals that in many cases are out of reach and/or alien to those students that see this learning opportunity in a much more down to earth context of survival. For that reason alone it is important to base the immediate learning on materials that resonate with the world as seen by our future graduates and not as aspired to by academic perfectionists.
Learning Formats BTTM_TEA
This course is currently available in a classroom setting (public or company private) with approximately 15 contact hours.
PDF – Certificate Of Completion
Each course offers a certificate of completion that identifies the course, the student, and a brief description of the course. To receive a certificate the student must have attended at least 80% of the course sessions. This personalized certificate is forwarded to the student by Email.
PDF – Course Notebook
Each course includes a notebook in PDF format that provides the minimum knowledge the student must master in order to obtain the certificate. In the notebook you will find references to other study materials. Students receive the notebook by Email when their registration is confirmed.
PDF – Program Overview
An overview of this study program can be downloaded from the website by right-clicking on the program link on the enquiry page.
PDF – Current Training Schedule
A list of upcoming training sessions can be downloaded from the website by right-clicking on the schedule link on the enquiry page.
Registration – Service Providers
To register for any training course please look on the enquiry link page of your service provider (from where you accessed this website). On the page you will find a registration request form where you can order the course that you are interested in. The availability dates will be provided to you, along with payment instructions if you decide to go ahead.
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