tip banner

 

This TIP will assist you to become more comfortable and acquainted with presenting.

The Five C's for Business and Commerce Teaching

Connectedness

  • Helping students make personal/social networks between students
  • Making connections between own perspective, academic theory and practice/the real world
  • Use relevant examples, current examples, and recent readings
  • Do repetitions/reinforcements: repeated in different ways to ground it
  • Connect with the students: use examples that relate to students' lives and look for common ground; popular media, sports, student life. But don't force it - be yourself

Conversation

  • Make the class 'dialogic'. Make it like a conversation, not a lecture. Make it inclusive
  • Have variety: sometimes monologue, two way, or multi-way exchanges
  • Break down barriers by relinquishing control
  • Invest time in questions
  • Don't talk down to students.

Curiosity

  • Critical thinking, teaching ways of thinking, not what to think
  • Allow space for creative and original thinking
  • Make it relevant to real work situations and 'light up' pathways to becoming reflective practitioners
  • Keep readings, theories and examples up to date
  • Life learning.

Consideration

  • Respect students and their diversity
  • Be aware of their lives and the pressures they are under
  • Be aware of how intimidating we can be, and of the newness of it all
  • Be aware of the loneliness in a big class and alienation at university.

Community/Culture

  • Each class develops its own culture
  • Create the atmosphere that you want
  • Teach to your audience: each class of students is different
  • The first class sets the scene: go through the teacher-student relationship and get an agreement/contract.

NOTE: Content is adapted from The Faculty of Commerce and Administration, Victoria University of Wellington
http://www.victoria.ac.nz/fca/teaching/advice-new-teachers.aspx

Whilst you watch the video, consider the following questions:

Basic Questions:

  1. Reflect on the characteristics of your own teaching. To what extent do they exhibit the qualities mentioned in the student comments?
  2. Thinking back to a time where you were a student and describe the attributes of a well delivered and presented learning session.
  3. List five characteristics of bad teaching.

Extended Questions:

  1. When do students learn best?
  2. Paul has difficulties delivering and presenting his tutorials. If you could talk to Paul, what questions would you ask?
  3. Focusing on communicating expectations, role-play the beginning and ending of one of your lessons.
  4. How would you determine at what pace and level to deliver content to students?
  5. What strategies would you use to facilitate skill demonstration or content presentation in a way that students can follow and remember?
  6. In teaching for understanding, teachers are asked to relate their lessons to pivotal ideas rather than on low-order information. This poses a dilemma between covering syllabus content breadth and teaching central topics in depth. Focusing on your teaching unit, how would you respond to this dilemma?
  7. Come up with a list of students’ learning styles and relate them to potential teaching activities in your unit.
  8. In learning with understanding, teachers are requested to relate new content to students’ existing prior knowledge. How would you deal with such a call if your students have little prior knowledge, are unfamiliar with certain content or find difficult to integrate new knowledge to their own?