Teaching Tips and Strategies

As educators, one question we frequently ask ourselves is: What pedagogical strategies can we use or implement to ensure our students grasp course concepts and successfully apply them in their chosen career path – i.e., Liberal Arts, Mathematics, Business, Accounting, Science, Nursing, etc.?

A fundamental approach that has been successful for me over the years as a Business and Accounting educator, is to present a simple layout of the class and course environment on the first day of class. The purpose is to clarify to students the goal(s) of education, the obstacles and challenges they will encounter, how to overcome them, and the benefits of taking this opportunity to build their academic careers through a college education. The objective is to motivate them to focus on their education and to see the importance of it, as well as the future benefits of their academic efforts today.

There are many teaching tips and strategies available to educators in the literature of teaching. The objective is to select the best approach that will help our students become engage in the concepts and subject matter of the course.

Before starting an online course, a challenge that a teacher may face is: What teaching strategies can I adopt to make sure that students are engaged and participating in a current topic in a standard classroom session?

While there are many teaching strategies that a teacher can select and work with, i.e., styles of student learning, here are various teaching tips and strategies that I have adopted over the years with varying success.

Encouraging students to learn from each other

Creating classroom engagement and opportunities for students to learn from each other benefits students significantly. Of importance is the support students provide each other. They develop greater attentiveness, motivation, and feel encouraged to improve their way of thinking. Creating the conditions for active and sustained peer learning can be a challenge for faculty at first. For example, a student may feel motivated and encouraged by the approach another student has taken to solve an assigned task or problem. Yet, they can’t quite retain the learning and embed what they’ve gleaned from their peers into their own thinking after the session has concluded. However, this peer learning approach has helped student to focus on the task at hand. Normally, I use this on team-based project work and peer review on assignments. I find that students can learn more effectively if they are open to peer learning.

Group discussion and participation

This approach has worked well with our students in virtual sessions. At the beginning of each semester, students are assigned to group or peer work with clear and specific student expectations from each group member. Instructions for each stage of group work or peer discussions and how students will be graded are made clear for participating students. Group discussions and participation are very important because they empowers students in building their student participation and confidence. While some students are reluctant to express themselves in front of others, this approach provides an environment for students to interact with each other, gain knowledge from each other, and it encourages them to express themselves more freely and with confidence. If students know that they will have to participate in answering questions in their group work after class, they are more likely to participate. On many occasions, students have asserted that they felt uncomfortable speaking in front of others, but participating in group discussions helped them deal with the problem and built their confidence and communication skills.

Encourage students to read assigned material before coming to class

If students come to class unprepared, with readings and assignments not completed, we as educators are faced with a dilemma: wecan’t move forward with the scheduled activity or engage students in discussions planned for class time. Student preparation for class by reading assigned texts related to the lecture material is extremely important for optimizing the lecture experience. On the other hand, you don’t want to lecture over the material you expected them to prepare. This simply teaches students that they don’t need to prepare for class in the future.

One approach to ensure that your students come to class prepared is to hold students accountable, with low-stakes ‘accountability tasks.’ Assigning an accountability task helps ensure that all students can participate in and benefit from in-class activities that will help them identify with and learn course content. At the beginning of the semester, I emphasize the importance of reading the lecture notes and the class materials before the beginning of each chapter. For example, before we start each class session students have one or two minutes to summarize the topic that they read, with an emphasis on their understanding of the chapter.

Summary

These teaching tips and strategies have worked well for me in both my physical and online classroom. They have also benefited our students. At the end of each semester, students shared that though they felt the course(s) to be very challenging, the tips and approaches used in the classroom helped them to develop a clearer understanding of the concepts covered in class. Clearly a positive experience for our Accounting students.

Finally, teachers should encourage students to read outside of the classroom. Build the mindset that reading is a normal and interesting part of daily life. Find course reading resources that help to build and strengthen a positive attitude while teaching important course concepts.