Sometimes The Wheel Needs To Be ReInvented

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Sometimes The Wheel Needs To Be Re-Invented

• Jamey D. Watson, CST, AAT
• Athens, Georgia

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Definitions

• Steering Wheel
• A wheel that controls steering

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A Choice Is Made

• Before each lecture a teacher makes a choice
• To make the material clear and understandable
• OR
• To allow the material to be nearly
  incomprehensible

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How can I make my lectures clear and
understandable?

• Five Techniques to Make Material More
  Understandable.

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The Five Techniques

• Justification
• Review
• Repetition Examples
• Introductions
• Sub-Concepts

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Justification

• In order for students to understand the material
  it must be justified.
• Why is the material important?
• How will it be used?
• Why is this technique better than the one we used
  last week?
• Justification is important because it gives the
  student a reason to listen to you.

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Do everything possible to show the student that
the material is important, relevant, and useful!
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Review

• Any new concept will rest on the foundation of
  previously learned ideas
• Review is important because it brings to mind the
  important concepts that will be needed to
  understand the new material.
• Review also helps to link new material to old.

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Review

• At the beginning of each class, briefly review
  the content of the previous class, simply to
  reload it in your students' minds.
• If you are going to present a new idea or
  technique, find the three or four important
  concepts that are required to understand the new
  idea, and review those concepts.

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Review

• They should know this material why should I
  review it?
• Review is important because human beings cannot
  remember everything they have learned
  instantaneously, especially if the knowledge is a
  year or two old.
• If they don't recall or understand a key concept
  or technique, then everything you say in class is
  meaningless, and will not be understood.

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Repetition and Examples

• People learn through repetition.
• No idea or fact is completely understood the
  first time it is seen. For complete
  understanding, the idea should be shown in a
  variety of contexts and applications, and should
  be connected to as many previously learned
  concepts as possible.

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Repetition and Examples

• One way to provide repetition is through
  examples.
• The first examples should be easy, to make sure
  students grasp the idea completely and to provide
  confidence.
• More advanced examples can show the use of the
  idea in different contexts.
• At least one example should show the boundary of
  the concept (the point where the concept breaks
  down or no longer applies), because this boundary
  is either a position where a different concept
  takes over, or a position where research is
  currently active.
• When possible, examples should be spread out over
  multiple class periods so students have time to
  digest the material and generate questions.

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Repetition and Examples

• Practice makes Perfect!

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Introductions

• Many new ideas are, initially, simple and
  straightforward. They become complicated only
  because they have been expanded (through
  research) over a long period of time.
• When this is the case, introduce the idea so
  that students can see it is simple. Then add
  complexity incrementally, occasionally reminding
  students that the original idea was simple

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Introductions

• A good example from surgery is a concept called
  prepping."
• Prepping is fundamentally simple.
• A teacher could easily make prepping seem
  impossible because of its complexity and multiple
  variations. But the teacher could also introduce
  prepping by showing that it is extremely simple,
  and then add complexity incrementally over
  several class periods.
• In the latter technique, students will understand
  and feel comfortable with the concept with the
  former they will tend to understand far less, and
  will feel intimidated by the material.

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Sub-Concepts

• Some ideas are fundamentally simple, but others
  are inherently complicated or messy.
• Complex concepts require that a number of
  different techniques and ideas all be understood
  together before any part of the new concept can
  be grasped.

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Sub-Concepts

• When trying to present a complicated concept, it
  is important that students know and understand
  each sub-concept individually.
• This can be done by deciding what the important
  sub-concepts are, and then presenting each one as
  a separate topic. The complicated concept can be
  introduced by referring back to (reviewing) these
  previously understood sub-concepts and bonding
  them together into a unified whole.

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Sub-Concepts

• It is important to tell students you are doing
  this.
• For example, you might start by saying, "We are
  going to begin talking about idea X. To
  understand it, you need to understand the
  sub-concepts A, B and C. I will present A, B and
  C first, and then bond them together to form X."
• As ideas A, B and C are presented, you can show
  how they relate to X and to each other--on a
  complicated subject a lot of repetition is
  required, so you might as well start early.

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Additional Ideas for Teaching Clearly

• Offer students a concrete form of your lecture
• Power point, lecture outlines, and online notes
• Offer students more hands on
• Find the learner in each student not from your
  learning experiences
• Offer students individual support
• Make yourself available for those students who
  wont speak in front of a crowd

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Re-Invent The Wheel!