Surprise: It is not your skill as a teacher that determines the outcome of your teaching activities. The success you as a teacher can achieve is determined by your students’ prior knowledge. More precisely, the knowledge relative to the…
Learner-centered teaching: the seven principles (II)
Following yesterday’s blog, here are the four last principles of learner-centered teaching: 4. Teacher facilitators model how skillful learners approach learning tasks. Example: When solving a problem, the teacher says out loud what is going through his/her…
Learner-centered teaching: the seven principles (I)
If you are a lecturer considering to move towards learner-centered teaching, you might want to know what you would be getting into. What principles would guide your new way of teaching? Of course each individual teacher has his or her…
Learner-centered teaching: Why it has not yet happened
Research shows that learning from learner-centered instruction trumps learning from traditional “teacher-centered” teaching. Then, why has not all teaching transformed to learner-centered (aka facilitative) teaching? Answer: the teacher does not want to change. Why? 1. Teachers like being the center of…
Feedback on your instruction
Feedback is the vehicle for improving performance in any field. How to use feedback to refine your legal teaching? Applying the following feedback loop might be helpful: (1) First review your teaching design against design standards, (2) As the teaching…
POWERPoint slides?
Mr. X had asked me to observe and comment on his teaching of law in class. Let’s just pick one point of improvement because we all tend to sin on this point frequently: How to use PowerPoint slides effectively? It…
Free e-learning actionable plans
Yesterday I bumped into a useful site for designing, implementing and enhancinge Learning for the legal sector. The site’s interesting features are its muti-focal view. It looks at e-learning from the perspective of the learner, teacher, manager, organisator, quality assurance body. You…
Peers on how to learn best
Sometimes we teachers think we help law students by informing them on the best way of learning in law school. There is a better way. Let other students tell them. I saw the other day a nice example of this.…
Learner-centered teaching: metaphors for teacher’s role
In learner-centered teaching the teacher is foremost a facilitator of learning. In contrast during traditional teaching the teaching is well … teacher-centered. Teacher-centered teaching In traditional classes teachers are the specialists who call the shots. They deliver the content, lead…
Learner-Centered Teaching – five features
Leaner-Centered Teaching is teaching focused on learning, not on content as such. What students are doing is the central concern of the teacher: how do they operate on the content? Students learn to solve the kind of authentic problems they are…