Teaching to Large Groups

Wednesday the 14th of October saw the Teaching Development Seminar Series move to Bongard Campus with a focus on teaching to large groups. Anne Bradley and Greg Bold shared their experience with us and offered some great strategies for larger classes. Have a look at their presentations below.

Strategies for Teaching Speakers of Other Languages

At our recent lunchtime Teacher Development Seminar, the English Language Team gave an excellent talk on strategies for teaching students who's first language is not English. They made the interesting point that these students are not necessarily international students studying English, but also New Zealand citizens and domestic students who grew up speaking another language.
Take a look here.

Our second series of  lunchtime PD sessions started on 9 September with the theme being 'Facilitative Teaching'. This is a shift from what is often viewed as traditional teaching to one of the teacher adopting a facilitative role, which is a student centred, flexible approach to learning. We had Donna Dinsdale, Allister Field and Graeme Jeffrey sharing their experiences of how they adopted a facilitative model of teaching in their programmes. Here's what they shared about their experiences.

Teaching Development Seminar 2

The second Teaching Development Seminar focussed on Alternative Assessment, with Tracey Clissold, Lindsay Skyner and Amy Raymond sharing examples of how they have re-designed assessments to support learning and engage learners. Here's what they did!

Tech4Learning

The first of our Teaching Development Seminars kicked of with a focus on Tech4Learning, presented by Lesley Mochan, Anne-Marie Simon and Dennis Keys.

The theme of all three presentations was the the use video to provide students with a range of resources they could revisit anywhere, anytime, to confirm some of the key learning points from their classes.

Lesley was looking for a resource to support her students learn the propagation process for a new type of rootstock. She found a programme on eTV, which was just what she needed. However, she didn't want to simply provide a video for them to watch but a resource that would engage them in the learning by adding some interaction. So she ran the video through Zaption, added some key information and some questions for students to answer to confirm their understanding. Click the Zaption image below to see what Lesley produced for her students. 

Anne-Marie wanted to produce some learning resources to support students to learn numerous techniques. She wanted to provide a range of resource options with written step-by-step instructions, physical sample and QR code, linking to video. By adding QR codes to the machines students use on campus, they are able to scan the QR code on the machine to see how to do a range of things such as threading or setting up the machine. Students can review the video as often as they need until they have mastered the technique. Check out this example of what Anne-Marie has developed for her students by clicking the image below.

The Carpentry Team decided to produce videos to provide learning resources that would allow students to revisit the operation and health and safety practices when using the range of machinery in the Carpentry Programme. When demonstrating practical skills in the workshop students can miss some of these essential key points however, these videos would allow students to watch them as often as they needed. By adding QR codes to the machinery, students can scan the QR code with their mobile devices and watch the videos in the workshop if they are uncertain of any aspect of the operating procedures. With the help of Mike Scott, they have also produced a number of ‘60 seconds of safety’ videos. Click the image below for an example of what the Carpentry Team have produced.