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Michigan Tech is known for providing a great education, so it’s no surprise that the university hosted the first ever Upper Peninsula Teaching and Learning Conference.
More than 130 instructors from four U.P. universities took part in the event, with over 20 break-out sessions covering a variety of education topics.
Christine Harrington, Executive Director of the Center For Student Success in New Jersey, said, “I think it’s critical that we not only know our disciplines, but we also know how to teach our disciplines, and in higher education, we’re hired because of our professional expertise in our subject matter, but there’s a lot of scholarly research and literature out there on what works best and how students learn best. So by making sure that you are familiar with that, you’re going to help your students really learn the material in significant ways and that’s going to lead to the best outcome.”
Harrington shared a tip from her upcoming book on how these instructors can incorporate reflection into their lectures.
Harrington said, “Sometimes we’re talking at them for a long period of time and we’re presenting a lot of information, and it’s really helpful if we give them a few minutes here and there to pause and it’s particularly helpful if they get to write down a couple of their ideas, summarize their thoughts. So giving them some processing times throughout the lecture really helps them kind of just take in the information and you can even ask them to identity ways that they might apply that information in their world.”
Harrington’s book, “Dynamic Lecturing: Research-based Strategies to Enhance Lecture Effectiveness” comes out in July.
