One of the things that I would want to consider in
this instructional material for new instructors is
more of a marketing strategy
when it comes to
the class work itself
What we're doing as instructors is that we're selling ideas, and we're selling concepts so for us to do this we need to get our
students involved, we need to have them feel as though they actually need this material.
If we don't present this material in a way in which they have a buy in and if we don't present the material in a way
that they want to learn it then they're never going to retain it and they'll feel like they've wasted their time and in effect you'll feel like
you're wasting your time so when we look at our target audience our students themselves
we need to understand where they're coming from, and we need to know how to address
their background, their demographics, their mindset, when we're presenting this material and that's, in a way, to get them more involved
and we want them to sit there and go "yeah my instructor makes a very good point, I would really like to learn this because I can see in the
future how it may be valuable to me and my future career" and see one of the problems I had
the first curriculum that I was involved in was mechanical engineering.
and for me, I was always a hands on person
when I went to school for mechanical engineering, it was all theoreitical and I couldn't relate to it and I can still remember my one prof.
he was talking about "well this is a spring constant and this is a damper and it's going over an irregular surface" and I couldn't relate
to that, I actually dropped out of the class, and I failed it and the third time I took it I finally
a light bulb clicked in my head and I was like "isn't that the same thing as a mount shock rear suspension on a dirt bike" and he was like
"yeah, that's exactly what it is"
I was like, "why didn't you tell me this?". Real world practical application I could relate to, I had a dirt bike sitting in my garage.
and I'm like "if you would have told me that its the same thing as the rear suspension on my motorcycle
I would have been able to relate to this material" but instead they left it
theoretical, and I was clueless, I didn't know what he was talking about I couldn't relate it to something I dealt with on a daily basis
so when you're able to take the a hindrance in an experience like and you know that you don't want to repeat that with your own
students, you have to bring in these real world practical applications of the information that you're covering and then they can relate to it
and that light bulb will come on a whole lot quicker.