Teaching Strategies
The scholarship of teaching and learning, as well as the broader areas of learning and motivational science, have discovered foundational principles and sound teaching strategies that can help address these kinds of questions:
- How do we teach effectively and inclusively?
- How do we convey disciplinary passion, curiosity, critique, and instinct to our students?
- How do we engage with students and learn with them?
- What do we do when they are struggling? How can we help those at the top of our courses go farther without leaving those who are struggling far behind?
- How can we get them talking to and learning from one another?
- How can we cover everything that we need to cover, and still have time to engage in intellectual debate and explore nuance?
Instructional Design has outlined some popular, evidence-supported teaching strategies below. Feel free to contact us should you have questions or comments or need assistance in designing your course using these or other teaching strategies, or if you'd like us to add a teaching strategy that is not represented here.
New to teaching and technology?
If you are new to teaching with online tools (either as part of your face-to-face course or your blended or online course), there are a few types of activities that are commonly used as a starting point:
Explore Teaching Strategies
Ready to explore? Start integrating more advanced tools and strategies be browsing the ideas below:
Open Pedagogy
Open pedagogy is a practice that encourages students to improve or create course content.
Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT)
Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) methods help students explicitly understand the how and why of the content, activities, and assessments in their courses. It is a non-prescriptive and feasible teaching approach that supports success for underserved student populations.
Blended Learning and Flipped Instruction
Blended learning refers to a teaching strategy that utilizes both face-to-face classroom meetings as well as technology-enhanced learning outside of the classroom.
Culturally Relevant and Responsive Teaching
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and Culturally Responsive Teaching are methodologies that address the need to support academic success for all students from a diversity of cultural backgrounds.
Games, Simulations and Gamification
According to Lewis, Lancaster, Savenye and Haas (2013), “the goal of using games in any learning scenario, whether Civics or Social Studies, Math or Reading, is to engage the learner and provide them motivation to continue exploring the content in a meaningful way” (p. 7).
Antiracist Teaching Methods
Antiracist teaching methods are culturally responsive instructional practices that also challenges issues of institutional and systemic racism to build race literacy and address systems of oppression through real world action.
Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT)
Just-in-Time Teaching or JiTT (Novak, Patterson, Gowin, & Christian, 1999) is a pedagogical approach that combines the best features of traditional in-class instruction with the modern communication channels of 21st century technology
Problem-based Learning & Case-based Learning
Barrows defined PBL as, “learning that results from the process of working towards the understanding or resolution of a problem.
Competency-based Instruction
“Competency-based education is an outcomes-based approach to education where the emphasis is on what comes out of post-secondary education—what graduates know and can do—rather than what goes into the curriculum”
Project-based Learning
Project Based Learning, similar to problem-based learning, is a teaching method by which students explore the content through solving of a problem, challenge, or the completion of some project.
Experiential Education
Experiential education is a teaching strategy with three key components: experience, reflection, and educational objectives. Students “learn by doing” and then reflect on this process towards specific educational goals.
Service Learning
Service learning is a teaching strategy that has two key components: community service and reflection. These components are tied to instruction through the application of class concepts in service to the community at large.
Teaching About and Addressing Microaggressions
Microaggressions are brief, indirect verbal and non-verbal put-downs or insults that are expressed toward a marginalized group. Teaching about and addressing microaggressions can be an important way to support students’ well-being, learning, sense of belonging, and success in academic spaces.
