What should be considered when selecting materials and methods of teaching?

Creating an inclusive environment for your students — both in and outside of the classroom — is essential for their learning. Please see the diversity, equity, and inclusion section of our website for more strategies, definitions, and explanations.

Course Design

While designing a course from scratch can be a daunting task, simply revising a course can also present its challenges. Identifying the content and skills you would like students to attain as a result of your class is an excellent place to start. To learn more, see Developing Learning Objectives on our Assessment of Student Learning website. There, you will also find a page on Creating and Using Assessments, which is yet another critical element in course design.

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Teaching Methods

When deciding on which teaching methods to use in their teaching, instructors should first reflect on the learning objectives they would like their students to achieve. 

Learning objectives should inform the selection of teaching methods. In one class, interactive lecture might be appropriate, while in another class, small group learning activities, discussion, or active learning strategies methods might be more effective.

Regardless of the teaching activity or strategy selected, instructors should think through their purpose and goals of using that particular approach.

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Teaching and Learning with Technology

While it may be tempting to assume that a flashy new technology will transform teaching and learning, it’s important to first reflect on your overall course goals and learning objectives. How will this technology support those goals and objectives?  How does that technology support learning? 

Whether you’re using a tool like “clickers” (personal response systems) or “flipping the classroom,” technology must be integrated effectively in order to enhance learning. Please see Northwestern’s digital learning page for more useful information.

Online Instruction

Online learning environments come with many benefits, including the convenience and flexibility they afford both instructors and students. They also present unique challenges. California State University has developed a helpful self-evaluation tool for faculty teaching online, which can be used when designing a new online course or when revisiting a course to enhance student learning. Access the tool from External Resources below.

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Grading and Assessment

How you assess student learning has important repercussions for student motivation and takeaways. For a broad discussion of the underlying rationale for assessing learning, strategies and tools for assessing learning in a variety of contexts, and practical examples of student learning assessment, go to our Assessment of Student Learning website.

Evaluating Courses and Instruction

Gathering student feedback about the course and instruction — whether through a survey, focus group, or a more informal means — can be vital for identifying the aspects of a course that are going well, and what could be improved. By not waiting until the very end of the term, instructors may be able to make timely adjustments to the course or instruction. This also offers students an opportunity to voice concerns and questions that they might not otherwise have posed, particularly if the feedback is gathered anonymously. In conjunction with student feedback, personal reflection on course alignment to learning objectives can lead to adjustments that greatly increase student learning.

Faculty Self-Reflection on Course Alignment:

Whether teaching a brand new course or a course taught for years, it is a powerful exercise to reflect upon the alignment between a course’s objectives, activities, and assessments. The following questions can guide faculty in this kind of self-reflection:

• What are my student learning objectives for this course? What do I intend my students to know, feel, value, or be able to do by the end of the course?
• Are the student learning objectives I have articulated for this course aligned with the student learning objectives for the larger program/department/degree?
• Have I communicated the student learning objectives to students through my syllabus or in some other way?
• What techniques and activities does the course employ to help students achieve these learning outcomes? (This might include particular small group techniques, specific assignments, particular learning approaches, lab techniques, etc.)
• How are the learning objectives assessed? Do the assessments give me the information I need about the degree to which each objective is being achieved?
• Of the techniques/approaches/ideas employed in teaching, which were successful and which were less successful, and why? What might I do differently next time?
• What lessons have been learned for subsequent courses? What did I learn about my teaching or my students? Were my ideas about teaching and learning challenged in any way?

Mid Course Checks:

Instructors might find it helpful to ask their students a set of questions (either in-class or using an online survey tool) related to their experience of learning in the class. The instructor might ask students about what is working well, what could be improved, and what the students themselves could do to take responsibility for their own learning in the course. It is often useful to share the results of a mid course check with the students and to discuss what can be changed and what can’t or shouldn't be, depending on the instructor’s rationale.

Critical Incident Questionnaire:

The Critical Incident Questionnaire (CIQ) was designed by Brookfield (2012) as a means to let students critically reflect on a given learning experience, rather than focusing solely on the instructor or instruction. The questions include:

• At what moment were you most engaged as a learner?
• At what moment were you most distanced as a learner?
• What action that anyone took in this session did you find most helpful?
• What action that anyone took in the session did you find most confusing?
• What surprised you most about the session?

The CIQ can be a useful alternative to a standard survey, because it can be adapted to a single session, course, or program.

Small Group Analyses (SGA): 

The SGA is a confidential service for Northwestern faculty, post-docs, and graduate students provided by the Searle Center for Advancing Learning and Teaching. The SGA provides instructors with detailed and constructive mid-term feedback accrued directly from their students about the instruction and their learning in the class. This process often yields information and insights that do not emerge from end-of-term course evaluations (CTECS).

Learning from learning analytics:

Canvas, Northwestern’s Learning Management System, allows instructors to view course and student learning analytics. Course analytics show the activity associated with the course, assignment submissions, grades, and students. With course analytics, instructors can see all course activity for all users in the class, including such activities as taking a quiz, commenting on a discussion, or submitting an assignment. The analytics show the distribution of grades for each assignment. Individual student data will also reveal how a student is doing in the course. Together, these data may help instructors to predict how students will react to course activities; identify at-risk students or students needing help;  and provide a deeper understanding of what students are achieving in the course. For more information please refer to NUIT’s Faculty Support Service and the Canvas Help guides.

Making sense of CTECs:

Teaching evaluations can be a valuable resource for instructors as they continue to improve and enhance their teaching, but it can be hard to identify the most meaningful bits. Instructors may find it particularly difficult to make sense of contradictory opinions, feedback that doesn’t seem to reflect what happened in class, or emotion-filled comments.

Consider the following comments from two students in the same class:

• “I didn’t learn a lot in class. It would have been better to give us the lecture notes so that we’d know exactly what the prof was getting at.”
• “Great class – definitely an opportunity to think independently.”

These students are both expressing their genuine response to the course, but clearly had different ideas about what the course should look like. The first felt that the instructor had let her down by failing to clearly explain the material, while the second enjoyed the degree of autonomy she was given to explore ideas on her own.

Instructors may find it helpful to:

• Seek to understand the messages behind the comments, and consider the perspectives and approaches to learning that students bring with them.

  For instance, students who expect a more transactional approach to the course – you talk and I’ll listen – will feel annoyed when they are asked to engage more actively or to play a role in running the course. Students who are looking for expectations to be crystal clear will feel frustrated when there is some ambiguity built into assignments or grading criteria.[i]

• Add their own questions to the CTECs (or other end-of-term ratings).

  If instructors ask their own questions about specific assignments, activities or methods used in the class, they are more likely to glean useful, relevant and focused feedback from their students.

• Be transparent about their own expectations for students early on.

  Instructors also have a fair degree of control over the expectations their students have of the course. For instance, if instructors want students to engage actively in discussions or in-class assignments, they should let their students know why this is important. When students understand the kind of thinking that an instructor is expecting, and believe that the instructor’s reason for a given activity is valid, they’re more likely to accept even activities that don’t align with their personal preferences (and to be easier on the instructor in the end-of-course evaluations).

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References:

[i] Entwistle, N.J. & Tait, H. (1990). Approaches to learning, evaluations of teaching, and preferences for contrasting academic environments. Higher Education,19, 169-194.

[ii] Trigwell, K., Prosser, M., & Waterhouse, F. (1999). Relations between teachers’ approaches to teaching and students’ approaches to learning. Higher Education, 37, 57–70.

What factors must you consider when choosing teaching learning material?

How are you going to choose your learning materials and methods of teaching?

What are factors that should be considered in the process of adapting teaching materials?