Updated & Effective Teaching Strategies
In my profession, I face a perplexing issue: the lack of collaboration and innovation in academic teaching. With my extensive background as a lecturer, supervisor, mentor, and consultant, I have witnessed and contributed to significant transformations through my engagement in education to address those challenges.
As a lecturer, I value a student-centered and humanistic approach, because I have seen how the traditional method that treats students and materials uniformly can limit growth and dialogue. I believe students can learn better if they have the right learning environment supporting their needs and creativity. The key elements are openness and respect, flexibility and engagement, practicality and fun, as well as encouragement and feedback. These are the basis that is always used in my role as their mentor.
1. OPENING THE SESSION
In the initial phase of my class, I usually greet and welcome my students with relaxing music and dynamic wallpaper on YouTube, collecting positive affirmations with word cloud, ice-breaking games, Q&A, and discussion via Mentimeter or Kahoot.
It could lift their mood and help them to receive new inputs, knowledge, and creativity to enhance critical thinking, find solutions, and express their opinion. I believe that every point of view and perspective is required to be heard, even though the discussion and implementation need to be matched based on the relevant time and topic according to the accepted norm.
2. CREATING AN ENGAGING CLASS
To engage the student in the explanation, I use some images, videos, or even popular memes to reduce boredom and maintain the attention of each class member, especially in a storytelling method with, for example, Prezi. I also highlight each student’s different traits and strengths, which could be a disadvantage if not handled well and a huge asset if leveraged properly.
Therefore, to optimize such potential, I encourage their involvement with different methods and applications that suit their different ways of expression by integrating various tools.
I also share daily tips for them to work/study effectively remotely, find inspiration, and relax, and invite the students to do the same via the Q&A tool. A quiz that can be done individually or in teams via Quizizz is given daily or every two weeks to improve retention of the topic and to assess the ability to grasp the teaching material and the effectiveness of the teaching approaches. A live ranking result after each question has been answered embraces them with a sense of challenge and competition.
Moreover, I assign them a group project and let them choose which topic (that is related to the course) and their role or responsibility in the group. It helps to identify individual and group preferences for each of them, which can also develop their soft skills to accept and nurture different perspectives and ownership of such topics. It has been shown that those are some of the best ways to stimulate their interest in acquiring their required knowledge, which also receives positive feedback from students and the university.
3. PRACTICALITY & HIGHER MOTIVATION
To motivate students to study the topic, I emphasized its practicality and how it could be applied and practiced in their daily activities and projects. This way, they would develop passion and enjoyment as they could see and experience the benefits of learning the lesson. To achieve this, I incorporated various aspects of entrepreneurship in the courses, such as doing, projects, presentations, debates, discussions, and current case studies. I also invited my colleagues and friends, virtually and physically, who had studied, done projects, or worked in related fields, as guest speakers for my courses.
By using online tools like thatPMGame, MonsoonSIM, or Virtonomics, students could easily implement the theory in a practical situation in a business simulation, where I acted as a facilitator and an advisor.
Furthermore, I strongly encouraged them to use several apps that were used in startups and technological companies, to adapt and improve their productivity in the current technological advancement and needs, such as using AI in ChatGPT and Microsoft Bing to generate the basis of the layout of the draft (although they were required to review and improve the result, including the mandatory ethical procedure), Canva’s AI image generator to visualize their ideas during brainstorming and presentation, Trello and Google Docs to create a list of tasks, progress, questions, and quick information,
Kumospace and Gather to create the ambiance of offline collaboration with the online environment and use Microsoft Copilot to accelerate and simplify the working process.
To create their report, I recommended them to use the AI in Scite_ to analyze the citations of academic papers and assign them different categories based on their context and meaning, such as supporting, mentioning, and contrasting.
Furthermore, the Hemingway App helps them create bolder and clear writing, which contributes efficiently to perfecting their paper and manuscript.
In addition, watching movies or documentaries about finance or the corporate world would prevent them from boredom. Students were asked to write about the movie’s relationship with international business, hence making them pay more attention to the values and lessons contained in the film.
My students considered these examples to be fun and they greatly helped them in their employment and in enhancing their performance.
4. FEEDBACK
Some students are quite inactive and struggle to concentrate and advance in the classroom. This is not mostly because of idleness but because they have various legitimate and external factors such as working part-time for living expenses, family situations, etc.
Therefore, I always tried to inquire about their progress, provide feedback, and assure them that I am ready to repeat some challenging topics in the classroom or outside the class schedule (via email and WhatsApp group, with more examples and case studies).
To avoid similar issues from occurring, I motivate them to give criticisms and suggestions in the learning session directly or with Google form (anonymous) to identify my shortcomings and unsuitable methods. This way, it is easier for me to adjust and optimize the relevant topic, case studies, used applications, and approaches to enhance the learning experience and delivery. I am also willing to apologize to them if I have made a mistake to ensure a respectful learning environment.
Due to my involvement in educational and professional organizations, such as the Indonesian International Scholars Association, Overseas Indonesian Students Association Alumni, Cintana Alliance, Indonesian French Alumni Association, etc. I am constantly discussing and receiving new insights and feedback from my colleagues.
They consist of lecturers, teachers, and mentors in academic and non-academic areas, since the internship is also quite common in startups, companies, and government institutions, as well as mentorship in business competitions, incubators, and accelerators. My students are also encouraged to participate in those organizational events, not only as attendees but also as organizers to allow them to expand their knowledge, insights, and network.
Finally, I sincerely hope that the quality of lectures and education can be gradually increased and up-to-date with the current technological development, needs, and characteristics of the students in the ongoing digital era.
I am looking forward to more suggestions and recommendations. Feel free to contribute!