Changes in Teaching Methodology
There has been a strong focus on inducting creative techniques of teaching into education at all levels. The role of a teacher has grown further from being the broadcaster in a lecture/classroom kind of and become more of a facilitator in honing and developing creativity in students through workshops or activity based seminars. There have been innovative ways which are being adopted to make students participate in various project works where the students are working in teams and designing new models, working on new concepts.
This is a huge shift from the way teaching has been done where the focus was to make the students remember and learn concepts. The teacher used to take up a chapter and then do some practice problems so that the students are able to make sense of the underlying concepts. The further work was done by giving practice problems as homework. Practice = Perfection was the motto. But with the advent of smart classrooms the teachers have a huge storyboard to present to the class for which the data is accessible through Wifi enabled campuses. Visual Aids are being used in every class since it has been understood that 75% of our sense receptors reside in the eye and thus, using tools which are visually stimulating are preferred over reading material. Just providing information is passe and the educational institutions are following/working on new modes of teaching where the student participation is higher. The benefits as you may ask are many. Listing down some for your reference.
- More participation in class means greater focus among the students.
- Group Behavioral skills are intrinsically developed. Teamwork, taking responsibility, leadership are just to name a few.
- Activity based learning leads to better understanding of concepts, subjects. Like Role Playing exercises for English Literature/Language. This is because the brain can retain 80% of concepts which are ‘seen and done’ as compared to 20% for ‘read’ and only 10% for concepts which are ‘heard’.
- Communication skills gets improved with closely interacting teams/groups of students.
The Educators, India.
