The Analytical essay, Don't Get it Right, Get it Wrote!

The analytical essay is a relatively brief, tightly organized, and highly focused piece of writing designed to (1) reveal your understanding of the perspectives or issues under discussion, (2) identify and analyze important concepts, assumptions or principles contained in the works, (3) identify strengths and weaknesses of various perspectives, competing ideas, or arguments, and (4) report any noteworthy insights gained or things learned from doing the analysis. Topics can be selected from a list that will be generated in class. The essays should be amenable to a brief treatment and should have a sufficient literature base available. If you are comparing and contrasting perspectives of different authors, include at least two, but preferably three, somewhat different perspectives. It is possible to write essays using only the resources found in the ACC Library, but it may be desirable to use other literature. Online resources may address the topic of an essay in a substantive way, so feel free to use any relevant literature you can find. When using online resources be sure to use a systematic approach to determining the reliability of the source.
Another essay marking rubric. Guidleines for Grading Essays

Developing Effective Presentation Techniques

Triple A Lecture This site is a wiki dedicated to the lecture technique. They have posted a faily extensive article which discusses all major aspects of lecturing and the authors have started a wiki or open online discussion forum to allow everyone to participate. As with most wikis yuou must register with a valid email address. Thge password for this wiki is "lecture".

The lecture is a time honoured technique for the transmission of knowledge, and used appropriately can be a very effective tool in the process of facilitating learning. It is a very efficient delivery format for learning institutions because it allows for the targeting of many individuals, as many as can be reached by the lecturers voice.
A well prepared and delivered lecture is a thing of beauty and joy. In fact, it can be a form of entertainment and great lecturers are in demand and comand large fees. Often the thing we remember most about a "really great lecture" is just that it was really great but we can't recall much of the content much less say that we have learned anything.
While it is a great technique for teaching, it is not necessarily the greatest technique for learning. We know that adults learn best when they are engaged in their learing and with the lecture format the engagement is minimal.

Developers have been working hard to replace instructors who simply lecture (as have many educational institutions. Pedagogical agents, virtual tutors digital helpers. are all terms used to describe the computer based training system being developed at Florida State University by Amy L.Baylor

These programs are also known as knowledge avatars or chat bots.

DESCA

http://www.officeport.com/enrich/files/Inspiring_DESCA.pdf

Liberal Education: Faculty development for teaching innovation - Greater Expectations

Liberal Education: Faculty development for teaching innovation - Greater Expectations: "he action research model describes cycles of change with four 'moments': planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. Applied to teaching, this suggests that an instance of teaching change involves four stages:

* selecting a new practice,

* experimenting with it,

* collecting information on what kind of learning the practice produced, and

* reflecting on the desirability of the change as well as whether the practice should be continued, modified, or discarded under specific sets of conditions.

"

Chapter 8: Teacher Learning | How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School

Chapter 8: Teacher Learning | How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School

Rethinking Teaching for the Knowledge Society

Article regarding the qualities of reflective teaching practice in of university
Referencing Shoen and Weinger.

"www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0201.pdf"

Reflective learning.

Lesson Plannning

Lesson Planning is a stage in the formal educational process and that begins with

• Conducting a needs assessment
  
• Development of goals and objectives
• Conducting an occupational analysis DACUM
  
• Developing Units of instruction and course outlines
  
• Developing lessons
  
• providing instruction
• assessment and refining course.
  

The essential components of a lesson plan are time, resources and order of presentation

There are many guidelines and resources for lesson planning. Often the type of lesson plan that is used depends on the philosphy and approach to teaching. The approach to lesson planning is also also dependant on the subject matter and setting. Courses that are presenting strictly cognitive material and are organized around a 50 minute time slot require different planning than a lesson that involves a psychomotor skill with a lab or shop component. The latter require considerably more planning in terms of time and resources. As most guides to lesson planning point out, there is seldom strict adherence to a lesson plan as experienced teachers make adjustments and shift strategies on the fly.

Lesson planning depends upon earlier events in the planning cycle particularly developing course outlines and units of instruction.
Blooms taxonomy provides a useful frame work for planning by dividing learning tasks into cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains.
A further taxonomy allows for a distinction between the level of accomplishment expected as a consequence of instuction general knowledge, working knowledge and qualified knowledge.
A course outline should specify the dominant domain and the expected level of knowlege.
Once these things have been determined a plan can be developed to deliver instruction that will meet this goal. As long as the outline is realistic in terms of expectations given time and resources the lesson plan can be fairly mechanical often completed in a template.

So a lesson is being planned to teach the boline knot.
What domain?
What level of learning?
How much time is required?
What resources are necessary?
How will we know when the lesson is learned?


Gagnes 9 Units of Instruction provides a guide for understaning the tasks that should be considered when devising a lesson plan .
1) gaining attention (reception)
(2) informing learners of the objective (expectancy)
(3) stimulating recall of prior learning (retrieval)
(4) presenting the stimulus (selective perception)
(5) providing learning guidance (semantic encoding)
(6) eliciting performance (responding)
(7) providing feedback (reinforcement)
(8) assessing performance (retrieval)
(9) enhancing retention and transfer (generalization).

Employability skills are mostly tasks that involve the affective domain.


DESCA
Some the characteristics of successful teachers
flexibility
sensitivity
and as Dr. Andy Chun describes, agility



The Teaching Cycle (on the left of the diagram) is for teachers on the right is for the learner.


Another important characteristic is the ability to reflect and modify instruction based on feed back from a variety of sources.
An article on the reflective teacher.

Feed back is essential to lesson planning and one of the main issues is "Are they learning what Iam trying to teach."
I know learning is occuring when ......