Want to learn the science, art and psychology of designing and facilitating dynamic, interactive, engaging courses while maintaining your publishing productivity and without losing your mind? Read on...
Let's be real. Most university courses, whether a seminar or lecture, are flat-out boring. The professor tends to do most of the talking or 'presenting', while students try to stay awake or end up staring into space or multi-tasking on their phones. And those students are lucky to walk away learning anything. They might even forget what the class was about before the next academic term!
But that all changes once the professor learns to be a good facilitator.
When the instructor uses and models expert facilitation skills to generate discussion and participation, the whole atmosphere changes. Students become engaged with course content, share ideas, discuss insights, ...and achieve the learning outcomes results you desire and they need to succeed.
The best thing is that facilitating interaction and encouraging exploration and student-centered learning is aligned with the latest in evidence-based instructional design that evaluates what makes for effective student learning.
So why isn't every instructor using facilitation skills?
Because it doesn't come naturally to most of us. When you're the expert, your first instinct is to explain everything. There can also be a perverse fear, where impostor syndrome makes you reluctant to let go of the reigns so you over prepare because you think you have to know everything to be in front of the room.
But the truth is, everyone learns best and retains that information when they discuss ideas, ask questions, and explore the relevance of the course material to their own situations and on their own terms.Then they walk away not only having internalized what they learned, but ready to implement it right away.
And this realization is a game changer when it comes to the typical stress and time spent on course and classroom preparation.
Luckily, anyone can learn the right facilitation skills needed to run their classes more effectively.
And you can learn how and much more with our Course Freedom 6-week intensive boot camp, including:
- the 3 ways to structure your courses and how to choose the right one
- how to give engaging lectures every time (even though you'll re-structure your class format, you still need to master effective presentation skills!)
- how to run active learning classrooms (and a toolkit of over 90 activities you can use any time so you never have to worry about what you'll do for class)
- how to incorporate technology the right way
- the fastest way to design captivating slides
- strategies to boost your student course evaluations
- grading techniques that empower students and free your time
... and much, much more!
Your Instructor
Hello, I'm Riz! I've been a faculty member since 2009 and the first few times I taught were...let's just say the word fine would be a big overstatement. You know why? Because I listened to all the casual advice given to those of us at R1s that teaching isn't as important as research and publications. And while it's true that keeping your job is tied to your scholarly productivity and impact, teaching is the most front facing and emotionally draining part of your job. And for many of us, it was the reason we go into academia in the first place. Despite the unhelpful advice, I kept investing in learning about effective teaching, striking the right balance between course prep and all the other demands on our time, and experimenting with ideas for creating more engaging classrooms. Results? At first, my course evaluations still were just average and I still felt overwhelmed. It was when I got smart about what effective teaching and time management really looked like that I started to see real results: the tone setters and motivation makers that make students care and stay engaged through every class; the slide templates that enable you to quickly and easily create a semester's worth of slides; the counter-intuitive approach that ensures you get raving comments and scores in your final course evaluations, and the whole (gluten free) tasty cake with a cherry on top! When you enroll in the programs at Course Freedom, you'll never worry about course preparation, lectures or evaluations EVER again!