Teaching Models

     There is a ubiquitous instructional design model with the acronym, ADDIE: Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation.  Let me briefly describe each stage in this process:

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1. A, the Analysis phase, is the “Goal-Setting” stage.  Instructors distinguish between what the learner already knows and what they should know after completing the course/lesson.  During this phase, questions must be answered, such as:

• Who is the audience and what are their characteristics?

• What is the current behavior/performance?

• What is the desired behavioral outcome? 

 

2. D, the Design phase, is the “Strategic Planning” stage.  Instructors define learning objectives, lesson plans, content, and assessment tools in a systematic (logical & orderly) and specific (detail-oriented) manner.  During this phase, questions must be answered, such as:

• What is the instructional strategy for this project?

• How would the instructional strategy be visualized using a storyboard?

• Does all of the content support the project’s goals and objectives?

 

3. D, the Development phase, is the “Creation” stage.  Instructors create and refine the content assets that were designed in the Design phase.  During this phase, questions must be answered, such as:

• Have technologies been successfully developed and integrated into the plan?

• Are there any errors or bugs?

• How will the content be delivered and stored?

 

4. I, the Implementation phase, is the “Delivery” stage.  Instructors deliver the content according to the instructional plan.  Meticulous monitoring ensures efficiency and success of the project.  During this phase, questions must be answered, such as:

• Are learners grasping the topic or do they need help?

• What feedback are you getting from learners?  From instructors?

• What is the procedure if errors are found?

 

5. E, the Evaluation phase, is the “Quality Assurance” stage.  Instructors determine if the goals and learning objectives have been met by meticulous testing of both the project and the learners.  Evaluation may be formative or summative.  During this phase, questions must be answered, such as:

• What criteria are being used to test the effectiveness of the project?

• How will evaluation data be collected and published/shared?

• What method will be used to ensure the reliability and validity of content, including assessments?

 

     At the end of this essay, I have included an infographic that depicts the ADDIE instructional design process in greater detail.  This model is universally employed by instructional designers to increase the efficacy of instruction and promote accomplishment of learning objectives.  For this reason, I consistently employ the ADDIE model as I design instruction in my role as a teacher.

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     The ADDIE model also correlates well to the components of research design.  Scholar and expert on mixed-methods research, John Creswell, describes the research process as a cycle wherein specifying the problem to be studied informs the literature selected for review, which then prompts a purpose statement, out of which the research questions or hypotheses will be identified, (collecting, analyzing, and reporting on the data finish out the cycle) (Creswell, 2012).  This iterative process helps educational researchers methodically approach research to analyze what has come before (the literature review), design the study, develop procedures for carrying out the study, implement the plan, and evaluate the whole process to make meaning of the results for sharing with the scholarly community.

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     ADDIE also supports another important instructional strategy: naming the specific standards, which will then inform the curriculum that must be developed, which then informs the instructional strategies and learning objectives that will meet the curricular goals, which must then be intricately linked to the appropriate assessment activities that clearly demonstrate how the learning objectives have been met by each learner.  This throughline, Standards>Curriculum>Instruction>Assessment, is of the utmost importance to educators and is one that I regularly emphasize to my undergraduate students.

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               >If you are interested in reading more about my perspectives on learning philosophies, click here to view my reflection paper from IDE 621: Principles of Instruction and Learning.  Our assignment was to create a “Knowledge Base” of our understanding of the philosophies, learning theories, and instructional theories that we studied in class.  You can read why a cognitivist perspective on learning resonates with me more than other learning theories.<

 

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Instructional Goals & Practices

     My goal as an instructor is to help others achieve their best performance.  An early example is my undergraduate honors thesis in which I directed a play at the SU Drama Department.  I designed a meticulous plan to rehearse the production, including weeks of collaboration with the actors and production designers. My goal was to empower the actors to achieve their best performance through my hawk-eyed observation and timely, specific, and behavioral feedback.  This practice also carried over into my 12-year career as a Standardized Patient (SP) Educator.  Defining performance indicators, coaching individuals to perform in accordance with the parameters, giving them opportunities for self-reflection and multiple rehearsals, observing their performance and engaging in post-encounter feedback conversations, and evaluating the quality of the training program and my manner of instruction – these are skills that I have developed over the years which serve me incredibly well as a teacher today.  Immersive, experiential learning, I believe, is one of the best learning strategies.

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     Empathy – and people’s expressions of empathy, both verbally and non-verbally – is another vital component of human communications, including in educational settings.  As a SP Educator, we define empathy as the ability to put yourself in another’s shoes and imagine what it must feel like to be that person.  We might express empathy verbally, such as “I can imagine it must be very difficult to turn in that assignment on time when you have been sick with the flu all week,” or nonverbally, such as gently patting a person on the back to express condolences.  As an instructor, I constantly strive to model appropriate empathic behaviors.  This means “putting myself in my students’ shoes” so that they, in turn, will start to imagine putting themselves in their future students’ shoes.  Approaching every interpersonal interaction from a perspective of empathy helps to make human connections, build respect and trust, and foster a community of learning.

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     Creating an effective, inclusive, supportive learning community is as much a personal goal for me as an instructor as it is an institutional goal within SU’s School of Education.  Empowering students to collaborate to achieve their learning goals is inherent in the course that I teach; teams of three students work together to analyze, design, develop, implement, and evaluate a 15-minute instructional presentation on a topic and grade level of their choice.  Students practice, together, identifying the appropriate New York State Common Core/EngageNY educational standards, which they use to identify the learning goals of their lesson, which then links to the assessment activity that demonstrates if and how the learning goals were met.  Students learn with and from each other as teammates.  During the final group presentations, the rest of the students in the class “place themselves in the shoes” of students in the grade level that each presentation targets and immerse themselves in the presenting team’s lesson.  The “students” and I also complete a comprehensive rubric that assesses how the team performed on six components: Quality of Instructional Materials, Integration of Technology, Organization of Content, Involvement of Team Members, and Engagement of Audience.  A copy of the rubric can be found in my Support Materials page.  The scores from the completed rubrics, plus the aggregated open-ended comments, are shared verbatim with each team.  The final report and reflection require students – as a team and as individuals – to both self-reflect and address the feedback their peers and instructor wrote for them, articulating how this feedback would be incorporated into the lesson if it were to be presented again.  The students almost always do an incredible job on their final presentations and reports: final scores for the presentation by percentage average at approximately 93% out of 100%.

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     Sometimes fostering an environment of mutual respect necessitates some tricky conversations to navigate.  For example, one student in my IDE 201 class was struggling greatly with some of the basic technologies that we were using in class (Microsoft Excel).  She suddenly stopped her work and loudly exclaimed/whined, “But I’m too stupid to do this!”  I immediately stopped what I was doing to address this comment: “(Student name), you are not stupid, in fact, you are a student at a prestigious university with rigorous admission standards.  On our first day of class, I announced that I would not tolerate hateful, hurtful, or abusive speech.  That includes negative self-talk.  I would not tolerate someone else calling you stupid, nor will I tolerate you calling yourself that term.  Now, how can I help you accomplish this task in Excel?”  Though my words were firm, I was careful to select non-verbal behaviors that expressed empathy, patience, and support.

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     Students arrive at my class with varying abilities.  Since the course is about integrating technology into the inclusive K-12 classroom, students’ levels of technological proficiency can also vary.  It’s my job, not only to patiently assist them with technology, but to enthusiastically encourage their engagement throughout the course.  I accomplish this by limiting the amount of didactic presentations I lead and, instead, assign readings to be completed before class, similar to a flipped-classroom model.  At the start of each class, students complete an unscored, formative assessment about important topics from the weekly readings.  These low-stakes “quizzes” enable me to ascertain students’ comprehension of and engagement with the readings.  By using different assessment software for these quizzes (i.e., Google Forms, Kahoot!, or Survey Monkey), I’m also modeling the different types of assessment activities that my students can build into their future teaching practices. Each class meeting, then, focuses on interactive in-class activities, accomplished in teams, pairs, and solo.  I always include at least one activity in which students stand up and move around the classroom, interacting with their peers’ activity products and/or giving feedback.  I often play music during the moving about, just as I always play music starting 20 minutes before class begins to set the tone for the class (I thematically link the music I am playing with the instructional topic for the day).  The pre-class music has also become a ritual for me as an instructor to “get in the right headspace” to teach the instructional unit at hand.

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     Including options that will appeal to a variety of learning styles is important, especially because my students are most frequently Inclusive/Special Education majors.  I present information visually using text, images, and videos; I use music and recordings to appeal to auditory learners; I include movement-based activities for kinesthetic learners, and I use candy as a reward for an in-class game (activating the senses of smell & taste).  One entire class is devoted to assistive technology.  I have coordinated with the Assistive Technology Librarian to bring my students on a “field trip” to the Assistive Technology room at Bird Library, where they actively engage with the equipment there.  Another strategy I use to include a variety of abilities and learning styles is to compose a “script” for each week’s instruction, which I call my “Instructor’s Notes.”  I publish these notes to our course’s Blackboard site starting 30 minutes before class begins.  In this way, I can help students who may benefit from seeing the printed words of my verbal speech before and during class.  The feedback I have gotten from this practice has been overwhelmingly positive, in particular from the students for which English is not their first language.  Having a script to follow also cuts down on my forgetting to say something in class, as well as having a written record of the class that has been useful in coaching the other TAs who will teach a different section of my same course.  A copy of my Instructor's Notes can be found on my Support Materials page.

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     One final component I include in every single workshop I have ever led and every class I have ever taught is to build in adequate time for group debrief and discussion.  During these discussions, I may pose a question to the class, ask them all to self-reflect for a moment (usually I encourage them to write down their thoughts), then ask for volunteers to share their comments.  Debriefing is an instructional strategy that is used heavily, for example, in medical education.  In this context, debriefers are usually highly trained on the many skills needed to effectively debrief learners.  In my teaching practice, I include weekly, graded, self-reflection activities.  I strive to provide ample feedback to every student about these self-reflections.  I also place much importance on writing individualized, thorough feedback for every assignment that students turn in.

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     Hopefully this essay has helped to introduce my teaching philosophy, goals, practices, and challenges.  Achieving employment as a full-time, tenure-track position at an institution of higher education is my professional goal.  Every chance I get to practice and refine my knowledge, skills, and attitudes as an instructor is a chance to get closer to my goal.

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