Teaching Skills Workshops
About the Series
ACET announces its new series of teaching skills workshops designed to provide the new or experienced teacher with tools, resources, and guidelines to help make them better instructors. Whether in the classroom or clinic, participants will learn essential skills to guide them from planning to delivery to student assessment and evaluation.
All sessions will meet on Thursdays at noon in the Library on the main campus.
Miss a presentation?
Or want to schedule an encore for your department? Most past presentations can be tailored to the needs of your school or department and presented at a time and place to allow maximum participation from your faculty. Review contents of the suggested topics below and contact Dr. Bret Simon to discuss your needs.
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Techniques for Active Learning
Active learning is the foundation of many educational innovations and initiatives. Problem-based learning, team-based learning, case-based teaching, evidence-based practice—all of these strategies depend upon students’ abilities to formally analyze and critically appraise their own thought processes, skills that require active learning. This session will explore the relationships among active learning, critical thinking, and higher-order questions. Simple techniques for introducing active learning in the classroom and clinic will be demonstrated.
Introduction to Case-based Teaching
Case-based teaching has a long history in many areas of education, including the health care professions, and CBT is currently used in many UTHSCSA programs. In 2008, SACS approved the Health Science Center’s proposal to develop case-based teaching and learning as our campus-wide quality enhancement program. This workshop will introduce participants to the principles of case-based teaching, demonstrate a typical computer-based progressive case, and provide basic introduction to how to access case-writing software. View an interactive case story about a young patient with asthma.
Teaching for the Here and Now
Health Professions education frequently takes a "building block" approach, where content is taught in discrete units (cardiology, pharmacology, periodontics...) independent of each other and independent of clinical observation or experience. Mastery of basic science is required before the student is exposed to real-world applications. This traditional and widely used system, however, often fails dramatically in one crucial aspect of adult learning: relevance. Teaching in the abstract--facts, models, formulas, rules--fails in the long-term because, while students may remember content long enough to pass an exam, they are likely to have forgotten how to use it when they ultimately get to the clinical encounter. Consciously and deliberately making content relevant--here and how--is a vital key to making teaching and learning work. This workshop will introduce some basic concepts related to relevance and help participants discover how they can make their content come alive in a way that promotes deep learning and retention.
Little Miracles: Small Group Teaching in the Health Professions
The use of small groups is a feature in many courses and curricula across campus. Yet faculty may have little formal training or experience in the use of small groups and may use this time for activities that resemble smaller versions of large lecture classes. The small group is an ideal setting and opportunity to teach skills that are important to the health care professions but that may be difficult to implement in other formats. Interpersonal skills, communication, leadership, collaboration, and personal growth and development can all be addressed successfully in the small group. This one-hour workshop will introduce faculty to the benefits of small group teaching and recommend ways to integrate this content into the curriculum.
Giving Power to PowerPoint!
PowerPoint has become a ubiquitious and, some would argue, essential part of teaching technology. However, many facutly never realize this software's full potential, or they may use it in a way that actually inhibits learning. This one hour presentation will introduce the basics of effective PowerPoint presentations, present some advanced features, and warn against some forms of misuse including ghosts of overheads past, the colorblind test, Tinker Bell syndrome, and PowerPoint karaoke.
Bringing Life to Lectures: Questioning Skills
From Socrates to Problem-based Learning, the ability to ask cogent, provocative, and probing questions has been long recognized as a cornerstone of effective education. Questions can serve as a means to test content mastery, apply general principles, prompt reflection, or generate debate. Too often, however, questions are used in a superficial or perfunctory fashion. This workshop will introduce basic principles of effective questioning skills in the classroom, including the use of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Objectives as a means of better understanding the cognitive function and learning outcomes of different question types. Participants will have the opportunity to practice reformulating questions to meet different educational needs.
Bringing Life to Lectures: Team-based Teaching and Learning
Many faculty view content delivery as the primary—or only—purpose for lectures. Yet there are many ways for students to learn and master content, and the few hours spent together in class each week can present instructors with opportunities to do much more than present information. This first in a series of workshops will present an alternative perspective to the lecture as “lecturing.” Team-based Teaching and Learning can provide a method of assessing content mastery and application, promoting collaborative learning, and exercising critical thinking skills. Students generally find these methods more stimulating and enjoyable, and faculty find that learning and recall are improved as well.
Introduction to Case-based Teaching and Learning
Case-based teaching has a long history in many areas of education, including the health care professions, and CBT is currently used in many UTHSCSA programs. In 2008, SACS approved the Health Science Center’s proposal to develop case-based teaching and learning as our campus-wide quality enhancement program. Through discussion and demonstration, this workshop will teach the principles and practice of case-based instruction and provide an update on the work of the CBE development team.
Grading Rubrics: Making Expectations Explicit
A common complaint of students is that grading often seems subjective. Multiple choice exams may appear objective enough, but exams are not always the best way to measure learning. Group assignments, papers, presentations, and clinical observations may provide more valid assessments of learning, but students may view these activities as prone to bias and subjectivity. Grading rubrics offer a means of minimizing perceived subjectivity in grading. They can also help the instructor clarify their own goals and objectives. Further, by involving students in the creation of rubrics—getting them to collaborate in establishing the grading criteria—they will have a clearer understanding of outcome measures and standards.
This one-hour workshop will introduce participants to the creation and use of grading rubrics in the curriculum. The benefits and limitations of rubrics will be discussed, and participants will have the opportunity to practice writing and scaling rubric items.
Beyond the Podium and PowerPoint: Teaching Techniques to Support Active Learning
Active learning can be promoted in many ways, but the purpose is consistent: To engage the learner through activities that reinforce higher-order thinking, active participation, reflection, and collaboration. Such methods may not be essential for content mastery, but they are superior for helping students develop and practice the interpersonal, communication, problem solving, and critical thinking skills necessary for the health care professions. What is more, both students and teachers find they are more motivated and enthusiastic about teaching and learning when these methods are creatively applied. This one-hour workshop will focus on interactive learning activities that can enhance the traditional lecture format.