Dear Mohamed:

You ask the following: What are in my views some of the most effective new pedagogical practices in university teaching. As I see it,  the most effective new pedagogical practices in university teaching should pay attention to the following:

(1) Professors should have a graduate degree (e.g., Ph H) in their area of specialization and expertise. If this is not the case, they don't know what to teach,

(2) professors should have a degree in education, and hence be well-versed in the details of the individual's psychological development, If this is not the case, they can teach their studens material that is much above or belove their cognitive abilities. Also,  if this is not the case professors do not know how to teach.

(3) professors should be more mentors and organizers of learning experiences and situations, such that their students come to understand, reinvent and recontruct everything they learn, than simple transmitters of ready made and established truths. When that is the case, professors cease to be "the sage on the stage" and establish bidirectional rather than unidirectional  interactions with their students. Needless to say, unidirectional interactions tend to lead to rote learning and passive memorization, whereas bidirectional interactions tend to lead to an active and true understanding.

(4) Professors should appeal to the active methods. In contrast to the tradional and conservative methods, the active methods aim to give rise to creative and innovative students, not to conformist students.

(5) Professors should appeal to technological resources such that they could deliver good, and even excellent teaching.

This would be what I would suggest if I were in a position of  appointing university instructors, be  they doctors or professors

Best wishes,

Orlando

Dear Mohamed,

Apprentice-centered learning has proven to be a very interesting initiative. Based on some constructivist principles, this approach considers the student as constructor of his own knowledge.

See you later.

A very good question.

If I were in a position of appointing university instructors (be it doctors or professors), I shall insist that the candidate must have a postgraduate degree in education because teaching is an art or a skill that have to be learnt. A high title in ,say physics, proves that there is an expertise in that subject but  does not guarantee that there will be "good" teaching. In fact, this is a worldwide problem that must be tackled well to find out pertinent solution.

Still, in many places, the sender-receiver approach is adopted during monotonous  lectures with the instructor assuming the role of "the sage on the stage". Arrogance of a high degree holder will not allow an easy change. There has to be orders from above to switch from a "one-way" method of teaching into a process which involves variety of activities that spark engagement & participation of the students. You may have very few examples of effective teachers in a given institute but the hope is for more.

Dear Mohamed:

You ask the following: What are in my views some of the most effective new pedagogical practices in university teaching. As I see it,  the most effective new pedagogical practices in university teaching should pay attention to the following:

(1) Professors should have a graduate degree (e.g., Ph H) in their area of specialization and expertise. If this is not the case, they don't know what to teach,

(2) professors should have a degree in education, and hence be well-versed in the details of the individual's psychological development, If this is not the case, they can teach their studens material that is much above or belove their cognitive abilities. Also,  if this is not the case professors do not know how to teach.

(3) professors should be more mentors and organizers of learning experiences and situations, such that their students come to understand, reinvent and recontruct everything they learn, than simple transmitters of ready made and established truths. When that is the case, professors cease to be "the sage on the stage" and establish bidirectional rather than unidirectional  interactions with their students. Needless to say, unidirectional interactions tend to lead to rote learning and passive memorization, whereas bidirectional interactions tend to lead to an active and true understanding.

(4) Professors should appeal to the active methods. In contrast to the tradional and conservative methods, the active methods aim to give rise to creative and innovative students, not to conformist students.

(5) Professors should appeal to technological resources such that they could deliver good, and even excellent teaching.

This would be what I would suggest if I were in a position of  appointing university instructors, be  they doctors or professors

Best wishes,

Orlando

I would like to suggest that many of the innovations in the last decade or so, at least in physics education  (clickers, flipped classrooms, Tutorials in Introductory Physics . . .) seem to address the issue that humans filter out the vast majority of input, and only cautiously spend the precious resource of attention.  

That is they help students confront the fact that their current thinking doesn't work, before introducing the correct thinking.

Well for me, the best approach is the one that is tailored to the solution of the 21st century problems; that is to say that these approaches should be able to equip them with the skills need. Hence, they should be approaches that should make them competent. Therefore, I suggest competence based approaches in which the learner is involved in the learning process and as well is presented with authentic/real problems.

Some of the "soft-skills" the physics approaches I mentioned offer include critical thinking, writing, reasoning, questioning, group and communication skills.  That students practice and gain these skills while addressing tough topical misconceptions is almost too happy an occurrence to believe them coincidence.

Dear Dr. Benmerikhi,

I think theory and practicals should complement each other. During practicals people should immediately see how theory is applied. I was able to see these changes during medical education. A few years back, students learned theory first and much later went to hospitals to apply them. Now they get practicals in hospitals much earlier during their medical education. I think this practice can probably be transferred to many subjects, not only in the sciences, but also in the arts.

For instance arts classes combining theory in the morning and practicals in the afternoon.

Yours sincerely,

Rainer

Dear Dr. Benmerikhi,

I just had another idea: it is possible to apply the internet / intranet for course material / Podcasts of the lectures that can be downloaded much more than it used to be applied in the past. Platform independent developments including mobile Apps will enable students to access the course material no matter which devices they run. Consequently, they can organise their studies better as they are flexible to access the content from anywhere, anytime.

Yours sincerely,

Rainer

Clarity of Teaching an education

Communicating with individual students

Classroom Discussion through Batch wise students

Course Assignments

Summary and Feedback

Cognitive Strategies

Collaborating with Colleagues

Greetings Dr to be the Professor with experience in his field to be able to deliver scientific material well and increases the students ' interaction with him......... Thank you

Dear Nizar Matar,

Dear All,

It seems to be a logically sound approach to study and gain a degree in pedagogy to increase the perfectness of teaching performance. I also shared this long time ago but with the years I found surprisingly that practically all of my colleagues or acquaintances with a degree in pedagogy were the professionally weakest teachers lacking enthusiasm and they presented anaemic teaching performance. Most of them wanted to increase their salary because the number of diplomas/degrees officially make possible to get into a higher salary class. These people have had also a weak publication performance and generally have not followed the literature in their field. I do not know the situation in other countries what I wrote based on Hungarian experiences.    

Anyway, there is such a competition in science that one has no time to follow such studies.  

Dear Rainer,

I am afraid your proposition may work only in case of diligent and self-conscious students. Unfortunately, the majority – more than the half - of students are not like those.

Some practices in our University:

1. Continuously revising the syllabi

2. Delivering lectures through latest technology and media

3. Interactive teaching

Dear Mohamed Benmerikhi 

The gap between teaching in the early stages and university studies still exists, and the methods differ depending on the facilities. Depending on the ability and skills of the teachers to communicate, interact, and continuously develop the curriculum, at a time when the information is not restricted in a particular book or lecture, most students get the data before the typical or traditional teacher finishes the lecture via the Internet. Therefore, it is essential that the basic courses are placed on the university website. The lectures are for interacting with students, exchanging scientific opinions and innovations, and devoting sufficient time to develop applied skills.It is important to develop students' receiving and recapture and interacting skills

Regards

Houda KAWAS

Dear Mohamed Benmerikhi ,

Various factors should be taken into consideration prior to making a decision on the type of pedagogical approach to be applied. For instance,  applying the constructivist approach that has become fashionable and welcome in Western universities   at the Arab university level is problematic for two reasons: First,. It entails creating a collaborative learning environment between the teacher and students where knowledge is co-constructed.This setting would have a drastic influence on the structure of the classroom and the roles of the teacher and students. The massive majority Arab teachers are still deep-rooted in traditional approaches Second, as a result, it is highly expected that they would not develop a positive attitude toward the implementation of the constructivist approach. This is due to the fact that they are strongly biased to the out-dated methodologies in which rote learning  dominates and teachers are the sole knowledge dispenser an d authorities. No room is left for students to apply their individual creativity to express their ideas and thoughts and to evaluate and respond to others'.

However, though the constructivist approach is time consuming and may interfere with the completion of the syllabus within the academic year, it is the remedy to the out-dated approaches that will never work successfully to enhance the academic performance of students  in all disciplines and  allow them to build confident and independent personality to have their say in the society.

Good luck with your work.

Dear Mohamed, 

I agree with Orlando and also like creative solutions and certain amount of spontaneity in teaching or subtle sense of humor with emphasis on absurdities. Furthermore the syllabus is still important, readings and field tasks while teaching qualitative methodology, any courses in disability studies or while leading diploma seminar groups. I usually give much freedom during classes and make FTF or online communication easy and not stressful. These actions are accompanied by certain expectations during final tests or exams. I still enjoy teaching.

One of the non-conventional methods of teaching I have seen work very well with students is that of creating course websites and providing sections for such as: course outline, reading materials and reading guide, as well as space for uploading completed assignment. A combination of this approach and face to face interactive sessions have proved to be highly effective with students.

Look into Universal Design for Learning as a lens for reflection on pedagogical change, particularly with regards to learner diversity.  The great thing about UDL is that it does not impose set strategies on a lecturer but rather invites you to use its three principles as a lens/ means of reflection on your current practices.  CAST has developed a great site for Higher Ed which you may find useful: www.udloncampus.cast.org.  UDL has the added benefit of serving as an convenient umbrella framework to make sense of, implement and combine a number of existing strategies such as active learning, the flipped classroom, inclusive and accessible guidelines,critical pedagogy and dialogical teaching, etc.     

Good afternoon

As a professor, I do some strategies: lower exams. More study cases. More forums. Also, I prefer my students do the class and I also use sharing evaluations. And portfolio is important to see advances. I am talking about significative learning. We should negotiate all issues at the beginning of the course

I have found out that in science courses, the students enjoy and learn a lot if they do their labs in groups of 5 or less (interactive).

Frequent short videos stress the point during theory delivery as well as pictures of the phenomena being explained. Without pictures and videos they learn little and fall asleep a lot!

Dear All

From my teaching experience, the fastest way to achieve a successful college education is to provide the following: respect for students and student learning,, appropriate assessment and feedback,, control and active engagement,, clear goals and intellectual challenge ,( learning from students!!!).

The most effective method of teaching is dialogue and discussion between teacher and students

  The best thing in my own view is to combine student-centeredness with examination-centeredness and societal expectations. Essentially, the type of students, the nature of the course and the facilities available should determine the pedagogies. Variety and freedom of expression promote creativity.

This may not be new but it is certainly highly effective: giving some input, providing reading materials or residing guide and setting up an interactive learning session. It helps students to learn and retain much. In addition, it eliminates the possibility of boredom for students.

This is going to sound just like promotional sales pitch, but I just have had a huge success with it.  I am using it for free, because I own our text content, so please keep that in mind.  But here is my experience:

The commercial product Perusall has surprised me in its effectiveness at delivering the text material in a native "Facebook" sort of environment which students recognize and seem to embrace.  The Artificial Intellegence takes the work out of grading annotations, and the instructor is free to "wander" the discussions, energize the languishing ones, intervene in troubled ones, and generally stir up participation.

It is the most effective reading preparation for this course I have ever assigned.  I cannot say what the process or cost is to use them as the "bookstore" for delivering the content.  I use materials we own, which are thus free.  However I am looking at using Perusall for the digital portion of some commercial texts soon.

It was written by a physicist (who else makes it LaTec compatible?), and I am pleased about how easy it is to use.  I have not attempted it with an LMS yet, as our university doesn't want to support another LTI right now.

  greeting I agree with colleagues in answer

There are a couple new innovations, in particular new web technologies and "going gradeless" that are being used in varied disciplines I've seen lately and am working on incorporating in my graduate courses. For new technologies, pharmacy education has been exploding with new research on the use of podcasting for learning. It has just been shown that podcasting helped students to learn more, plus there is evidence that having students create podcasts for one another can improve learning. (I'm attaching one link here.) For "going gradeless," this is an approach that is becoming popular in new pedagogical approaches to address the over assessment of students. Instead of assigning grades, which has been shown to inhibit learning, the faculty focuses on feedback. No grade is given during the course yet extensive feedback is provided. Thus the student is not looking to see if they received an A, B, C etc but what was it that they could improve. The student is then responsible for reworking their work and providing rationale for what they have done throughout the course. This evidence of their work is then discussed with the faculty who then collaboratively determine a final grade (see the discussion on Medium for more explanation). 

http://pharmacyeducation.fip.org/pharmacyeducation/article/view/525

https://medium.com/teachers-going-gradeless/teachers-going-gradeless-50d621c14cad

While all the above are good methods, I think students should be introduced to more critical thinking, critical writing and critical reflection skills to be able to conceptualize their learning

Joseph's comment is important here.  He points out that the pre-class reading tool I mentioned is not the end-all, which is important to note.  It really only covers the pre-class preparation.

However, when students who come to class have actually engaged the reading for class --a real hurdle in our current YouTube and FaceBook environment--  the wider variety of classroom possibilities, debates, clicker discussions, minute papers, . . .  even static demonstrations and presentations, all get more traction, much quicker, and more easily.

I agree with Joseph, critical thinking is something we must work on. However, what has worked very well for me has been to engage the student at an emotional level. I've accomplish that throught techniques such as experiential learning, flipped classroom and by incorporating their issues and common problems as topics to discuss and solve along the class. What I've seen is that when they feel involved, and feel that actually learning something is helping them to solve something they care about, they really interact and engage in the task effectively, so they gather info, criticize, argue, create and test. 

I personally believe that any teaching approach that can inculcate in students the abilities of critical thinking, self learning, and problem solving are the best. Some teachers would do it through interactive teaching; others would do it through just lecturing. The point is, lecturers need to be well-versed in the kind of approach they are using.

The nature of knowledge creation requires us to think critically about teaching and learning, they are different practices.Its not simply transmission of information, nor Professors talking at great length I hope you mean all university academic staff

in my experience they do not teach but maybe that's a UK thing.

So called classical approaches are rather in vogue as many UK Universities build bigger and bigger amphitheatres for all the egomaniacs to strut their stuff.The key thing for University's is not knowledge based its economics the so called "Bums on seats" is king,commodification or knowledge is euphemistically called modularisation, and we teachers deliver it .I suggest we press the pause button and ask, what are really doing here in our practice as academics, researchers or teachers, and who is it for really?

Academics in universitiy have to teach students in diverse areas of education e.g. Law, Ethics, Engineering and Business Management etc. I think one size fit-all approach in teaching will be oversimplification. For me, project based teaching and learning work best in some fields e.g. Data Analysis but other subjects like Ethics can effectively be taught using stories and case studies as lecturing ethics can hardly sensitize students. The key is to immerse/engage the students in the experience and sensitize them enough to be self driven learners. Some people stressed the need for degree in education. I believe it is more philosophical understanding and clarity of purpose which matter. There are some teachers who craft unique methodologies over the time. 

A former colleague did his dissertation in the field of education once observed that  while there are dozens of different learning styles most teachers limit themselves to using a small handful of teaching methodologies. On another occasion he observed that all too often the choice of classroom teaching methodologies reflects the teacher's preferred mode of learning. These observations have resulted in much reflection on my part.

The best new, relevant and practical research that I have seen in many years has been done by Bruce Hilliard, PhD currently in Murdoch University, Western Australia. His web page: www.seahorses-consulting.com is well woth visiti

I highly recommend that if you really want to improve your skills and knowlege, contact him.

Given the fact that almost any lecture on any subject could be found-wieved on Internet, it is practical to promote pro-active type learning, having students fully engaged and motivated to master the subject. The spoon feeding type of teaching might be not effective in todays global market and competitiveness.

Eduard's comment may not even be quite strong enough. I am not certain the so-called "spoon feeding" type of teaching was ever particularly effective.   It was just much more effective than the popular mode of the time.

When I attended University introductory physics courses were commonly viewed as a way to weed out the unworthy, unwashed masses from technical majors, rather than to teach. 

Thoughtful teachers even then rejected that idea, and sought to help all their students in that unfavorable environment.  One of my peers overheard his professor fume that his text had be rejected from the publisher because it sought to be give students a complete presentation, "removing the need for the professor."   However, against that environment it was hard for better methods to get much hearing or traction.

However, it meant that my junior mechanics professor, who rigorously did every derivation in the book on the board for us, including the steps the book skipped, was really trying to give value beyond what he experienced as a student.

Students will remember little of what we 'teach' them - but they will remember most of what they learn.  We might do well to consider that we 'facilitate learning' rather than 'teach'.

Peter,   your answer resounds with the message of the now aging video I just showed in my physics ed course called, "Minds of Their Own."  This is available at Learner.org to view for free, and I believe it represents a watershed event in stirring up new pedagogical practices in university teaching.

Great strand - Thanks for launching it Mohamed!

For me, webinars have been an effective new pedagogical practice in helping to breath fresh life into my teaching. I go in without a script (although with identified themes to explore, usually closely linked to upcoming assessment items). Student questions drive the sessions. I run the sessions in the evenings from 8.00-9.00 p.m. which suits the study needs of part-time and/or on-line students who are working other jobs during the day. And (unlike the forerunner of the webinar - face-to-face seminars) the sessions are recorded, so can be accessed asynchronously as well as synchronously. Meets many of the requirements of earlier contributors - interactive, responsive to student learning needs, and personalised where necessary. Needs to be part of a 'There is no such thing as a silly question' learning environment.

Another way to upgrade pedagogical practice is through the setting of more innovative and engaging assessment activities (e.g. blog-posting).

Many of the responses in this strand have been insightful. Thanks everyone.

                                                                    Peter

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Dear Peter,

Thank you so much for the pertinent references. 

The most effective lecturers have deep knowledge of the subjects they teach, and

when lecturers' knowledge falls below a certain level it is a significant impediment

to students’ learning. As well as a strong understanding of the material being

taught, lecturers must also understand the ways students think about the content,

be able to evaluate the thinking behind students’ own methods, and identify

students’ common misconceptions.

One of the most important aspects is related to  being  aware of the necessary consistency between: learning outcomes of the subject, evaluation  procedures  and teaching and learning methodologies with the profile  of formation  program.

I you adopt a view to using the evidence based pedagogy from Physics education research and adapt it to your subject area it should work quite well. I've done this a lot and had good success. BUT...you have to accept relinquishing control of your class and getting out of the way of their learning. IE. THOSE WHO DO THE WORK; DO THE LEARNING. IF A LECTURER IS AT THE PODIUM DOING THE WORK...!!

Dear all,

If I am not wrong, all the previous comments aggre on the idea that teaching is or should be a double scientific process. This means that teachers should master their area of specialization. When this is not the case teachers do not know what to teach and, hence, they are no teachers at all. In addition to this, teachers should be well versed in the details of the student's psychological development, namely his/her cognitive development. When this is not the case, the teacher risks teaching material that is much above or below his/her students' cognitive abilities.  When the former is the case, students tend to memorize rather than understand, reinvent and reconstruct what they "learn". In Piagetian terms, no assimilation/accommodation occurs. When the  latter is the case, there is also no significant teachin/learning because students know the point in advance and teachers are jeopardizing their time. Teachers should be mentors and organizers of learning experiences and situations, not simple transmitters of ready made or established truths. When the former is the case, it is likely that students become innovators and creators, When the latter is the case, there is indoctrination and conformist students are likely to appear.

More to the point, the most effective new pedagogical practices in university teaching are far away fom the idea that teachers are "on the stage" only to teach and and that students are there only to learn. This means that teaching/learning should be a bidirectional, not a unidirectional process.

I hope that this constitutes a king of abstract of the content of the previous and wise comments.

Best wishes.

Orlando

Dear Mohamed,

Perhaps there are some guidelines concerning this question in the review: Teacher personality: a review of psychological research and guidelines for a more comprehensive theory in educational psychology

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23265507.2017.1339572

All the best,

Lajos

Extensive use of project activities (individual and group), business games and preparing articles for publication

The most effective pedagogical practices in university teaching are are to carefully design the educational materials before the course starts (including integrated assessment) to keep the students engaged. Part of the engagement is to have the students working with other students and, preferably, working with real world problems outside the university. Another is approach is to allow the student to provide evidence of what they have learned outside a course structure. There are, or course, not new practices, but the availably of digital technology, particularly LMS and e-portfolios, has expanded how they can be applied.

I gave up giving regular lectures at the Australian National University (ANU) in 2009 and changed to on-line delivery of the material. The ANU is now building a flexible learning building with flat floors and movable furniture for blended learning.

My approach is to design a course to be delivered completely on-line to isolated distance students. Where the students can meet face-to-face, activities for this can then be added to supplement the on-line learning. This approach works much better than taking a lecture based course and trying to convert it to an on-line format. For more see my book "Digital Teaching": http://www.tomw.net.au/digital_teaching/

It is important to use a pie assessment of work performance and self-evaluation

The problem lies in the emphasis on the pedagogical stance

HE should be more focused on the Andragogical stance with a smidgeon of pedagogy for the students who find self directed learning difficult

Some students and lecturers are averse to technology enhanced learning, students can be adverse to self directed learning methods and lecturers prefer the sage aspect of teaching

While agreeing that indepth knowledge of the subject being taught is important, the lecturers have also to be aware that the globe is shrinking at the same rate that information is expanding, courtesy of the WWW

My book on technology enhanced teaching and learning available at BDL, highlights all this

http://www.bdlbooks.com/

Engaging in reflective practice is associated with the improvement of the quality of care, stimulating personal and professional growth and closing the gap between theory and practice.

Source - http://www.academicjournals.org/journal/JMCS/article-full-text-pdf/813A65C13885

Dear Mohamed,

I have already given an answer to your question. In this answer I want to say something else.

As I see it, the most effective new pedagogical practices in university teaching should be, say, oriented to raise and solve problems, not oriented to perform  exercises. Let me substantiate my idea through the following exemple. The example is appropriate to secondary-school students, but it could be adapted to university teaching/learning  Consider the case of a pupil, who, when writing, missppels a given word. If s/he is asked to write correctly the missppeled word ten times, for example, then an oriented-exercises pedagogy woud be the case. Needless to say, such a pedagogical practice is relatively futile at its best, and boring at its worst. It generally gives rise to rote learning and conformist students. Consider now the case of a pupil that is asked to explain why a drop of water on a table vanishes some minutes later. Here, we would have an oriented-problems pedagogy. Pedagogical practices of this type are likely to give rise to creative and innovative students and also autonomous people.  A pedagogical practice of this type would be, for example, to ask students to write a written exam and attribute them appropriate exam results. I know of no one that has appealed to this otherwise reflective and demanding task. While doing this, students would have to master of the course at hand, to be capable of raising problems, and putting on another's shoes.

I hope that this helps,

Best regards,

Orlando

It seems to me that it is more appropriate to divide pedagogical practices into good and bad - not old and new. The worst practice is a monotonous reading of text from an outdated textbook. Fast flashing of the slides is not much better. Every theory presented must be documented by appropriate examples - best by solving the problems of "real life". Then it does not really matter what 'learning technology' we use. If we can organize a suitable experiment - it's wonderful!

PS

The presence of a "living teacher" is a gift to inquisitive students. Feedback is as fast as possible. I do not know a better way of teaching than a "living teacher" can provide.

I would say "Formative course assessment surveys!" I have been using it for my Math courses for a long time, and I can't see that it is common among the science instructors. My teaching improved substantially over the period of 10 years.

You can check the details here:

https://sites.google.com/view/aozkanozer/teaching

New pedagogical practices that needs to be incorporated in university teaching are Independent study, Project-based Learning, Collaborative Learning, Experimentation and Reflective Practices.

Task-based learning, in my opinion, is the most effective method of teaching at the university level.