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Innovative and Creative Teaching Methods
Author: Charles Laffiteau
My approach to teaching has been influenced by my experiences as a student, tutor and
lecturer, first at the elementary school and later at undergraduate level of higher education. My
initial teaching experience came about as the result of a request from a 3rd
grade elementary
school teacher who is a close friend. She and her fellow teachers were under increasing pressure
from her school’s administrators and school district officials to ensure that all of their students
were well prepared for the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) test. Both the
school district and the elementary school had teaching and administrative objectives tied to their
goal of being judged as either a ‘recognized’ or ‘exemplary’ school on its NCLB report card.
But this elementary school also had a student enrollment which included a large number
of students from low income Hispanic and African-American families. Many of them came from
one parent households where the parent worked and didn’t have time to provide help to their
children outside the classroom. As a result she had 6 students in her class of 24 3rd
grade students
who had failed to grasp even the basic adding and subtraction math skills that would be required
at a minimum to pass their initial 3rd
grade TAKS test. Her dilemma as a teacher was that she had
to move on with the math lessons for her other students and didn’t have time to tutor the students
who needed additional time spent on learning how to add and subtract.
I agreed to help by visiting the school twice a week to spend an hour and a half each day
with these 6 students working with them on learning how to add and subtract. But instead of
using the books and flash cards provided by the school to assist in this learning exercise, I
decided to spend some time talking with them first to determine why they were not progressing
in math like their classmates. What I discovered was that none of them found math interesting
and that most of them also didn’t see the need to learn math as compared to learning how to read
and write. So I decided to try an unconventional teaching and reward method to see if I could
both help them understand why math skills were just as important as reading skills and motivate
them to want to learn how to add and subtract.
Instead of using flash cards and math worksheets, I opened a small store in a separate
room where I tutored them and stocked it with a variety of healthy snacks such as fruit chews,
granola bars, nuts and raisins. I then put price stickers on each item with prices ranging from .27
to .69 and gave each of the student’s one dollar that they could use to buy snacks with. To
motivate them to learn how to add I told them that one dollar was enough to buy at least two and
as many as three snacks depending on the cost of the snack. But to motivate them to learn how to
subtract I also told them that they had to correctly calculate the change they were due if they
wanted to be able to keep the snack.
To help them understand why math was important I then went on to explain that in real
life you needed to know how to add up the cost of what you were buying in order to determine if
you had enough money to pay for it. I also pointed out that even honest store clerks sometimes
make mistakes and don’t give their customers the correct change back. So to make my store
realistic they would also need to know how to subtract the cost of what they were buying with
their dollar from a dollar to make sure I gave them the correct change.
The results of my unconventional and creative teaching methods amazed both their
teacher and the students themselves. After 10 weeks of my in class store every student was able
to add and subtract in both whole numbers and with decimals. I then opened the store and gave
all of their other 18 classmates a dollar so they could also purchase snacks and practice their
math skills. I was pleased to hear that all of them also subsequently passed the math portion of
their 1st
TAKS test. The cost of the snacks I used was only $17.60 and the school was more than
happy to reimburse me for this because of the excellent results that were achieved.
But I also know that just because my snack incentives helped these under achieving
students acquire the math skills they needed doesn’t necessarily mean similar rewards or
financial incentives will work with all students and in all learning situations. A case in point is a
recently published study that examined a series of school-based field experiments in over 200
urban schools across three cities that were designed to better understand the impact of financial
incentives on student achievement. In Dallas, students were paid to read books, while in New
York, students were rewarded for performance on interim assessments and in Chicago, students
were paid for classroom grades. The author says that based on his statistical analysis of the
results there was no evidence that these financial incentives worked. He also observed that one
reason for this might be many students’ belief that test results were more a result of luck than
inputs like reading. He therefore concluded that “incentives based on these tests do not truly
provide incentives to invest in inputs to the educational production function because students
believe there is too much luck involved.” (Fryer 2011, 1794)
At the state level, states also control their public universities and as a consequence, use
this control to impose mandates such as requirements that force their universities to admit
students residing in those states who obtain certain levels of academic achievement (i.e. test
scores or grade point averages) in those states public education secondary schools.
Unfortunately, neither the state nor the federal government use their higher education policies to
encourage public universities to experiment with unconventional or creative teaching methods
that will help students understand the importance of what they are learning, motivate
undergraduate students to want to learn and keep students interested in what they are learning.
My focus on the student learner has been a very important element both in the planning
and development of my courses as well as in my choice of teaching methodologies. At the very
outset, I tried to imagine what it would be like to be a student learner in one of my courses prior
to the planning and development of my course and its content. I tried to put myself in my
student’s shoes by reflecting on my own undergraduate student classroom experiences in an
American university and then placing them within the context of the Irish university system
setting, based on what I have learned about the differences in these two university systems. I then
tried to apply what I have learned from my readings on the topics about teaching methods as well
as what I have learned from my previous experiences as a lecturer, tutor and student, to the
courses I am currently teaching in a number of ways that I believed would be both innovative
and effective.
I faced a number of challenges in developing and then teaching my course for second
year undergraduates on Contemporary US Business and Society course as well as my Global
Systems and Communication course. Some of these challenges were the same as those
confronting teachers at other universities around the world such as ensuring that the course
content adequately addressed the expected learning outcomes and keeping the majority of their
students engaged and interested in the course lectures. Based on my own classroom experiences
in both large lectures (100+ students) as well as smaller classes of 15-30 students, I tried to recall
what style of teaching seemed to resonate most with me and my fellow classmates.
Keeping my own undergraduate learning experience in mind, I thus went about designing
the Contemporary US Business and Society course that I taught from 2009 through 2011at
Dublin City University. When the head of the school asked me if I would agree to teach this
undergraduate course, I think he sensed my hesitation to do so because he then told me he would
also give me a ‘blank canvass’ as regards how I designed and taught the course. Although he
may have done this out of desperation, I sensed that his offer of a ‘blank canvass’ was primarily
motivated by his confidence in my abilities as a lecturer. So after I agreed to teach the course I
then reviewed the previous teacher’s course description and learning outcomes as well as the
syllabi, lecture slides and reading lists used by other lecturers for the last seven years.
At first I was very tempted to take this previous work and use it because it would have
minimized the amount of time I would have to spend outside of the classroom developing the
course. But being given a ‘blank canvass’ was also a great opportunity for me as a lecturer and I
felt I had a responsibility to both my supervisor and my students to use my knowledge of
American business and society to maximize the course and my students' learning potential.
I knew developing a new version of the course I teach rather than using the course lecture
notes and reading lists of previous lecturers would be time consuming because I would have to
do quite a few hours of research in order to find appropriate readings that would help me develop
and provide support for the concepts and ideas I would be lecturing about. But I justified this
investment of my time based on my belief that; 1) If the course was well received I would likely
be asked to teach it again the following year and would only need to spend a fraction of the
amount of time I spent initially to update it in later years. 2) The ‘blank canvass’ I had been
given was a great opportunity and anything worth doing is worth doing to the best of one’s
ability. 3) “All the world’s a stage”, but this is particularly true of the classroom where the
success of the lecturer depends on their ability to command and keep the attention of their
students. Therefore it is imperative that the lecturer be both very comfortable and very familiar
with the content they are delivering. 4) I wanted to develop a course that I could claim was the
product of my own work and one that I would be proud of.
But before I undertook any research I began by first trying to consider and imagine what
it would be like to be an undergraduate student in my course. To accomplish this, I thought about
my own undergraduate experiences as well as some of what I observed about my fellow students.
Although my fellow students came from a wide variety of socio-economic backgrounds, and
represented an equally wide variety of personality types, I generally thought of them as falling
into one of three categories; 1) serious and fully engaged 2) committed but only mildly interested
and 3) would prefer to be somewhere other than in this classroom. Since the majority of my
classmates (including myself in some classes) fell into the second category, I thought I should
focus the development of my course on this group. I figured that since the interests of those in
the first category would be served regardless, if I could get the second category more fully
engaged, I might also pull in some of those in the third category as well. As for the rest of the
‘don’t want to go to class types’, I decided there were other steps I could take that would force
them to engage at least at a minimal level, if they wanted to pass the course.
The second of my initial stages of thinking was to put my own American undergraduate
student experiences within the context of what I knew about Irish undergraduate students. One of
the biggest differences between the Irish and the American undergraduate university systems is
the fact that in Ireland (and the UK) the emphasis is placed on your final year BA thesis, rather
than on the entire body of a student’s undergraduate course work. In the United States and the
vast majority of other nations’ higher education systems, a final year thesis is only undertaken by
undergraduates who have obtained the best marks in their undergraduate courses and wish to
graduate with Latin honours. But regardless of whether or not these students write a final paper,
their cumulative mark upon graduation is based on their individual course grades, not their final
thesis. While some Irish undergraduate students also work hard to achieve high marks in their
individual courses, a substantial number do not because their primary concern is the mark they
receive for their final year BA thesis. As a consequence of this feature of the Irish university
system, and the fact that most of the cost of their education is funded by the government while
American students or their parents must pay for higher education, many Irish students are less
motivated to get high marks in their courses than American undergraduates.
Developing a course within the context of an Irish rather than an American university
system also presented other challenges. Whereas class attendance is compulsory if a student
wants to pass most undergraduate courses in the United States, such is not the case in the Irish
university system. Furthermore, in addition to class attendance being a significant component of
a student’s final grade in American undergraduate courses, there are normally a number of other
components which determine a student’s final course mark. At a minimum, students must also
take a mid-term and final exam in addition to submitting different types of group or individual
homework assignments, as well as class presentations, and individual essays or papers. However
in the Irish system, many students’ final course marks are determined on the basis of a single
final exam and or class paper, and in the vast majority of the other classes, they only have to
submit one essay plus sit a final exam or are required to submit two (or at most three) class
papers. Given the fact that most Irish university lecturers also post their lecture notes or slides
on-line, it isn’t surprising that many Irish undergraduate students also choose to skip attending
classes. So I knew that simply motivating most of my students to actually attend my lectures
would be an additional challenge I would face as a teacher.
So my first challenge was to try and develop a course that would get the majority of my
less motivated or less interested students engaged in the process of learning about contemporary
US business and society. Another challenge was the differences in students learning styles as
well as the practical limit to how much content I could deliver in a single 2 hour lecture and
expect them to absorb each week. A further limitation was that due to the large size of my class,
it would be virtually impossible to engage with my students very much on a one to one basis,
like a teacher can with a smaller class of 20 to 40 students. I then decided the virtual learning
environment provided by the university’s moodle learning system would be an excellent tool to
provide all of my students’ ready access to certain elements of the course content.
So I reflected on some of the e-learning course elements I had used most often as an on-
line student at the University of Texas and incorporated these into my course’s moodle page. So
instead of handing out a class syllabus and spending lecture time reviewing it, I instructed my
students that the class syllabus could only be accessed by going to the course moodle page. On
the moodle page I also provided an icon to submit their class papers to turnitin.com, a guide for
writing a good essay paper, a class paper assignment submission form, links to US news media
outlets, a comprehensive list of additional readings they could use for their class papers and a
weekly summary of the topics covered in my lecture as well as the specific associated readings
for that week’s lecture.
Since I didn’t think it was reasonable for any teacher to expect to hold a large class’s
attention for more than an hour, I decided to develop a series of 10 lectures that I could
comfortably deliver in an hour, along with additional information in an accompanying
PowerPoint slide presentation. Since I had always liked lectures where the professors had used
dramatic films to bring the subject they were lecturing about to life, I also did research on films
that would add some colour and texture, as well as a sense of emotional feeling to my topic for
each lecture. I thought that the use of pertinent films would not only help them understand what I
was discussing, and keep the students more engaged in the topic of that week’s lecture, but
would also encourage them to attend class every week. But to encourage those students who
don’t want to attend class, regardless of how interesting their classmates find it, I also decided to
make it a point to tell the class repeatedly that unlike most of their other lecturers; I would not
post my lecture slides on-line or email copies to them. Since at least 3 of the 5 short essay
questions on their in-class midterm and end of term tests required answers that were based on the
ideas and concepts I discussed in my class lectures, I told them that if they missed class, then
they would have to make an appointment to view the lecture slides in my office and ask me any
questions they might have about what I discussed in lecture, or alternatively, obtain lecture notes
from one of their fellow students.
In addition to the steps I took to get and keep my fairly large class of students engaged
and interested in the course’s content, I also thought it was important that they experience what it
is like to be an undergraduate student at an American university. To that end I informed them
that their final marks in the course would be based on continuous assessment (their combined
marks for a midterm and end of term test I would give in the second half of class in week 5 and
week 11, as well as a final class paper due at the end of week 12 on a topic of their choosing that
had previously been discussed in my class lectures). In an effort to acquaint them with the
outside readings they would need to do in order to write a good final class paper (as well as their
final year BA thesis), I also provided them with links to at least one or two academic journals,
archival papers or think tank/foundation articles as their readings each week, which in turn
complimented the lecture for that week. Furthermore, I also told them that although I would not
discuss these readings in class, they should expect that at least 2 or more of the 5 short essay
questions, which comprised their midterm and end of term tests, would be based on what the
authors discussed in those weekly readings. Finally I used moodle’s “latest news” topic tool to
send all students a weekly email with a link to the reading for the upcoming week’s reading as
well as my office hour’s availability and information about the in class midterm and end of term
make up tests.
Regardless of the size of the class, the enthusiasm of the lecturer for the material they
were delivering was the key to keeping me interested and engaged in learning. Studies of student
centred learning point out that the; “Principal factors that were seen to facilitate learning
included dynamic or inspirational lecturers whose ‘enthusiasm spills over’ (male, postgraduate,
mature) and peer support (such as formal or informal tutor groups).” (Lea, et al, 2001: 328)
However, in large lectures it is difficult for lecturers, no matter how enthusiastic they are about
their subject matter, to engage directly with the students so it is also important to speak
forcefully, vary your tone of voice and move around rather than stand in one place as you speak.
As a former multinational sales and marketing executive who had also been involved in local,
state and national politics for years as well as having successfully run for an elected office as a
labour union president, I was confident I had the public speaking skills I needed to grab and keep
students in a large lecture’s attention for at least an hour or more.
But lecturing to a large class of students for two hours is not the same type of teaching
experience as interacting with 10-20 students in an hour long class. However, I had also been the
leader of a ten person national account team for a number of years, which required a different set
of people skills. In this situation I found that I had to be less dramatic and act more like a mentor
by offering lots of encouragement to my subordinates, while also remaining flexible and fair-
minded in my one on one and group interactions with them. I felt that this skill set would
therefore be much more effective than my public speaking skills in terms of my one on one and
group interactions with the 10-20 students enrolled in my much smaller Global Systems classes.
My business colleagues had often noted that my flexibility and liberal attitudes towards my
subordinates and co-workers stood in marked contrast to those of other managers. In fact studies
about the personality traits of the most effective teachers have shown that “faculty who are
liberal, flexible, and high in leadership ability would be expected to excel in a wide range of
different types of courses. It is noteworthy that the personality traits of leadership and flexibility
(liberalism) were found to be associated with generalized or wide-ranging teaching effectiveness
in the present study.” (Murray et al, 1990: 259)
Keeping the preceding thoughts in mind, I then developed a course syllabus which
included the following course overview and learning outcomes’ sections:
Overview: In the United States of America business and civil society as a whole operate
within a legal and regulatory framework delineated by local, state and federal governments. It is,
therefore, in the interest of businesses as well as consumer and non-profit special interests groups
in America to try to influence government decision-making. This course explores the
relationship between business or civil society groups and government politics or policies in the
U.S. Key themes include the impact of mass communication media on political institutions and
American culture, the role of special interest groups and voters in government decision-making
and the successes and failures of various state and federal laws and regulations in the U.S.
including those dealing with immigration, healthcare, electoral politics, social welfare, civil and
criminal justice, education, tax revenue sources, environmental and business regulation as well
as the root causes of the recent financial crisis.
Learning outcomes: Participants will gain an understanding of how mass
communication media, business and politics are intertwined in America and consequently how
they simultaneously influence each other and various aspects of American culture. In addition to
developing a fuller understanding of the political and societal context from within which U.S.
business and culture exists, students will finish the course able to think critically about the origin,
nature and consequences of the distinctive aspects of American culture and how they in turn
influence consumer, business and government relations.
Because one of the primary learning outcome of my Contemporary US Business and
Society course is for Irish and foreign students to gain an understanding of the similarities and
the differences between American business and society and the Irish and European business and
society they are more familiar with, I knew that it also was going to be important to discuss the
many cultural differences that also exist. I could give them readings and also discuss these
differences in lectures, but I felt that many of these students would still fail to grasp a real
understanding of what makes American business and society different unless they were able to
really connect with the subject. As Joseph Champoux notes, “Some evidence suggests that
people learn abstract, new and novel concepts more easily when presented in both verbal and
visual form. (Salomon 1970, 1979) Other empirical research shows that visual media make
concepts more accessible to a person than text media and help with later recall. (Cowen 1984)
The conclusion from brain and media and cognition research points compellingly to using
multimedia in a teaching program.” (Champoux, 1999: 209)
But finding American films that dealt with the some of the topics I was covering in my
lectures and with my assigned readings was the easy part of my research. Deciding which films
or hour long portions of films to show the class was a much more important as well as time
consuming task. This was important because “Whether it examines differences between cultures
or variations within a culture, the chosen film should provide several clear examples of
contrasting values and the behavioral manifestations that result. These multiple cultures are
important in providing students with easy-to-identify contrasts among the behaviors of different
individuals and to illustrate how these differences in cultural values can lead to ambiguous, and
sometimes paradoxical, behavior.” (Mallinger & Rossy, 2003: 616)
But the Irish university system also posed some rather unique challenges due to the
emphasis placed on the mark for a student’s final year thesis, as opposed to the overall mark a
student would receive based on the body of their undergraduate coursework. Virtually all
undergraduate courses in the United States are 50-75 minutes long which presents challenges to
lecturers who have very large classes. “Given that students have an attention span of around 15
to 20 minutes and that university classes are scheduled for around 50 or 75minutes, instructors
must do something to control their students’ attention. We recommend building a “change-up”
into your class to restart the attention clock.” (Middendorf & Kalish 1996: 2) Since most Irish
lectures are more than twice as long as those in American universities at 120 minutes, I decided
to break my lecture at about the 20 minute and 40 minute points to ask one or two students a
question and regain the rest of the class’s attention and then at the one hour mark I conclude with
the lecture and begin the film. But I also started some classes with the film and concluded with
the lecture to avoid making the lectures predictable.
But whether it was a two hour lecture or a one hour tutorial for a much smaller class, I
also thought it was important to keep the class and or the tasks varied. So with respect to my
lecture for 145 second year undergraduates, instead of a film following my lecture, in the 6th
and
12th
weeks of class I gave them a five question test on the subject matter and readings for the
previous 5 weeks of class, which required them to write 1-2 paragraph answers. Since the results
of these tests carried equal weight with their marks for their final class essays, this also
encouraged students to come to class and do the readings. As Lea et al have noted; “Hall and
Saunders (1997) explored the use of a more student-centred approach within a first-year
information technology course. Student presentations, quizzes and continuous assessment were
used rather than the more conventional lecture and final examination. Although the transition to
this approach was not without problems (such as increased workload for staff and a shortage of
resources), the course was seen to increase student participation, motivation and grades. Some
94% of the students taking the course attested that they would recommend it, rather than a
conventional course, to others.” (Lea, et al, 2001: 323) Although this approach did result in more
work for me in terms of deciphering their handwriting and marking almost 300 papers plus 145
final class essay papers, I also believe my students will be and have been more likely to
recommend it as well.
With my one hour Global Systems and Communication classes I took a different
approach. In these much smaller classes, I adopted a more interactive approach using a modified
Kolb cycle to keep my students active engaged. (Cowan, 1998: 33-45) Since I knew it was
pointless to give them readings and or homework because they wouldn’t do either, I put the
emphasis on working through various global communication issues in class. I randomly assigned
them to three different groups and discussed some of the different sides to a pertinent Global
Systems course issue such as developing countries pursuit of IMF bank loans. Then I had one
group take a position in favor of one course of action while a second group took an opposing
position. The third group would then be responsible for negotiating a middle ground position that
synthesized the other two opposing viewpoints. I let the groups discuss their positions among
themselves while I went around the room and visited with them to offer encouragement and
suggestions on specific items they were considering using.
When we met the following week I took all 3 groups to the library where I showed them
how to do research in support of their various positions and pointed out how these research
methods could also help them write better class papers. The next class was devoted to using the
research gathered in previous classes to write up notes that they could use in an in-class debate.
The class after that was devoted to presentation skills and a film showing funny mistakes made
by professional TV presenters. I did this because I didn’t want my students focused on
comparing themselves with each other but rather on self-improvement. Carole Ames has written;
“When students are focused on self improvement, rather than on comparison with another, they
exhibit better recall of material.” (Ames, 1992: 265) Then we had a class where we conducted a
debate with each member of each group required to present at least one part of the respective
debate positions to the rest of the class.
For the 2nd
half of the term I then switched up the groups, seemingly at random, but
actually based on my assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of each student. I structured
the new groups in such a way as to match students who were strong in certain areas, such as
public speaking, with students who were weak in the same areas. As Chickering and Gamson
have noted “Working with others often increases involvement in learning. Sharing one’s own
ideas and responding to other’s reactions sharpens thinking and deepens understanding.”
(Chickering & Gamson, 1991: 65) Then during the remaining classes of the term we repeated the
group work we had done in previous classes, this time dealing with a completely different topic
for the next and last debate.
The other steps I took that were new for my large class of undergraduate students
involved what I call ‘eliminating the temptation to cheat’ on their in class tests. Bunn et al
conducted a university survey and concluded; “The results of the survey indicate that a
surprisingly large percentage of students admit to some form of cheating during college.” (Bunn
et al, 1992: 197) Since the students in my large lecture have to sit in very close quarters I devised
three different sets of test questions (that were roughly comparable in terms of their degree of
difficulty) and distributed the tests in such a way that if a student looked on a classmate’s paper
to the right or left of them, they would see that those students had a different question to write a
brief essay answer for. Given the fact that a few students answered questions from another
version of the test correctly but their own test question incorrectly, it was apparent that some
students were still cheating. However they did not receive any benefit from doing so.
Although I believe that I still have much to learn as regards becoming an even more
innovative and effective university lecturer, I also believe that I have applied much of what I
have already learned quite effectively as a university teacher. Researchers have found that
“Feedback is more effective when information is gathered from a number of sources. Feedback
from student ratings has been found to be valid and reliable but only marginally helpful in
improving instruction when used alone. Feedback is more effective when information is gathered
from oneself as well as from others, because feedback from the self is more valued, better
recalled, and more credible than feedback from other sources” (Brinko, 1993: 576-577)
My students have evaluated me as a teacher, and their assessments of my innovative and
creative approach to teaching as well as my effectiveness as a teacher mirror my own
assessment. My students considered my course to be the most interesting of all of their
undergraduate courses and they also told me it was the course they most looked forward to
attending each week. Those results, coupled with the fact that 35-45 students added my course
each semester but not a single student ever dropped it, therefore attest to my effectiveness as an
innovative and creative university lecturer.
References
Ames, Carole. “Classrooms: Goals, Structures and Student Motivations” Journal of Educational
Psychology (Vol. 84 No.3 1992): 261-271
Brinko, K. “The practice of giving feedback to improve teaching”. Journal of Higher Education,
(Vol. 64 No. 5, 1993): 574–93
Bunn, Douglas N. Steven B. Caudill, and Daniel M. Gropper “Crime in the Classroom: An
Economic Analysis of Undergraduate Student Cheating Behavior” The Journal of
Economic Education, (Vol. 23, No. 3 Summer, 1992): 197-207
Champoux, Joseph E. “Film as a Teaching Resource” Journal of Management Inquiry (Vol. 8
No. 2 June 1999): 206-217
Chickering, Arthur W. and Zelda F. Gamson “Appendix A: Seven principles for good practice in
undergraduate education” New Directions for Teaching and Learning (Vol. 1991, Issue
47, Fall 1991): 63–69
Cowan, John. On Becoming an Innovative University Teacher: Reflection in Action Society for
Research into Higher Education (London: Open University Press 1998)
Fryer, Roland G. “Financial Incentives and Student Achievement: Evidence from Randomized
Trials” The Quarterly Journal of Economics (Vol. 126 No. 4, 2011): 1755-1798
Hall, J. and P. Saunders. “Adopting a student-cantered approach to management of learning,” in:
C. Bell, M. Bowden & A. Trott (Eds) Implementing Flexible Learning (London: Kogan
Page 1997).
Knaus, Christopher. Still Segregated Still Unequal: Analyzing the Impact of No Child Left
Behind on African American Students. (University of California, Berkley: National Urban
League 2007)
Lea, S. J., D. Stephenson and J. Troy. “Higher education students’ attitudes to student centered
learning: Beyond ‘educational bulimia’. Studies in Higher Education, (Vol. 28 No. 3,
2003): 321–34.
Mallinger, Mark and Gerard Rossy “Film as a Lens for Teaching Culture: Balancing Concepts,
Ambiguity, and Paradox” Journal of Management Education (Vol. 27 No. 5 October
2003): 608-624
Middendorf, Joan and Alan Kalish. “The “Change-Up” in Lectures” The National Teaching &
Learning Forum (Vol. 5, No. 2 1996): 1-7
Murray, Harry G., J. Philippe Rushton, and Sampo V. Paunonen “Teacher Personality Traits and
Student Instructional Ratings in Six Types of University Courses Journal of Educational
Psychology (Vol. 82 No.2 1990): 250-261
Robinson, Ken. Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative. (West Sussex, UK: Capstone
Publishing Ltd. 2011)

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Charles Laffiteau innovative and creative teaching methods

  • 1. Innovative and Creative Teaching Methods Author: Charles Laffiteau My approach to teaching has been influenced by my experiences as a student, tutor and lecturer, first at the elementary school and later at undergraduate level of higher education. My initial teaching experience came about as the result of a request from a 3rd grade elementary school teacher who is a close friend. She and her fellow teachers were under increasing pressure from her school’s administrators and school district officials to ensure that all of their students were well prepared for the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) test. Both the school district and the elementary school had teaching and administrative objectives tied to their goal of being judged as either a ‘recognized’ or ‘exemplary’ school on its NCLB report card. But this elementary school also had a student enrollment which included a large number of students from low income Hispanic and African-American families. Many of them came from one parent households where the parent worked and didn’t have time to provide help to their children outside the classroom. As a result she had 6 students in her class of 24 3rd grade students who had failed to grasp even the basic adding and subtraction math skills that would be required at a minimum to pass their initial 3rd grade TAKS test. Her dilemma as a teacher was that she had to move on with the math lessons for her other students and didn’t have time to tutor the students who needed additional time spent on learning how to add and subtract. I agreed to help by visiting the school twice a week to spend an hour and a half each day with these 6 students working with them on learning how to add and subtract. But instead of using the books and flash cards provided by the school to assist in this learning exercise, I decided to spend some time talking with them first to determine why they were not progressing in math like their classmates. What I discovered was that none of them found math interesting
  • 2. and that most of them also didn’t see the need to learn math as compared to learning how to read and write. So I decided to try an unconventional teaching and reward method to see if I could both help them understand why math skills were just as important as reading skills and motivate them to want to learn how to add and subtract. Instead of using flash cards and math worksheets, I opened a small store in a separate room where I tutored them and stocked it with a variety of healthy snacks such as fruit chews, granola bars, nuts and raisins. I then put price stickers on each item with prices ranging from .27 to .69 and gave each of the student’s one dollar that they could use to buy snacks with. To motivate them to learn how to add I told them that one dollar was enough to buy at least two and as many as three snacks depending on the cost of the snack. But to motivate them to learn how to subtract I also told them that they had to correctly calculate the change they were due if they wanted to be able to keep the snack. To help them understand why math was important I then went on to explain that in real life you needed to know how to add up the cost of what you were buying in order to determine if you had enough money to pay for it. I also pointed out that even honest store clerks sometimes make mistakes and don’t give their customers the correct change back. So to make my store realistic they would also need to know how to subtract the cost of what they were buying with their dollar from a dollar to make sure I gave them the correct change. The results of my unconventional and creative teaching methods amazed both their teacher and the students themselves. After 10 weeks of my in class store every student was able to add and subtract in both whole numbers and with decimals. I then opened the store and gave all of their other 18 classmates a dollar so they could also purchase snacks and practice their math skills. I was pleased to hear that all of them also subsequently passed the math portion of
  • 3. their 1st TAKS test. The cost of the snacks I used was only $17.60 and the school was more than happy to reimburse me for this because of the excellent results that were achieved. But I also know that just because my snack incentives helped these under achieving students acquire the math skills they needed doesn’t necessarily mean similar rewards or financial incentives will work with all students and in all learning situations. A case in point is a recently published study that examined a series of school-based field experiments in over 200 urban schools across three cities that were designed to better understand the impact of financial incentives on student achievement. In Dallas, students were paid to read books, while in New York, students were rewarded for performance on interim assessments and in Chicago, students were paid for classroom grades. The author says that based on his statistical analysis of the results there was no evidence that these financial incentives worked. He also observed that one reason for this might be many students’ belief that test results were more a result of luck than inputs like reading. He therefore concluded that “incentives based on these tests do not truly provide incentives to invest in inputs to the educational production function because students believe there is too much luck involved.” (Fryer 2011, 1794) At the state level, states also control their public universities and as a consequence, use this control to impose mandates such as requirements that force their universities to admit students residing in those states who obtain certain levels of academic achievement (i.e. test scores or grade point averages) in those states public education secondary schools. Unfortunately, neither the state nor the federal government use their higher education policies to encourage public universities to experiment with unconventional or creative teaching methods that will help students understand the importance of what they are learning, motivate undergraduate students to want to learn and keep students interested in what they are learning.
  • 4. My focus on the student learner has been a very important element both in the planning and development of my courses as well as in my choice of teaching methodologies. At the very outset, I tried to imagine what it would be like to be a student learner in one of my courses prior to the planning and development of my course and its content. I tried to put myself in my student’s shoes by reflecting on my own undergraduate student classroom experiences in an American university and then placing them within the context of the Irish university system setting, based on what I have learned about the differences in these two university systems. I then tried to apply what I have learned from my readings on the topics about teaching methods as well as what I have learned from my previous experiences as a lecturer, tutor and student, to the courses I am currently teaching in a number of ways that I believed would be both innovative and effective. I faced a number of challenges in developing and then teaching my course for second year undergraduates on Contemporary US Business and Society course as well as my Global Systems and Communication course. Some of these challenges were the same as those confronting teachers at other universities around the world such as ensuring that the course content adequately addressed the expected learning outcomes and keeping the majority of their students engaged and interested in the course lectures. Based on my own classroom experiences in both large lectures (100+ students) as well as smaller classes of 15-30 students, I tried to recall what style of teaching seemed to resonate most with me and my fellow classmates. Keeping my own undergraduate learning experience in mind, I thus went about designing the Contemporary US Business and Society course that I taught from 2009 through 2011at Dublin City University. When the head of the school asked me if I would agree to teach this undergraduate course, I think he sensed my hesitation to do so because he then told me he would
  • 5. also give me a ‘blank canvass’ as regards how I designed and taught the course. Although he may have done this out of desperation, I sensed that his offer of a ‘blank canvass’ was primarily motivated by his confidence in my abilities as a lecturer. So after I agreed to teach the course I then reviewed the previous teacher’s course description and learning outcomes as well as the syllabi, lecture slides and reading lists used by other lecturers for the last seven years. At first I was very tempted to take this previous work and use it because it would have minimized the amount of time I would have to spend outside of the classroom developing the course. But being given a ‘blank canvass’ was also a great opportunity for me as a lecturer and I felt I had a responsibility to both my supervisor and my students to use my knowledge of American business and society to maximize the course and my students' learning potential. I knew developing a new version of the course I teach rather than using the course lecture notes and reading lists of previous lecturers would be time consuming because I would have to do quite a few hours of research in order to find appropriate readings that would help me develop and provide support for the concepts and ideas I would be lecturing about. But I justified this investment of my time based on my belief that; 1) If the course was well received I would likely be asked to teach it again the following year and would only need to spend a fraction of the amount of time I spent initially to update it in later years. 2) The ‘blank canvass’ I had been given was a great opportunity and anything worth doing is worth doing to the best of one’s ability. 3) “All the world’s a stage”, but this is particularly true of the classroom where the success of the lecturer depends on their ability to command and keep the attention of their students. Therefore it is imperative that the lecturer be both very comfortable and very familiar with the content they are delivering. 4) I wanted to develop a course that I could claim was the product of my own work and one that I would be proud of.
  • 6. But before I undertook any research I began by first trying to consider and imagine what it would be like to be an undergraduate student in my course. To accomplish this, I thought about my own undergraduate experiences as well as some of what I observed about my fellow students. Although my fellow students came from a wide variety of socio-economic backgrounds, and represented an equally wide variety of personality types, I generally thought of them as falling into one of three categories; 1) serious and fully engaged 2) committed but only mildly interested and 3) would prefer to be somewhere other than in this classroom. Since the majority of my classmates (including myself in some classes) fell into the second category, I thought I should focus the development of my course on this group. I figured that since the interests of those in the first category would be served regardless, if I could get the second category more fully engaged, I might also pull in some of those in the third category as well. As for the rest of the ‘don’t want to go to class types’, I decided there were other steps I could take that would force them to engage at least at a minimal level, if they wanted to pass the course. The second of my initial stages of thinking was to put my own American undergraduate student experiences within the context of what I knew about Irish undergraduate students. One of the biggest differences between the Irish and the American undergraduate university systems is the fact that in Ireland (and the UK) the emphasis is placed on your final year BA thesis, rather than on the entire body of a student’s undergraduate course work. In the United States and the vast majority of other nations’ higher education systems, a final year thesis is only undertaken by undergraduates who have obtained the best marks in their undergraduate courses and wish to graduate with Latin honours. But regardless of whether or not these students write a final paper, their cumulative mark upon graduation is based on their individual course grades, not their final thesis. While some Irish undergraduate students also work hard to achieve high marks in their
  • 7. individual courses, a substantial number do not because their primary concern is the mark they receive for their final year BA thesis. As a consequence of this feature of the Irish university system, and the fact that most of the cost of their education is funded by the government while American students or their parents must pay for higher education, many Irish students are less motivated to get high marks in their courses than American undergraduates. Developing a course within the context of an Irish rather than an American university system also presented other challenges. Whereas class attendance is compulsory if a student wants to pass most undergraduate courses in the United States, such is not the case in the Irish university system. Furthermore, in addition to class attendance being a significant component of a student’s final grade in American undergraduate courses, there are normally a number of other components which determine a student’s final course mark. At a minimum, students must also take a mid-term and final exam in addition to submitting different types of group or individual homework assignments, as well as class presentations, and individual essays or papers. However in the Irish system, many students’ final course marks are determined on the basis of a single final exam and or class paper, and in the vast majority of the other classes, they only have to submit one essay plus sit a final exam or are required to submit two (or at most three) class papers. Given the fact that most Irish university lecturers also post their lecture notes or slides on-line, it isn’t surprising that many Irish undergraduate students also choose to skip attending classes. So I knew that simply motivating most of my students to actually attend my lectures would be an additional challenge I would face as a teacher. So my first challenge was to try and develop a course that would get the majority of my less motivated or less interested students engaged in the process of learning about contemporary US business and society. Another challenge was the differences in students learning styles as
  • 8. well as the practical limit to how much content I could deliver in a single 2 hour lecture and expect them to absorb each week. A further limitation was that due to the large size of my class, it would be virtually impossible to engage with my students very much on a one to one basis, like a teacher can with a smaller class of 20 to 40 students. I then decided the virtual learning environment provided by the university’s moodle learning system would be an excellent tool to provide all of my students’ ready access to certain elements of the course content. So I reflected on some of the e-learning course elements I had used most often as an on- line student at the University of Texas and incorporated these into my course’s moodle page. So instead of handing out a class syllabus and spending lecture time reviewing it, I instructed my students that the class syllabus could only be accessed by going to the course moodle page. On the moodle page I also provided an icon to submit their class papers to turnitin.com, a guide for writing a good essay paper, a class paper assignment submission form, links to US news media outlets, a comprehensive list of additional readings they could use for their class papers and a weekly summary of the topics covered in my lecture as well as the specific associated readings for that week’s lecture. Since I didn’t think it was reasonable for any teacher to expect to hold a large class’s attention for more than an hour, I decided to develop a series of 10 lectures that I could comfortably deliver in an hour, along with additional information in an accompanying PowerPoint slide presentation. Since I had always liked lectures where the professors had used dramatic films to bring the subject they were lecturing about to life, I also did research on films that would add some colour and texture, as well as a sense of emotional feeling to my topic for each lecture. I thought that the use of pertinent films would not only help them understand what I was discussing, and keep the students more engaged in the topic of that week’s lecture, but
  • 9. would also encourage them to attend class every week. But to encourage those students who don’t want to attend class, regardless of how interesting their classmates find it, I also decided to make it a point to tell the class repeatedly that unlike most of their other lecturers; I would not post my lecture slides on-line or email copies to them. Since at least 3 of the 5 short essay questions on their in-class midterm and end of term tests required answers that were based on the ideas and concepts I discussed in my class lectures, I told them that if they missed class, then they would have to make an appointment to view the lecture slides in my office and ask me any questions they might have about what I discussed in lecture, or alternatively, obtain lecture notes from one of their fellow students. In addition to the steps I took to get and keep my fairly large class of students engaged and interested in the course’s content, I also thought it was important that they experience what it is like to be an undergraduate student at an American university. To that end I informed them that their final marks in the course would be based on continuous assessment (their combined marks for a midterm and end of term test I would give in the second half of class in week 5 and week 11, as well as a final class paper due at the end of week 12 on a topic of their choosing that had previously been discussed in my class lectures). In an effort to acquaint them with the outside readings they would need to do in order to write a good final class paper (as well as their final year BA thesis), I also provided them with links to at least one or two academic journals, archival papers or think tank/foundation articles as their readings each week, which in turn complimented the lecture for that week. Furthermore, I also told them that although I would not discuss these readings in class, they should expect that at least 2 or more of the 5 short essay questions, which comprised their midterm and end of term tests, would be based on what the authors discussed in those weekly readings. Finally I used moodle’s “latest news” topic tool to
  • 10. send all students a weekly email with a link to the reading for the upcoming week’s reading as well as my office hour’s availability and information about the in class midterm and end of term make up tests. Regardless of the size of the class, the enthusiasm of the lecturer for the material they were delivering was the key to keeping me interested and engaged in learning. Studies of student centred learning point out that the; “Principal factors that were seen to facilitate learning included dynamic or inspirational lecturers whose ‘enthusiasm spills over’ (male, postgraduate, mature) and peer support (such as formal or informal tutor groups).” (Lea, et al, 2001: 328) However, in large lectures it is difficult for lecturers, no matter how enthusiastic they are about their subject matter, to engage directly with the students so it is also important to speak forcefully, vary your tone of voice and move around rather than stand in one place as you speak. As a former multinational sales and marketing executive who had also been involved in local, state and national politics for years as well as having successfully run for an elected office as a labour union president, I was confident I had the public speaking skills I needed to grab and keep students in a large lecture’s attention for at least an hour or more. But lecturing to a large class of students for two hours is not the same type of teaching experience as interacting with 10-20 students in an hour long class. However, I had also been the leader of a ten person national account team for a number of years, which required a different set of people skills. In this situation I found that I had to be less dramatic and act more like a mentor by offering lots of encouragement to my subordinates, while also remaining flexible and fair- minded in my one on one and group interactions with them. I felt that this skill set would therefore be much more effective than my public speaking skills in terms of my one on one and group interactions with the 10-20 students enrolled in my much smaller Global Systems classes.
  • 11. My business colleagues had often noted that my flexibility and liberal attitudes towards my subordinates and co-workers stood in marked contrast to those of other managers. In fact studies about the personality traits of the most effective teachers have shown that “faculty who are liberal, flexible, and high in leadership ability would be expected to excel in a wide range of different types of courses. It is noteworthy that the personality traits of leadership and flexibility (liberalism) were found to be associated with generalized or wide-ranging teaching effectiveness in the present study.” (Murray et al, 1990: 259) Keeping the preceding thoughts in mind, I then developed a course syllabus which included the following course overview and learning outcomes’ sections: Overview: In the United States of America business and civil society as a whole operate within a legal and regulatory framework delineated by local, state and federal governments. It is, therefore, in the interest of businesses as well as consumer and non-profit special interests groups in America to try to influence government decision-making. This course explores the relationship between business or civil society groups and government politics or policies in the U.S. Key themes include the impact of mass communication media on political institutions and American culture, the role of special interest groups and voters in government decision-making and the successes and failures of various state and federal laws and regulations in the U.S. including those dealing with immigration, healthcare, electoral politics, social welfare, civil and criminal justice, education, tax revenue sources, environmental and business regulation as well as the root causes of the recent financial crisis. Learning outcomes: Participants will gain an understanding of how mass communication media, business and politics are intertwined in America and consequently how they simultaneously influence each other and various aspects of American culture. In addition to
  • 12. developing a fuller understanding of the political and societal context from within which U.S. business and culture exists, students will finish the course able to think critically about the origin, nature and consequences of the distinctive aspects of American culture and how they in turn influence consumer, business and government relations. Because one of the primary learning outcome of my Contemporary US Business and Society course is for Irish and foreign students to gain an understanding of the similarities and the differences between American business and society and the Irish and European business and society they are more familiar with, I knew that it also was going to be important to discuss the many cultural differences that also exist. I could give them readings and also discuss these differences in lectures, but I felt that many of these students would still fail to grasp a real understanding of what makes American business and society different unless they were able to really connect with the subject. As Joseph Champoux notes, “Some evidence suggests that people learn abstract, new and novel concepts more easily when presented in both verbal and visual form. (Salomon 1970, 1979) Other empirical research shows that visual media make concepts more accessible to a person than text media and help with later recall. (Cowen 1984) The conclusion from brain and media and cognition research points compellingly to using multimedia in a teaching program.” (Champoux, 1999: 209) But finding American films that dealt with the some of the topics I was covering in my lectures and with my assigned readings was the easy part of my research. Deciding which films or hour long portions of films to show the class was a much more important as well as time consuming task. This was important because “Whether it examines differences between cultures or variations within a culture, the chosen film should provide several clear examples of contrasting values and the behavioral manifestations that result. These multiple cultures are
  • 13. important in providing students with easy-to-identify contrasts among the behaviors of different individuals and to illustrate how these differences in cultural values can lead to ambiguous, and sometimes paradoxical, behavior.” (Mallinger & Rossy, 2003: 616) But the Irish university system also posed some rather unique challenges due to the emphasis placed on the mark for a student’s final year thesis, as opposed to the overall mark a student would receive based on the body of their undergraduate coursework. Virtually all undergraduate courses in the United States are 50-75 minutes long which presents challenges to lecturers who have very large classes. “Given that students have an attention span of around 15 to 20 minutes and that university classes are scheduled for around 50 or 75minutes, instructors must do something to control their students’ attention. We recommend building a “change-up” into your class to restart the attention clock.” (Middendorf & Kalish 1996: 2) Since most Irish lectures are more than twice as long as those in American universities at 120 minutes, I decided to break my lecture at about the 20 minute and 40 minute points to ask one or two students a question and regain the rest of the class’s attention and then at the one hour mark I conclude with the lecture and begin the film. But I also started some classes with the film and concluded with the lecture to avoid making the lectures predictable. But whether it was a two hour lecture or a one hour tutorial for a much smaller class, I also thought it was important to keep the class and or the tasks varied. So with respect to my lecture for 145 second year undergraduates, instead of a film following my lecture, in the 6th and 12th weeks of class I gave them a five question test on the subject matter and readings for the previous 5 weeks of class, which required them to write 1-2 paragraph answers. Since the results of these tests carried equal weight with their marks for their final class essays, this also encouraged students to come to class and do the readings. As Lea et al have noted; “Hall and
  • 14. Saunders (1997) explored the use of a more student-centred approach within a first-year information technology course. Student presentations, quizzes and continuous assessment were used rather than the more conventional lecture and final examination. Although the transition to this approach was not without problems (such as increased workload for staff and a shortage of resources), the course was seen to increase student participation, motivation and grades. Some 94% of the students taking the course attested that they would recommend it, rather than a conventional course, to others.” (Lea, et al, 2001: 323) Although this approach did result in more work for me in terms of deciphering their handwriting and marking almost 300 papers plus 145 final class essay papers, I also believe my students will be and have been more likely to recommend it as well. With my one hour Global Systems and Communication classes I took a different approach. In these much smaller classes, I adopted a more interactive approach using a modified Kolb cycle to keep my students active engaged. (Cowan, 1998: 33-45) Since I knew it was pointless to give them readings and or homework because they wouldn’t do either, I put the emphasis on working through various global communication issues in class. I randomly assigned them to three different groups and discussed some of the different sides to a pertinent Global Systems course issue such as developing countries pursuit of IMF bank loans. Then I had one group take a position in favor of one course of action while a second group took an opposing position. The third group would then be responsible for negotiating a middle ground position that synthesized the other two opposing viewpoints. I let the groups discuss their positions among themselves while I went around the room and visited with them to offer encouragement and suggestions on specific items they were considering using.
  • 15. When we met the following week I took all 3 groups to the library where I showed them how to do research in support of their various positions and pointed out how these research methods could also help them write better class papers. The next class was devoted to using the research gathered in previous classes to write up notes that they could use in an in-class debate. The class after that was devoted to presentation skills and a film showing funny mistakes made by professional TV presenters. I did this because I didn’t want my students focused on comparing themselves with each other but rather on self-improvement. Carole Ames has written; “When students are focused on self improvement, rather than on comparison with another, they exhibit better recall of material.” (Ames, 1992: 265) Then we had a class where we conducted a debate with each member of each group required to present at least one part of the respective debate positions to the rest of the class. For the 2nd half of the term I then switched up the groups, seemingly at random, but actually based on my assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of each student. I structured the new groups in such a way as to match students who were strong in certain areas, such as public speaking, with students who were weak in the same areas. As Chickering and Gamson have noted “Working with others often increases involvement in learning. Sharing one’s own ideas and responding to other’s reactions sharpens thinking and deepens understanding.” (Chickering & Gamson, 1991: 65) Then during the remaining classes of the term we repeated the group work we had done in previous classes, this time dealing with a completely different topic for the next and last debate. The other steps I took that were new for my large class of undergraduate students involved what I call ‘eliminating the temptation to cheat’ on their in class tests. Bunn et al conducted a university survey and concluded; “The results of the survey indicate that a
  • 16. surprisingly large percentage of students admit to some form of cheating during college.” (Bunn et al, 1992: 197) Since the students in my large lecture have to sit in very close quarters I devised three different sets of test questions (that were roughly comparable in terms of their degree of difficulty) and distributed the tests in such a way that if a student looked on a classmate’s paper to the right or left of them, they would see that those students had a different question to write a brief essay answer for. Given the fact that a few students answered questions from another version of the test correctly but their own test question incorrectly, it was apparent that some students were still cheating. However they did not receive any benefit from doing so. Although I believe that I still have much to learn as regards becoming an even more innovative and effective university lecturer, I also believe that I have applied much of what I have already learned quite effectively as a university teacher. Researchers have found that “Feedback is more effective when information is gathered from a number of sources. Feedback from student ratings has been found to be valid and reliable but only marginally helpful in improving instruction when used alone. Feedback is more effective when information is gathered from oneself as well as from others, because feedback from the self is more valued, better recalled, and more credible than feedback from other sources” (Brinko, 1993: 576-577) My students have evaluated me as a teacher, and their assessments of my innovative and creative approach to teaching as well as my effectiveness as a teacher mirror my own assessment. My students considered my course to be the most interesting of all of their undergraduate courses and they also told me it was the course they most looked forward to attending each week. Those results, coupled with the fact that 35-45 students added my course each semester but not a single student ever dropped it, therefore attest to my effectiveness as an innovative and creative university lecturer.
  • 17. References Ames, Carole. “Classrooms: Goals, Structures and Student Motivations” Journal of Educational Psychology (Vol. 84 No.3 1992): 261-271 Brinko, K. “The practice of giving feedback to improve teaching”. Journal of Higher Education, (Vol. 64 No. 5, 1993): 574–93 Bunn, Douglas N. Steven B. Caudill, and Daniel M. Gropper “Crime in the Classroom: An Economic Analysis of Undergraduate Student Cheating Behavior” The Journal of Economic Education, (Vol. 23, No. 3 Summer, 1992): 197-207 Champoux, Joseph E. “Film as a Teaching Resource” Journal of Management Inquiry (Vol. 8 No. 2 June 1999): 206-217 Chickering, Arthur W. and Zelda F. Gamson “Appendix A: Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education” New Directions for Teaching and Learning (Vol. 1991, Issue 47, Fall 1991): 63–69 Cowan, John. On Becoming an Innovative University Teacher: Reflection in Action Society for Research into Higher Education (London: Open University Press 1998) Fryer, Roland G. “Financial Incentives and Student Achievement: Evidence from Randomized Trials” The Quarterly Journal of Economics (Vol. 126 No. 4, 2011): 1755-1798 Hall, J. and P. Saunders. “Adopting a student-cantered approach to management of learning,” in: C. Bell, M. Bowden & A. Trott (Eds) Implementing Flexible Learning (London: Kogan Page 1997). Knaus, Christopher. Still Segregated Still Unequal: Analyzing the Impact of No Child Left Behind on African American Students. (University of California, Berkley: National Urban League 2007)
  • 18. Lea, S. J., D. Stephenson and J. Troy. “Higher education students’ attitudes to student centered learning: Beyond ‘educational bulimia’. Studies in Higher Education, (Vol. 28 No. 3, 2003): 321–34. Mallinger, Mark and Gerard Rossy “Film as a Lens for Teaching Culture: Balancing Concepts, Ambiguity, and Paradox” Journal of Management Education (Vol. 27 No. 5 October 2003): 608-624 Middendorf, Joan and Alan Kalish. “The “Change-Up” in Lectures” The National Teaching & Learning Forum (Vol. 5, No. 2 1996): 1-7 Murray, Harry G., J. Philippe Rushton, and Sampo V. Paunonen “Teacher Personality Traits and Student Instructional Ratings in Six Types of University Courses Journal of Educational Psychology (Vol. 82 No.2 1990): 250-261 Robinson, Ken. Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative. (West Sussex, UK: Capstone Publishing Ltd. 2011)