COETAIL Course 3, Reflection 1 > how my teaching has been influenced to date by the course

How my teaching has been influenced to date by the course. The big shift in my thinking is that learning is an active process, done by the learner, and not to be given by the teacher. My role is to facilitate. What this translates to on the ground is more time listening to students to identify areas to bring up. The other day I was doing my annual sessions with HS Journalism giving a crash course on Adobe InDesign. While I would not characterize this program as the type of program you can just "pick up" by using, I can see that my approach has changed a great deal. In the past I have scheduled the meeting earlier in the year, in order to stop bad habits from occurring. I covered a wide range of specifically relevant features and practices for publishing a news journal. This year I scheduled our session later so that they were into their first months issue with questions and problems, I observed more and helped students where they wanted help. Retention is up, frustration is down and I have to say it is in a large part due to the project based learning resources we have used. image all rights reserved used with permission from Hugh MacLeod www.gapingvoid.com