Workshop on The “Content Monster”

Workshop Summary:

Many of the most effective teaching practices involve spending some, or even most, of our time together in class having students answer questions, solve problems, and otherwise engage with our content. How can we spend time on these types of practices, yet also have enough time to “cover” all of the content that the students need to learn? I have good news for you in this workshop, which will help you banish the content monster from your classroom, while still allowing your students to learn more content (and truly understand it better) than they did before.

Workshop Length:

I usually do this as a 50-minute workshop with time for 10 minutes of questions in a typical 1-hour slot. However, another option is to combine it with the Course Design Workshop for a highly active two hours in which faculty can produce specific plans for redesigning their courses while the solution to the “Content Monster” problem is fresh in their minds. A third option is to first discuss evidence-based teaching in general, and then move into course design more specifically, addressing Content-Monster challenges along the way (“Evidence-Based Teaching: From Theory to Practice,” ~2.5-3 hours, a good length for a morning or afternoon workshop with time for breaks and additional discussion).

Workshop Link: 

Here is a recording made of this workshop at Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic, April 2017.