Becoming an Instructor ? 2

[W2KMAN]

Hi everyone!

Rightnow, I am working for a private computer school, I am their network admin. the school mainly teaches programming, nothing to do with hardware and networking. All of a sudden yesterday my boss came by and ask if I would consider teaching A+, he is planning to open up a course for A+ and he wants me to teach the course.

I am confident that I have the knowledge to teach a+ but my teaching skill isn't all that great. however, I am very interested in becoming an a+ instructor. Should I take any additional course before taking this job?? what other training should I take?? any advise would be great !

thank you

 

[Kjonnnn]

Maybe u dont need another A+ course, but a communication or some sort of teaching or public speaking course. You said you already have the A+ knowledge.



Remember there are some people that dont know everything but are good teachers....

But there are some people who know ALL the inner workings of a computer, but arent good teachers, because they can't communicate what they know to someone who doesnt.

 

[Kjonnnn]

Had an idea.

Have like a mini class to someone you know who knows NOTHING about computers.

Have them critique you... i.e., they'd let you know when you were talking over their heads, or not explaining something on a basic level, or went too fast....

 

[dwmatteson]

Hi W2KMAN --

While I'm no expert, here's what's worked for me in the past. (Before I get started, I should mention that I haven't taught too many computer classes -- just training classes at work -- but I've taught courses in research and statistics at the college level for six years.)

1) Be organized, organized, organized! It's a royal pain in the butt for students to try to learn and retain information if it's presented in a haphazard fashion. As an instructor, it's (to some extent) your responsibility not only to provide the information, but to provide a framework for learning that information. This brings me to...

2) Provide an outline for each class. The outline is useful both for you and for your students. It helps your students by providing some structure for learning the material. It helps you by making sure you don't leave out anything important. I spend the first few minutes providing a super-condensed summary of what we covered the previous class, then go over the outline for that class session. I use this time as an opportunity to show how different items/concepts are related and I can give them a sense of how the class flows.

3) Show your students that you respect them and care whether or not they learn. (Catch: you must actually respect them and care whether or not they learn.) You can do this by being patient with them while they learn, by taking the time to talk with them about how things are going in the class, finding out whether there's anything that's unclear to them, and soliciting (and responding to) lots of feedback. When I start each course, I hand out an information sheet that I use to find out more about my students. A couple of things that are the most important for me are: why they're taking the course, what they expect to get out of the course, and something unique or unusual about them (helps me remember names). I also hand out a anonymous course evaluations throughout the course (not just at the end) so I can fine-tune; every group is different. I also find that an anonymous feedback page on the course web site is effective at soliciting useful information. Surprisingly, I've not yet had anyone abuse this by just sending me nasty comments.

4) Make sure you're prepared. If I'm teaching a course for the first time, I generally expect to spend about 3-5 hours of prep time outside of the classroom for every hour I spend in the classroom. It doesn't matter if I know the course material backwards and forward or if it's completely new to me. That time is spent in syllabus construction, lecture prep, designing activities and homework, and finding other corroborative sources that can be used for supplements to what I say in class.

5) Use examples and analogies liberally. Cognitive psychologists have long told us that people learn most easily by relating new information to something that's already famililar to them. Take advantage of this and have at least a couple of analogies for every major point that you make. (For instance, when talking about the file allocation table, the "table of contents" analogy tends to work pretty well. When I have to explain disk defragmentation, I ask people to imagine that their favorite book's binding has torn and the pages have been put back all out of order. I talk about defragging as putting those pages back in order so they can be accessed more quickly and easily.) This is the place where knowledge of the material really pays off, since the better you know the subject, the better you'll be able to draw analogies to other topics. (For those who were following the brief liberal arts and IT thread, here's where that broad-based education *really* comes in handy!)

6) Have fun! If you're not enjoying teaching, there's no way that anybody in the room is going to enjoy learning from you. I try to run a fairly "flat" classroom, where I don't hold my authority position over the heads of my students (I ask to be called by my first name, and I tend to get upset when they call me "professor&quot. I don't try to come across as their best pal, but I do have a sense of humor and try not to take myself too seriously.

Well, there's lots more, but that's a start. Make no mistake: teaching well is very hard work. It's also among the most rewarding things you'll ever find yourself doing. There's nothing that compares to the feeling you get when a student "clicks" with something that previously seemed completely alien to them.

Sorry for the length, and I hope that helps,

Don

 

[W2KMAN]

WOW!! thank you don, you gave me alot of useful info, I am printing it out rightnow

another question?? do I require a license to teach the a+ course ?
should I buy the materials from comptia??

thanks again.

 

[dwmatteson]

Hi Again --

If anybody's interested in seeing an example of one of my course web sites, take a look at:

http://wings.buffalo.edu/courses/su00/soc/404/

Just a warning: It won't be around forever, but it should be there for a few months at least. It's just a matter of when the university's webmasters decide it's time to purge old course web sites.

Feel free to contact me if you're interested in talking more about teaching. (Or post here -- be warned though, I can write for miles about pedagogy!)

Don

 

[Voyager1]

You don't need to buy from CompTIA (I don't think they even have materials), and there is no particular credential involved. Materials are available from a variety of sources - ElementK (

http://www.elementk.com)

and ComputerPrep (

http://www.computerprep.com)

are two that come to mind. Be advised - these are kind of pricey ($200+ per student).

We use a book by Osborne (can't think of the exact name) and created supplemental materials to go along. It works well, and only costs about $30 per student.

Even though you don't need the credential, you might want to consider taking a Microsoft Train-the-Trainer class. This will give you the classroom skills to complement your technical skills.

IMHO

Hope this helps

- Bill

"You can get anything you want out of life, if you'll just help enough other people get what they want" - Zig Ziglar

 

[carp]

A couple of items to add to Don's excellent list:

1. If you can't get somebody to sit through your rehearsals, go ahead and do them anyway. You don't have to be in a classroom to do this - do it in the shower, or on the drive to work. It doesn't matter WHERE you do it, as long as you do it! This helps you remember what you want to say as well as identify what areas you have difficulty delivering. The LAST thing you want to do is to give your first presentation of the material to an actual class!

2. Don't be afraid to say "I don't know." I've seen too many instructors crash and burn because they felt they had to give an answer to every question, so they'd try to make something up. This not only undermines your credibility, but also angers students when they figure out you're blowing smoke. And, oh yeah, they WILL figure it out! If you don't know, just say so. Write the question down and research it, then bring back the answer. Or - if you can figure out how in a short enough time - do an experiment in front of the class to try to get the answer. This is tremendously helpful to students - not only do they get an answer to the question, but they get to observe the techniques used to find the answer.

3. Watch your time! Most courses will come with timing recommendations (i.e., Chapter 8. Lecture: 40 minutes. Lab: 60 minutes.) These are guidelines, but you need to stick to them pretty closely. The last thing you want to do is to have four hours left with 12 hours of material to cover!

4. Don't be afraid to experiment! Sometimes courses are put together wrong, and the topics don't flow together very well. If you see a better way to present the material, then go for it! Just be sure to explain to students ahead of time what you are doing and why. This can make the difference between disgruntled students and delighted students.

And to underscore Don's point on preparation, he's not kidding. The first time you deliver a course, you'd better plan on at least four hours prep for one hour presentation. Eventually this number goes down through repetition and familiarity with the course. After the first couple of times, you'll not only have the timing and material down, but you'll also know which questions are likely to come up and how to answer them. (Which brings us back to item 4 - if you are doing OK on time, let the students ask the questions. It gives you a guage of how many are paying attention, and gives you a chance to show your mastery by having the answer. On the other hand, if you are running a little long, just answer the question before it gets asked - it takes a lot less time.).

It can be a lot of fun - go for it!