30 years ago Chickering and Gamson published “Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. Their work is a culmination of 50 years of research on effective teaching practices. Ironically, the majority of instructors in higher education are still not aware of this work or how it could benefit their instruction. This oversight is commonly an instance of instructors overlooking self-reflection, and asking how they can improve their teaching by adopting proven successful teaching strategies.
In Stanley Kubric’s 2001: Space Odyssey – the apes as well as everyone in the audience is reflecting on the obelisk. When you realize that the obelisk is a metaphor for the screen that the audience is watching, you can reflect on how the film affects you. Similarly you can recognize the technology and reflect on how the medium is affecting you. Sometimes instructors do not reflect on how they are teaching and what principles they could employ because they do not have the time or their appeal to tradition. After all, they conjecture, if this is how they learned material, why should they change?
Years ago we did not have Learning Management Systems, ubiquitous access to the World Wide Web, and more computing power in our hands than what was used to place an astronaut on the moon. Perhaps we should touch the screen, engage in self-reflection, and investigate what are the best practices for teaching while employing this technology.
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