“It’s not just what you teach, but how you teach that’s important.”
Classrooms often throw up unpredictable situations that can result in frustration for even the most experienced teachers. A well-rehearsed lesson plan doesn’t always work and when a teacher turns to see a room full of confused or distracted faces, they need to think on their feet.
Dr Tashmin Khamis, Director, AKU Networks of Quality, Teaching and Learning, is familiar with such situations and calls on teachers to use innova
tive methods to engage students. These methods urge teachers to constantly assess how students are responding instead of the traditional lecture approach where one just talks at students.
She says: “The average attention span of an 18-year-old is just eight minutes. That’s why long, Powerpoint presentations often fail to engage students. It’s vital that teachers keep lessons interesting by being student-centered and by trying out new ways of imparting knowledge.”
Dr Khamis, who also serves on international quality assurance bodies for Higher Education such as
INQAAHE and
EAQAN, is currently spearheading efforts at the University to keep teaching standards high. With the help of the Teaching Support Centre at Western University in Ontario, Canada, the Network of Teaching & Learning has developed a peer-based teaching skills development workshop for faculty modelled on the internationally certified Instructional Skills Workshop (ISW).
Following on from the July ISW workshop in Tanzania for AKU’s East Africa faculty, a three-day Teaching Learning Enhancement workshop (TLEW) was held in Karachi from September 28-30, 2016, that gave 27 AKU faculty an opportunity to develop their teaching skills.
The three-day workshop required participants to take on the roles of both learner and instructor every day. Each participant became an instructor when they delivered brief ten-minute lessons to their peers. After receiving feedback on their teaching method, the instructor then joined his peers to evaluate another participant’s approach to teaching.
The format encouraged everyone to reflect on their teaching practices instead of focusing on the content of a lesson. It also helped people understand how students learn and which methods are the most effective.
Throughout the session faculty reflected on feedback from their peer which they then incorporated into subsequent lessons during the workshop.
One of the participants at the workshop, Dr Rehana Rehman, an Assistant Professor in Biological and Biomedical Sciences, said: “I now have a much deeper knowledge about how to use different techniques to engage students. The workshop has showed me how to incorporate new ideas such as videos and activities in my lesson plans.”
Speaking about the approach of the workshops, Dr Khamis explained that the workshops are conducted in a friendly atmosphere that encourage faculty to experiment with new techniques. As teachers try out new techniques they become used to evaluating how their audience is responding and learn how to make on the spot adjustments.
One of the expert trainers at the session in Tanzania, Professor Mike Atkinson from Western University, said: “Teaching has great power to change people’s lives. As faculty members we are used to getting feedback on everything we write (papers, books and reports) but rarely do we get comments on how we teach. Such workshops provide you with skills and methods to enhance student learning by becoming a more reflective instructor.”
The overall goal of the workshops is to create a community of educators at AKU who strive for excellence in teaching and who mentor other faculty thereby passing on the art of great teaching.
