UTTOMExperiences in TOMMY TOMTeaching is two-sided

Teaching is two-sided

APRIL, 2014

Marloes Jansen is a lecturer of Communication Studies within the Faculty of Behavioural Sciences. She has studied at the UT and has been working for the department of Media, Communication and Organisation (MCO) since 1 October 2013. Marloes is occupied with education full-time, but in the future, she would like to obtain a doctoral degree. Within TOM, she is primarily a tutor, but she also gives a number of lectures and, together with her colleagues, she has designed the third module for the first year. In addition, she supervises a number of senior students, for example when they are writing their bachelor's thesis.

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Teaching

Marloes has given her first lecture this year and says she finds it quite exciting to stand in front of the group. To prepare for teaching optimally, she is working on obtaining her University Teaching Qualification (BKO) and has followed the tutor training course. "Because I had little experience, I thought it was important to follow these courses." Marloes has experience in giving presentations, but indicates that giving lectures is different. "Doing presentations is more one-sided, teaching is much more two-sided." In addition to taking courses, Marloes tries to obtain ideas about teaching by, for example, visiting the faculty's Educational Consultant, reading, digging through the course material and frequently talking with experienced colleagues. "Sometimes I just attend a lecture given by one of my colleagues to see how they do it."

Activating lectures

Marloes finds it very important to activate students during lectures. "It is also much more interesting for me to come into contact with students and to talk with them about the subject matter." To activate the students, Marloes employs many different methods. For example, she has them discuss things together or prepare propositions in small groups, which are then discussed with all of the students. "I aim for them to think about whether they agree with something and whether there are other theories, and to learn to articulate their point of view properly."

Shakespeak

Another method that Marloes uses to activate the students during lectures is to deploy the ICT tool 'Shakespeak'. Shakespeak is a program that makes it possible for lecturers to have students vote or have them answer questions by mobile phone. It is a great way of activating students during lectures. "First-year students really like to give answers using their mobile phone." Marloes adjusts the use of Shakespeak to the level of the students. For example, she uses more multiple-choice questions for first-year students, while senior students are more frequently given open questions or propositions. With the pre-master's students, the questions also lead to further discussions. "The students then ask why, for example, answer D is not correct.

Do they understand?

Marloes says that she, as a teacher, also likes using Shakespeak. "Because I can see the answers given by the students, I can see what they do not understand and I am better able to explain the subject matter." It therefore gives her greater insight into whether students understand what the lecture is about and to which subjects they need to pay extra attention. It therefore makes it possible to check the learning objectives of the relevant lecture. "What I try to do is directly or indirectly explain the learning objectives in advance, and then return to where I started at the end of the lecture." Marloes also says that asking questions with Shakespeak helps her return to these learning objectives and thus complete the circle. "It forces me to stay focused."

As a lecturer, you can use Shakespeak free of charge, for every size of group. The UT has so-called credits for Shakespeak. For more information, see: https://www.utwente.nl/telt/solutions/shakespeak/