Ed-Tech list members,
For many of you, summer is a time to reflect on last year's teaching-learning and consider changes for the coming year (while performing your research and other duties). If you are looking for something to trigger ideas for changes in your courses, you might take a look at "Multiple Ways to Motivate Students: An Introduction to the Imaginative use of Multiple Intelligences" by Alice Macpherson of Kwantlen University College. It is also known as "104 Ways of Learning (or Teaching) Anything Using Gardner's Multiple Intelligences." It is available at http://www.miami.edu/bb/104ways.doc . If you have trouble getting it, let me know and I will send you a copy.
I encourage you to read through this list twice. The first time, mark the items that you are currently using in your courses. Then count up the number of techniques you are using in each of the categories, such as verbal/linguistic, logical/mathematical, etc. Note which categories dominate and which, if any, are not part of your learning system. Your discipline controls some of that. Clearly a course in mathematics will have many logical/mathematical activates. So there is no expectation that the categories be balanced. This step simply assesses where you are now.
The second time mark the items that you could be using. These are items that you can see a way to include in your course. Not that you are going to include them, just that you can see how they could be included as part of the student's learning activities in your particular courses.
If your goal is to come up with new ideas, particularly ideas that allow your students to experience a wider variety of learning experiences, you might find this list helpful.
Bill Vilberg
Assoc. Dir. of Instructional Advancement
305-284-3944
