Guidance for Educators: Making time for learning

Transcript:

Welcome all. Please feel free to share this with your colleagues, if you think they’ll find it of interest.

Let’s talk about how you make time in your learning. We all have a very busy curriculum. We have a lot of ‘content’ to get through a lot of concepts and learning, to convey to students during any one session. I think it’s really important that we make time for learning. I think teaching is better equated to a version of television rather than of radio. There’s a concept in radio of ‘dead air. Every, every silence has to be filled. That’s not true in television. If you’ve got something visual to look at, you don’t need to provide words to go with it.

So unless you’re developing podcasts for teaching, I think there’ll always be a visual element in any teaching encounter that you’re designing. There’s no need to worry about the dead air.

And in fact, a well-planned teaching session will always have space built into it, time built into it, to allow for some quiet reflection. And I think you do need to build that into your session at pertinent points, during any session that you’re delivering. So you can build in reflective questions.

For example, something I used to do literally to put up a slide that would have a question on it and just say. We are going to pause for a minute. I’m going to encourage you to think about that. Make some notes. Sometimes students might start talking to each other. That’s not necessarily a big problem. It’s only for a minute. It gives you a chance to gather your thoughts, have a glass of water, but it also paces the session quite effectively.

So please have a go try something similar. Let me know how it goes. Be well.

Author: Simon Paul Atkinson

30 years as an educational strategist, academic practitioner and developer, educational developer, educational technologist, and e-learning researcher. Simon is now an Educational Strategic Consultant. An experienced presenter and workshop facilitator. Previous roles include Head of Learning Design at the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand, Associate Dean for Teaching and Learning (BPP University), Academic Developer (London School of Economics), Director of Teaching and Learning (Massey University - College of Education), Head of Centre for Learning Development (University of Hull), Academic Developer (Open University UK)

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