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It’s learner-centered teaching—it’s those instructional strategies and approaches designed and used by teachers who want learners to be motivated, independent, and self-regulated.

We criticize students for their surface learning approaches and yet I see a lot of surface learning when it comes to teaching. Our infatuation with teaching techniques—the tips, tricks, and gimmicks that can make our teaching dance—yes, they’re important, but so are the assumptions and premises on which they rest. We quest for “right” answers to what we think are simple questions. “Should I call on students or let them volunteer?” The answer depends on a host of variables including; how you call on students, who you call on, when you call on them, and what’s the motivation behind calling on them. Thinking that good teaching results from having right answers trivializes the complexities that makes teaching endlessly fascinating.

learning about teaching. I have talked with teachers who admit they don’t do any pedagogical reading and others who don’t do any professional development activities. How can you expect to stay instructionally alive and well when you’re not taking actions that promote health? It’s not about needing to improve; it’s about wanting to grow. It’s about taking our love of learning and tackling teaching as a subject to be mastered, a skill to be developed.

Although there is no single definition of active learning approaches, they include asking students to answer questions by using handheld clickers, calling on individuals or groups randomly, or having students clarify concepts to each other and reach a consensus on an issue.

But I don’t think there should be a monolithic stance about lecture or no lecture. There are still times when lectures will be needed, but the traditional mode of stand-and-deliver is being demonstrated as less effective at promoting student learning and preparing future teachers.”

U.S. Department of Education h

In fact, the lecture-dominated course runs completely counter to what we know about the importance of formative assessment, high-level questioning and discussion, differentiation, and attention to metacognition – all at the highest levels of effect size in Hattie’s research.

If the goal is to help learners make meaning of and transfer content in the future, then they have to be coached in how to do so. Coaches lecture, of course. But for far briefer periods and not for most of the course.

"The concept is simple enough - a lecturer stands in front of an often large group of students and delivers a monologue on his or her specialist topic. "Students take notes and then at some later point there is an examination, during which the students will try to recreate the lecturer's approach to the subject. If all of that works, the student gets a degree."

Lectures are not simple stand-alone options

They must be combined with small group classes such as seminars, tutorials, lab-based activities as these are often the best way for students to learn. Small group activities are much more resource-intensive than lectures, so universities need to increase their commitment and current levels of investment in staffing and teaching-related infrastructure to deliver more of these."

Today’s ability to oh-so-easily see and hear each other online is a double-edged sword: it can make electronic communication more personable, but it can also inject offline prejudices evoked by how someone looks or sounds.

Now, a lot of online communication is done synchronously, or nearly so: volunteers are online together, at the same time, talking together, and staff supporting those volunteers is often seeing their volunteering activities in real time.

People do not communicate primarily via e-mail anymore; they now talk together via online social networks and in the comments section of blogs, photo-sharing sites, and video-sharing sites. Some people send far more SMS messages than email messages.

The related field of appreciative inquiry offers similar flip-the-question approaches but is more specific, asking us to look for and build on the positive case or “outlier.” Is there someone in the community already exhibiting the desired behavior? What is enabling them to outperform? What resources are they tapping into that others are not? Not “Why are staph infections so high in the hospital?” but “Why are staph infections lower on the third floor?” Not “Why are sales down in Regions 6 and 9?” but “Why are sales up in Region 4?” Not “Why do so few graduates of our leadership academy get promoted?” but “Why did these seven graduates get promoted?” Why is the accident rate lower in _______? Why is the turnover rate lower in ______? Why are there fewer ethics complaints about ______ division?