Question

What instructional methods have you used that have been effective with patients? Are there other methods you think might be more effective? Would you use particular materials to enhance learning?

Answer 1

Ans) A key feature of effective teaching is the selection of instructional materials that meet the needs of students and fit the constraints of the teaching and learning environment.

- There are many pressures for educators to match the audiovisual stimuli of television, computers, and electronic games with which students are experienced. The speed of personal computers and the ease of authoring systems permit instructors to design and customize computer-based audiovisual presentations and to develop computer-based assignments for their students.

- The tremendous increases in rates of information transfer, access to the Internet, and posting of materials on the World Wide Web give instructors and students an almost limitless supply of resource material. In addition, the ease of electronic communications between an instructor and students, and among students, provides new opportunities for sharing questions, answers, and discussions during a course.

- At the same time, there remains a major role for student use of textbooks and for instructional use of demonstrations, films, videos, slides, and overhead transparencies.

- Carefully scripted presentations and activities run the risk of emphasizing teacher delivery rather than student learning. Carefully planned and prepared instructional resources sometimes tempt instructors to race ahead and to cover more.

- The rapid-fire presentations combined with audiovisual overload can tempt students to remain intellectually passive. One way to avoid this is to intersperse activities which assess student understanding and encourage reflection and critical thinking. Another possibility is to reduce the pace of the class session, by pausing periodically to invite questions.

- Instructional resources usually fall into one of two categories: student-centered and teacher-centered. In the student-centered model, instructional resources can be used for tutorials, problem solving, discovery, and review. In the teacher-centered model, resources are used for presentations of supplementary or primary material in the classroom. Information technology can also be used for communication and for information retrieval.