Creative Teaching Ideas - The Art and Science of the Didactic ApproachBy Chris Laliberte Creative teaching ideas are simply reminders of what we did or did not love about our schooling. Often disparaged as "the thing we most hated" about our schooling experience, the tool of presenting information directly is nonetheless a valuable skill to have in your repertoire. Telling people information straight out, or "giving people answers" are not inherently bad things to do. On the contrary, the art of didactic teaching is an important color to have on your creative teaching ideas palette. When used appropriately, it can be a very effective way to transmit important information quickly and clearly. Engaging students For the didactic approach to be effective, students must be interested in receiving the information. If they are not, no amount of fancy technique is going to make your lecture effective. So a large part of the art of didactic teaching is learning to discern when students are ready for it-better yet, eager for it. The didactic approach can actually be a good creative teaching idea for engaging students. Remember all those fun factoids that friend of yours is always rattling off? Well, having a wide range of those little tidbits at your disposal is like having lots of different lures and baits in your tackle box. "Hey! Did you know that..." Consider it like going fishing-you throw out a handful of "cool facts" and see when they bite. With a little practice, it's quite easy to see-body language changes, eyes light up, and students begin interrupting you to tell you what they know. No they are engaged! Just remember - it's bait! You are really just discovering what will "hook" the interest of the students. The most crucial aspect of engaging students is your own ability to accurately perceive and constantly monitor the level of a student's interest. Especially when lecturing, you must be eternally vigilant to the body language and eye/facial expressions of your students. If they begin to fade, you'll just be wasting your time continuing on in didactic mode. Didactic Presentation Skills Here is a short list of important tips for effective didactic teaching once your students are genuinely interested: -Attend closely to when students are ready for information - don't do their work for them! -Be conscious of your priority - is it more important that information be conveyed quickly and accurately, or that the students struggle with figuring it out for themselves? -Be clear in your own mind of the points you want to make. -Consider the rule of three: tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them. Repetition is great. -Go slow and leave time for the information to sink in before going on to the next thing. -Watch for jargon or "insider" language that students won't understand. -Watch carefully for signs of confusion - ask students to explain in their own words what you just covered to check if they are really understanding it. -Allow students to ask questions as they come up - don't worry about "breaking your flow." If they are holding a question, they won't really be able to attend to what you're saying anyway. The most important thing to remember in using didactic techniques is that mixing in other creative teaching ideas as participatory elements - like the Art of Questioning (see next topic), or giving students small activities or mysteries to explore - is a crucial part of keeping students with different learning styles engaged. The classic reputation that didactic teaching is "boring" comes mostly from this simple fact: a painting with just one color can be pretty boring. For the most part, the didactic approach is best viewed as one color among many, one that needs to be mixed skillfully with the other colors to get the effect you want. Good luck in using this and other creative teaching ideas!
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