Some of the Most Prominent Teaching Strategies by Rogelio G. Dela Cruz, Ph.D (December, 2005)

Institutions of higher learning across the nation are responding to political, economic, social and technological pressures to be more responsive to students' needs and more concerned about how well students are prepared to assume future societal roles. Faculty are already feeling the pressure to lecture less, to make learning environments more interactive, to integrate technology into the learning experience, and to use collaborative learning strategies when appropriate. Some of the more prominent strategies applicable to teaching are outlined below.

The Lecture Method
For many years, the lecture method was the most widely used instructional strategy in college classrooms. Nearly 80% of all college classrooms in the late 1970s reported using some form of the lecture method to teach students. Although the usefulness of other teaching strategies is being widely examined today, the lecture still remains an important way to communicate information.

Used in conjunction with active learning teaching strategies, the traditional lecture can be an effective way to achieve instructional goals. The advantages of the lecture approach are that it provides a way to communicate a large amount of information to many listeners, and maximizes instructor control and is non-threatening to students.


The Case Study Method
Providing an opportunity for students to apply what they learn in the classroom to real-life experiences has proven to be an effective way of both disseminating and integrating knowledge. The case study method is an instructional strategy that engages students in active discussion about issues and problems inherent in practical application. It can highlight fundamental dilemmas or critical issues and provide a format for role playing ambiguous or controversial scenarios. Course content cases can come from a variety of sources. Many faculties have transformed current events or problems reported through print or broadcast media into critical learning experiences that illuminate the complexity of finding solutions to critical social problems.

Integrating Technology
Today, educators realize that computer literacy is an important part of a student's education. Integrating technology into a course curriculum when appropriates, is proving to be valuable for enhancing and extending the learning experience for faculty and students. Many faculties have found electronic mail to be a useful way to promote student/student or faculty/student communication between class meetings. Others use list serves or on-line notes to extend topic discussions and explore critical issues with students and colleagues, or discipline- specific software to increase student understanding of difficult concepts.

Cooperative Learning
Cooperative learning can be summarized as the instructional use of small groups, so that the students work together to maximize their own and each other's learning. Cooperative learning groups proliferate in every educational setting, regardless of the age or educational level of the students present.

In cooperative learning situations, there is a positive interdependence among students' goal attainments; students perceive that they can reach their learning goals if and only if the other students in the learning group also reach their goals.

The primary objective of using cooperative learning groups is to meet specific content goals. In order to attain it, we need to place the students into non-competitive situations, giving each student the opportunity to succeed. They have included the five elements of cooperative learning namely:

Positive interdependence
To face-to-face interaction
Individual and group accountability
Learning social skills
Group processing

Brainstorming
Brainstorming is a technique for generating new, useful ideas, and promoting creative thinking, according to an Educational Website, "Brainstorming for Students." It can be a very useful technique to help generate ideas for projects, encourage shy or reluctant students to participate actively and to express themselves confidently.

The use of brainstorming in the classrooms is truly an effective method. In this method, there will be a need to assign roles to students, making sure that each student's contribution is valued. It can be used to help;

Define what project or problem to work on.
To diagnose problems.
Remediate a project by coming up with possible solutions and to identify possible resistance to proposed solutions.
There are three roles for participants in a brainstorming session namely: the leader, the scribe, and the team member.

Ground Rules for Brainstorming

All ideas are welcome. There are no wrong answers. During brainstorming, no judgments should be made of ideas.
Be creative in contributions. Change involves risk taking, it's important to be open to new, original ideas. Every point of view is valuable.
Attempt to contribute a high quantity of ideas is a short amount of time.
Participants should "hitch hike" on others' ideas.