My Teaching Philosophy

My teaching philosophy is built upon my twenty years of naval experience and my 3 years as a learning standards officer at Submarine Learning Center. My philosophy is to incorporate as many teaching styles as possible in order to maximize the learning experience for every learner, regardless of their learning styles. I try to use a blended learning approach using tradition instructor led training, presentation, computer based interactive multimedia instruction and practical application.

This can be a difficult task when teaching through asynchronous distance learning. Many different techniques must be utilized. Instructors should be available daily through email, whiteboard, LMS chat, and IM. This means learners can quickly contact their instructor for clarification on assignments and readings. Due to the global teaching environment, instructors cannot be on-line all the time. Learners in different time zones create a communication challenge. This does not mean quick instructor response is not possible. Feedback from the instructor must be returned to the learners within 24 hours.

I prefer andragogy over pedagogy. Andragogical principles should be observed and enforced to ensure student growth. Instructors should not be too nurturing because it can limit learner growth and critical thinking development. Providing clarification and amplifying information on assignments are expected and desired, conducting learner research for them is not desirable. Learners need to discover information by themselves, with guidance, so the Socratic method so be maximized.

Facilitation techniques must be utilized to foster learner growth. Many of the learners in distance learning are adult learners that bring many years of experience to the virtual classroom. These learners need to share this knowledge and experience and this experience can greatly benefit the class. Therefore the instructor needs to provide a bulletin board or chat room in the LMS for the learners to provide this input. Facilitation must be maintained to ensure the conversation stay constructive and pertain to the learning objectives.

Assessments should be regular and frequent. I am not a fan of multiple choice or True / False questions on assessments. Assessments can and should test multiple levels of taxonomy. For instance essay questions; while harder to grade and require rubrics, test higher taxonomies in the cognitive domain. However, the learning objectives may not require a high taxonomy and may only require a learner to recognize or identify, which a multiple choice question is sufficient.

Learners always need the opportunity to provide feedback. An instructor is always being evaluated by his learners. Not only is the instructor being evaluated, but so is the curriculum. My experience has been that all too often the on-line course evaluation tools are limiting. Many learners are not provided the opportunity or space required to properly provide feedback on the curriculum. These Kirkpatrick 'smile' sheets are an extremely valuable tool to the instructor. Perhaps there are better textbooks or teaching techniques that the learners have been exposed to that the instructor is unaware of.

Overall a blended learning experience is best while allowing the learners to pursue the topic using their best learning style. The instructor needs to use the blended learning style in order to reach the most possible learners. The andragogical learner will pursue the learning objective deeper using whatever learning style is best suited for him.