On Course has an article by Rebecca Brent and Richard Felder entitled, “The 10 Worst Teaching Mistakes“.  This has been ciruclating the office with a lot of discussions of “I’ve done that, haven’t done that,” etc.  As the article says, “Doing some of the things on the list may occasionally be justifed, so we’re not telling you to avoid them at all cost.  We are suggesting that you avoid making a habit of any of them. ” While the article has further examination of each one, this blog only has the list and some of my comments.  So, drum roll please:

 10.  When you ask a question in class, immediately call for volunteers.  They don’t mention “Victim Volunteers”…  so maybe I am safe from this mistake. 

 9.  Call on students cold.  

 8. Turn classes into PowerPoint shows.  I heard that people can read slides seven times faster than the person speaking them can – less is more when it comes to using PowerPoint.

 7.  Fail to provide variety in instructions.

 6.  Have students work in groups with no individual accountability.

 5. Fail to establish relevance.  This is actually an area that many people at Maricopa CC district are working on right now.  I also know that nothing establishes relevance than a student success story using the materials they learned at their job and their boss noticing – and the student sharing that with the class.

 4. Give tests that are too long.  Apparently this is still a huge problem in the engineering fields.  As a colleague said, “I rather have an engineer who took their time to do the problem correctly, then someone who whizzed through it.”  After all, the goal is not to see who can get done first, but who makes the least mistakes – people’s lives may be riding on the answer.

 3. Get stuck in a rut.  What rut?  This is a dangerous one because it is hard to see sometimes.  See Teaching Mistake #5.

 2. Teach without clear learning objectives.  Student confusion is not always that they didn’t understand what was taught, but what the objectives were.

 1. Disrepect the students.  It happens – it shouldn’t, but it does.  How can they be expected to respect the teacher if the teacher doesn’t respect them?

Rebecca and Richard then invited instructors to create their own list, and you can follow this link to The 67 Worst Teaching Mistakes.

The question remains, how many of these mistakes do you see yourself in, and what can you do to avoid them most of the time?  I think we all make these mistakes at some point or another.  It becomes, how can we learn not to?  Your thoughts?

Mark Viquesney