Questions, Ideas, and Concerns

I have over a decade of teaching experience and yet, I am still daunted by the responsibility of expanding my students’ knowledge base and preparing them to be productive members of the workforce. Cognitive psychology research informs us that learning is not a passive process of simply transmitting information from the instructor to the student rather an active mechanism where new information is integrated with student’s previous knowledge, prior experience and the context of today’s workplace. The big question is how? Two new pedagogical tools making waves and based on their staying power, not flavor-of-the-month approaches, are, flipped classroom technique and evidence-based teaching.
So, armed with knowledge gained from a variety of teaching workshops, I have been flipping the classroom, i.e., getting students to read and reflect on course material outside of the classroom and freeing time in the class for application, synthesis, and analysis from the course, mixed success. The challenge for me is to design class activities that successfully help students with assimilation of new information. This problem is compounded by the fact that not all students are engaging in pre-class activities due to differences in motivation, experience, and ability. For instance, those who are employed have an edge due to their actual experience related to the management course content. So the challenge is how to teach/reinforce material for those who need help and at the same time find ways to keep the momentum going for those who are ready to move ahead and take it to the next level.
The second approach I am grappling with is evidence-based teaching methodology. I believe technology has led to a paradigm shift in not only what students learn but how they learn. The ever increasing pervasiveness of big data means students have to learn tools and