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Teaching Training

Training Experience

At no time during my undergraduate or graduate studies was I exposed to courses on "How to teach." While some graduate students today are taught a variety of styles of teaching, in my day such a program was not available. Instead, we were expected to develop our teaching styles and knowledge of teaching techniques based upon the haphazard exposure we had to our instructors.

I spent a good part of eight years of my life (from the age of 14 to 22) traveling around the country leading groups in song. I played guitar, sang, taught them the songs, and led them in singing them. In time, I became comfortable working with diverse groups of people. The smallest groups consisted of only a few individuals while the largest group consisted of five thousand people.

Since graduating with a Ph.D. in 1970, I have attended many seminars and workshops on teaching related to my work at the University of Missouri in St. Louis, Ball State University (Muncie, IN) and Missouri State University (Springfield, MO). The training sessions were sponsored by the universities for which I worked or were offerings at professional association meetings.

Teaching Techniques

Among the teaching techniques I regularly use are:

bullet Lectures.
bullet Whole-class discussion and debate.
bullet Small group discussions (students are given a topic to discuss and meet in the classroom in small groups to discuss them).
bullet In-class Internet investigations.
bullet Internet-based out-of-class assignments.
bullet Showing videos/films and leading discussions at their conclusion.
bullet Student presentations.
bullet Inviting area practitioners to the classroom and interviewing them (including criminal justice / sociology-related practitioners and clientele).
bullet Weekly testing, one chapter per week, using multiple-choice, true-false, fill-in-the-blank, and short essay questions.
bullet Field trips to area institutions, agencies, and organizations related to course content.
bullet Service learning (placing students in course-related work settings in order to give a real-life connection to course content).

If you'd like to see what one of my online syllabi/study guides looks like, please see An Introduction to the American Criminal Justice System.

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