Single Course Workshop 

This workshop is three-days of intensive preparation to solve a one-time problem, such as preparing the sales force of a company to use laptop computers and sales management software, or preparing plant employees to use new equipment and procedures.  Participants learn to teach a single course. They learn to use specific lesson plans and specific instructional skills to teach specific content to specific students in that course. 

Who Should Attend and Why

• Subject-matter experts, not now instructors, who know the course content and need to learn how teach it.
• Experienced instructors who will first learn the course content and then learn to teach it.
• Supervisors who need to know how the course is taught in order to provide follow-on support.
  

Instructional Process

The course has two components.

The first, Content-Free Microteaching ® (CFM), teaches how to cause error-free learning, and to focus on the planning, teaching, feedback cycle.  Four and one-half hours are devoted to Content-Free Microteaching on the first day.

Following that, on the first day, the participants schedule their “real-content microteaching” (RCM) lessons to be taught during the remainder of the course, and plan their lessons.

During the second and third days of the course, the instructor-trainees practice teaching the content of the course they will later teach to real students.  RCM consists of teaching short (micro) segments of the course.  The trainees learn how to use the already-prepared lesson plans, how to manage classroom / lab activities, how to present the content, and how to coach and evaluate their students to ensure error-free learning.   See Teaching Practice Format to visualize how the learning activities are carried out.

Typical Three-Day Single-Course Workshop

• Use a 12-step instructional process that ensures error-free learning.
• Learn ten skills, including planning the teaching process, selecting words to use, using patterns and stategies, chunking the content, explaining using comparisons and examples, pacing the lesson, focusing on non-verbal feedback, summarizing, seeking feedback, and giving feedback.

• Describe the content coherently.  If they took the course themselves to learn the content they will teach, they need to think and talk about it in order to remember and fully understand what they learned.
• Teach the course as an integrated whole, rather than a series of unrelated pieces or activities.  
• Use the lesson plans efficiently, not skipping important content or practice, but achieving all the lesson and course performance objectives.
• Manage the use of the equipment and media.
• Manage classroom activities effectively, particularly how to keep both the more experienced students and the less experienced students on the same tasks without boredom or anxiety.
• Convey enthusiasm about the content and potential benefits of the skills to be learned.