Nine Ways to Put My Technical Training Experience into My Teaching

Tom Meyer

As a former instructor pilot, my environment had lots of visual, audio, and tactile technology.  It had unique stresses and lots of possible technical breakdowns and complications due to weather, engineering, and human variables.  So I have tried to take nine guidelines into the classroom from the environment in which I used them to cope successfully with co-pilots, dispatchers, and passengers.  Here’s what works well for me:

1.  Create a Trustworthy Environment.
The first principle a successful pilot uses is to create a trustworthy environment. Learning doesn't occur well in threatening environments because our "fight or flight" response to fear seems to block out ordinary reason and critical thinking responses. The students (just like co-pilots and dispatchers) can work better together and with me when the technology surrounding us isn't breaking down or under repair. So another thing I do is put materials for each class into hard copy, into Internet, and onto BlackBoard. That way, we can be prepared for success, even when other parts of the environment are in the process of breaking down.

2.  Provide Meaningful Content – (Make it relevant to student life).
I deliberately choose to create a curriculum or environment that will have relevance to students' lives. I use examples that will assist them in understanding information otherwise seen as puzzling from within the confines of the Wall Street Journal. It is easier for students to see new patterns, if we can build upon patterns that may already be stored in their prior experience and learning.

3.  Offer Optional Choices that Recognize Personality and Differing Levels of Intelligence.

Provide each student choices about how his or her learning will occur. This helps others to take control and to feel that they can manage what they are asked to do. For example, I offer pre-study and post-study bonus point quizzes. As an option bonus points can become important if a student has done poorly and needs to regain some stature. Pre-study quizzes are available on Sundays to my students before I expect them to read an assignment and complete their study guide. It can help them know what they don't know, or convince them that they already know something about what is coming. Post-study quizzes occur on Saturdays and measure what a student mastered after having read an assignment, come to class, spoken with peers, and completed one's study guide. The more sophisticated reason behind my pre and post testing of measurable course objectives lies in my attempt to discover by statistical t-test if what was learned that week exceeded what we might otherwise have expected by random chance alone.

4.   Allow Ample Time for In-depth Learning.

As a fourth principle, I believe in offering ample time that permits flexibility for in-depth study of those areas within a course which a student might find personally intriguing. That's why examinations are scheduled every five weeks, and not more frequently. It takes time to seek and build patterns, and to master and internalize complex processes.

5.   Provide an Enriched Environment.

It's important for learning to occur in an enriched environment that reflects what is being taught. I always make reference to the decisions I had to make within my own personal financial experiences (such as insurance, housing, stocks & bonds, and helping elder parents, or putting kids into college) because my experiences were generally successful and transferable. I have been on every continent except Africa and Australia. So I have met or taken directions from a number of different people each associated with the culture in which they were uniquely raised. These experiences enrich what I have to share with students who may not yet have traveled or interacted with others who come from very different countries or environments.

6.   Enable Collaboration – Teach Working Together in Small Teams!

I believe in collaborative learning. In my courses there are some tasks that can be completed either individually or by serving one another on small teams of two or three persons. For example, everyone has to get involved in writing one or more current issue papers. So I permit them to do the task alone or in small teams. On a two person team, one person writes the paper, and the second illustrates it using PowerPoint. On a three person team, the first person writes the paper, the second person illustrates it using PowerPoint, and the third must create a digitized sound recording that incorporates the work of the first two members which must by playable in class or on the computer in my classroom. This kind of collaboration enables "those who can," to share with "those who can't."

7.  Give Immediate Feedback.

The seventh principle I use in multi-media teaching is immediate feedback. In fact, I begin class by asking what problem, page, definition, or graph each student grappled with the most during the class preparation period. When I find two or three students having the same difficulty or concern, I begin the class with an explanation meant to clarify and reduce their degree of consternation. I also end each class by asking what the muddiest point was. It may provide grounds for continuing that particular explanation when the next class begins. I also pride myself on returning voicemail, email and graded material within 24-48 hours.

8.   Require Mastery and Application to the Real World.

It's important in multi-media to try to teach to the mastery and application level, by challenging students to apply their knowledge in a real world context. For that reason I often ask for PowerPoint slides that show a company or a corner of the globe in which a particular problem or achievement, or discovery seems likely to occur. I also try to share my experience with student personal finance issues, such as how much insurance to buy, how to finance a home, what constitutes a sufficient emergency cash reserve, how to send children to college, and when and how to invest in stocks and bonds. Having flown to every continent except Africa and Australia, I’ve discovered a broader collection of people and cultures than those persons and places with whom and in which I was raised.

9.  Use Lots of Movement.
The final principle I use in multi-media classes is to encourage movement. I do that by bringing students to the board, (or to their whiteboard), or before their onsite camera to help me make up numbers that might go into the type of problem I might be trying to solve. Movement actually fires up both sides of the brain making all eight lobes active. This in turn increases the chances that neural-to-neural connection (or learning) will actually occur. I have been successful in doing this even with (and because of!) a deaf mute student and a second brain-damaged student who both became successful in my classroom.

Summary
Taken together, a supportive, enriched, mechanized class consisting of differently motivated but collaborative students who are given immediate feedback, who find realism, practicality, and wisdom in what they discover, and who can take ownership in their curriculum can master my measurable learning objectives with a strong probability of success!  What seemed to work well within my cockpit while talking with co-pilots, air controllers, and passengers makes good sense in the classroom too.