Developing your teaching skills (Cambridge University Library)

Reasons for attending this session were to improve and find out more about the following:

• Teaching skills in general
• Learning styles and how they should be considered when creating learning interventions
• Teaching techniques being used by other staff at other institutions

The event was held at Cambridge University Library and consisted of the following sessions:

• Adapting your teaching to fit different learning styles (by Suzanne Griffiths and Clare Humphries)
• Engaging users’ with interactive teaching sessions using the Cephalonian method (by Isla Kuhn and Clair Castle, University of Cambridge)
• Developing practical teaching skills (by Chris Powis, University of Northampton)
• Sharing best practice (by Jo Harcus, Cambridge Librarian, TeachMeet Team)

Sessions in more detail

Adapting your teaching to fit different learning styles (by Suzanne Griffiths and Clare Humphries)

Suzanne Griffiths and Clare Humphries’ session began by considering learning styles and how a person’s own learning style has an affect the types of interventions they create. To enable you create effective interventions that could encompass a variety of learning styles they recommend developing a knowledge and understanding of your own personal learning style. To do this they provided a questionnaire that allowed you to assess your own style of learning. The types of learning styles commonly indentified in literature and referred to by Suzanne and Clare are the following:

• Activist
• Reflector
• Theorist
• Pragmatist

These styles were noted by Suzanne and Clare in their presentation slides as consisting of the following traits:

Activist

• Open minded –try anything once
• Act first and consider later
• Thrive on new challenges
• Risk takers
• Easily bored

Reflector

• Prefer to stand back and observe situations from different angles
• Good listeners – they seek the opinion of others before making their minds up
• Thorough and methodical
• Cautious – not risk takers and not very assertive

Theorist

• Solve problems in a logical steps
• Perfectionists
• Prefer rational and objective solutions rather than ambiguous or subjective solutions
• Dislike disorder and uncertainty

Pragmatist

• Like to test new ideas
• Practical down to earth problem solvers
• See problems and opportunities as a challenge
• Impatient
• Task and people orientated

In addition to providing information on the various learning styles they Suzanne and Clare also pointed out how people with each of these styles can learn more effectively or less effectively as a result of teaching practice and many of the points they highlighted for each style can be seen below:

Best learning opportunities

• Activist – excitement or drama, a range of activities, they can participate

• Reflector – given the opportunity to review what has happened, when they are allowed to watch and think about activities
• Theorist – when there is a structured and clear purpose, can listen or read about ideas
•  Pragmatist –a strong link between the content and their role, opportunity to implement what they have learned as soon as possible

Worst learning opportunities

• Activist – when it involves a passive role, when working on their own, where data is required to be interpreted

• Reflector –situations that involve action without planning, forced into the limelight
•  Theorist – involved in unstructured activities, situations where emphasis on emotions is required
• Pragmatist – learning is at a distance from reality, no perceived immediate relevance or practical benefit

Engaging users’ with interactive teaching sessions using the Cephalonian method (by Isla Kuhn and Clair Castle, University of Cambridge)

Isla Kuhn and Clair Castle use the Cephalonian method to deliver learning interventions to their students and they demonstrated its ability to make interventions more interesting by using it on the delegates.

To achieve this they taped pictures that contained questions beneath the seats and all the delegates were asked to check if a specific type of picture was attached to their seats. When a picture was found each person then asks the question written on the back of the picture. This method enabled Isla and Clair to answer key questions about their library service but in a more interesting and involving way, and it also enabled all of us to witness this method in action. Although I am aware of this method it was good to see it being used and it was also interesting to discover that Isla and Clair commonly use this method to deliver interventions.