Experience of Multiple Instructors About Student Presentation Based Teaching (SPET) Approach

Many college instructors are hesitant to adopt student active teaching approaches. Student activity-based classroom teaching may require a lot of time investment in designing and conducting student activities. Also, student activities during the class period may lead to inadequate coverage of the course content mentioned in the syllabus. Incomplete course coverage and the amount of effort required on the part of an instructor for designing active teaching strategies are cited as the common hindrances in adopting active student teaching. To address these widely recognized inhibiting factors, we recently implemented a new student-active teaching approach. This approach is based on the students’ presentation and hence termed as student presentation based effective teaching (SPET). The SPET approach is designed to address the key components of effective teaching. However, to understand the efficacy of SPET for different instructors we implemented it in five courses offered during the same semester. The Learning Resource Division faculty analyzed the data and interviewed the instructors that implemented SPET. Here we present the response and insights garnered from different instructors. Participating instructors reflected their views about the advantages and challenges associated with the adaptation of SPET.