Good teaching guide
The following guide is not intended to be a comprehensive guide of the way to teach classes - there is no absolutely correct way and in time everyone develops their own style. The aim of the guide is to help a new teacher prepare for their classes and also to pass on some hints and tips for running classes.
Please make sure you have also read Joining The Faculty
For those who like executive summaries, I can summarise the approach as: - Prepare for what you want to cover - Prepare for what you might need to cover - Make the class your own - Keep control of the class while giving it
Apologies in advance if I am now about to lecture you on stuff you already know.
Preparation for a class
So, you want to give a class? Good for you - EVE University relies on people giving up their time to share knowledge on subjects they understand to new players. So, best be prepared for it, right?
I can't emphasise enough the importance of having class notes prepared in advance and having a clear idea of:
- what you are covering; and
- what order you are covering it in; plus
- what you might need to cover depending on questions that get asked.
I'll cover the last of these in a bit but for now let's focus on what you want to cover.
EVE University's Syllabus Library is a great starting point for this. With any luck, you'l find a pre-prepared class syllabus that you can crib from. These are a great resource, so use them. They'll help to jog your own memory of what needs to be covered and also helps classes taught to have a more uniform feel to them.
However, don't just print out the syllabus and then advertise and run the class.
Have you ever tried presenting someone elses work? I give client presentations and training presentations regularly at work and one thing I can honestly say is that it is always harder to give a presentation that you didn't write yourself. Writing a presentation yourself, even simply reordering the points to an order that makes the most sense to you leads to a presentation that flows better and feels more natural to you as you present it, and so more natural to your audience as they listen to it.
So, if you are starting off with a syllabus from the library, I'd still go through the following steps.
All in all, I reckon I spend an hour or so preparing for an hour long class.
Class notes
The best way to prepare for your class is to write out some class notes.
Class notes come in all forms, I prefer to use a notebook, other people I know use a text document of some form. The level of detail in class notes will depend on your personal preference. At the least, I think that they ought to contain:
- Major headings of the topics you want to cover
- Sub headings to remind you of the order you want to cover things
- Notes to remind you of the points you want to make.
As an example, here is a section of possible notes for a class on research and production:
Nothing earth shattering but it helps the instructor to remember to cover all the points and gives an order. I find that by giving a few bullet point items to cover, I still speak fluently and I don't simply read out my notes (as there are no full sentences to read)
So, you've got your class notes, you're almost ready for the class. You know what you want to cover but students have an annoying habit of asking questions that don't quite fall within your neat class notes.
Additional notes
Depending on the class, there may be little need for additional information. However I'd hazzard a guess that most classes have related topics that you might not intend to cover, but you might be asked about.
A final stage of preparation for a class is to think through the related topics and prepare some short notes on those topics that might come up. It will help you to manage the class and deal with questions and also make you look good.
For example, for a production and research class, I might not intend to cover POS use in great detail beyond using them for high sec research but I would prepare a seperate page of class notes on all aspects of POSes. Clearly there is no need to go into as much detail as you would have for your main topics, as an instructor always has the "beyond the scope of this class" option, but giving a general idea of a related topic if you have time can add real value to your class.
As another example, for a class on caldari ships - basically a run through caldari ships, I also prepared a set of notes on shield tanking (active and passive), railguns and missiles, plus drones and ECM. Nothing detailed but if the question came up, I wanted to be abe to cover the subject in a structured manner and cover the main points.
Final preparations
So, you now have:
- Class notes, setting out the class as you want to give it
- Supplementary notes to help deal with questions
The final thing that you might consider doing is to prepare a Note in-game of all the websites and items that you might want to link during the course of the class in the order you'll want to link them.
Giving the class
Advertise the class a week in advance if possible to ensure as many people as possible get notice and can arrange to attend. Longer than that and they might forget come the day and if you only give people a couple of days, you might find attendance is on the low side.
For fleet-based classes, it is a great idea to advertise a 15 minute fleet sign up period when advertising the class. For example, "fleet will form from 19:45 to 20:00 and class will start promptly at 20:00 - latecomers will not be able to attend" (you might choose to be more lenient on the day but no need to let people know that in advance!)
On the day, make sure you have all your notes to hand and get there ahead of time to prepare. You want to be there waiting for students to arrive and start on time. Remember, people are taking time out to listen to you - yes, it is a great service you are doing but also they might only have an hour and you owe it to them to keep your end of the bargain.
The best classes I have been to (in EVE and in real life) are those that:
- have a clear structure;
- are presented well;
- deal efficiently with questions; and
- maintain control of the class.
Have a clear structure
You'll have a very good idea of how you want the class to run. The best way to make sure this happens is to let your class know this in advance.
EVE University classes are often run on Teamspeak with an in-game channel and some instructors like to run EVE Voice on the in-game channel.
From a professional education standpoint, the following method of teaching (lesson plan structure) has an incredibly high success rate for the students to retain the information you are teaching them, which can be summed up in the following three point guide.
- Tell them what you are going to tell them (Introduction, and what you are going to talk about)
- Tell them (Go through each item that you are wanting to cover)
- Tell them what you've told them (Summarise what you've just told them and list each of the points you've just covered)
At the start of the class, spend a few minutes telling people about the class. You might like to cover:
- A brief overview of what you will be covering
- How you intend to use the channels and teamspeak
- Whether you want a volunteer to link items for you as you talk about them
- How you intend to deal with questions
People want to be helpful, so use them in a controlled manner:
- You'll have people linking things you talk about in the class channel, but you can arrange a volunteer in advance to limit channel spam and also to make sure you don't ask "can someone link an Avatar blueprint please" and get 30 helpful links!
- Likewise, making sure someone is recording will mean the inevitable "Is anyone recording this?" question is quickly answered.
- You might even ask for a volunteer to keep an eye on corp chat and drag late comers into the class channel.
So, my introduction for my production and research class might look something like:
Presentation tips
Everyone has their own style - my own is relatively chatty - but I have the following hints and tips that ought to help you when setting out.
Always make clear when you are stating your own opinion, rather than facts and recognise other opinions may exist. For example, "The caracal is a great ship and I would normally passive tank it for missions, although you'll see people active tanking it as well. It comes down to personal preferences. For a passive tanked caracal, you'd fit with..." is a lot better than "A caracal should be passive tanked for missions. You need to fit...". For a start, I know I can argue both sides and the last thing you want is to have people arguing with you in the middle of a class - recognise up fron their view is valid and present your own. Very Happy
Always be polite. The moment you start raising your voice to someone, you've lost control. Keep polite and your class is on your side - if someone keeps misbehaving, eject them and carry on. Your class will thank you for dealing with the trouble maker and you come across a lot more professional.
Don't rush. You'd be surprised how fast you run through material. It might seem to you like you are taking your time, but often you will be going through things more quickly than you think. Take time to explain things, slow down your delivery, and don't be afraid to pause for a second or two before answering a question. You'll sound and come across better for it.
I remember the first time I was recorded for a presentation course - if you think hearing yourself recorded is awful, seeing yourself is a whole new world of pain - I felt my presentation had been slow, faltering and I stumbled a lot. I was pleasantly surprised to see it came across a lot more fluent and not too slow at all - although I did discover I had an unfortunate tendency to say "erm" and fiddle with the papers I had!
Find out what your annoying habits are and cut them out. I, erm, say "erm", a lot, erm, less than I used to now. Which is, erm, good.
Don't get side tracked. Especially when questions come up, it is tempting to answer them right away. However this might be a totally different part of the class than what you are currently talking about. It is much easier to follow for everyone if your story/explanation progresses logically, so do your best not to get side tracked. If necessary, answer questions with "I'll cover this later on in the class".
Practice makes perfect. Players will memorize the subject matter better if they are able to put the knowledge into practice. Therefore, adding a practical part to your class greatly enhances its effectiveness, as well as making it more entertaining for the students. This is ofcourse not possible with all classes, but a Research & Production class for example can be greatly enhanced by handing out 1run BPCs at the start of the class. Then, as the class progresses, the teacher talks the students through all the required steps to install, run and deliver their production job.
Dealing with questions
As you will have seen from my mock introduction above, my preference is to ask people to use the in-game channel for questions. I find that it gives me more control over the class and allows me to deal with questions when I want to and to defer large topics.
- If you are going to defer a topic then let the class know.
- When answering a question from the in-game channel, repeat the question in teamspeak before answering it - recordings will make more sense and there might be people solely listening on teamspeak.
- If you have a lot of similar questions then take a short bit of time out to consolidate them into a short topics - "A lot of people are asking questions relating to passive shield tanking so I'm going to take a bit of time out to cover that as a topic" - if appropriate.
- If someone asks a question you are not sure of the answer of, then don't answer definitively. You might think you know the answer, in which case let them know: "Someone has asked how moon mining works - I know the rough details but it is a bit beyond the scope of this course, so if it is ok with you, I'll leave that for a more detailed course on POSes".
The important thing with questions is to deal with them when you want and to stay in control.
Keeping control
Speaking of staying in control, it's vital. You are the instructor and this is your class.
This means that you need to discipline:
- anyone chatting in the class channel (ask them to take it private)
- anyone continually trying to answer questions "for you" in the class channel ("please could those of you responding to questions in the class channel stop - I know you are trying to be helpful but it is a distraction and I intend to cover points as I go along")
- anyone misbehaving in channel
- anyone repeatedly speaking on teamspeak.
In the first instance be polite and ask them to stop.
If they don't then do kick them from the Teamspeak channel or in-game channel. Using the in-game channel commands, you can choose to mute them for a period as well.
Summary
- Prepare for your class, including those optional questions and topics that might arise
- Make it your own class, presented in the order and manner that you feel comfortable with
- Control the class and questions
