Last week, we were introduced to Instructional Skills Workshop (ISW) at LSC-Tomball.
Under the tutelage of Earl Bloor and Charles Miller, a group of 6 people from across the district (Kim Hubbard, Claire Phillips, Pam Husband, Jim Derakhshandeh, Carrie Johnson, and Juan Primo) dived into the the task of learning more about Instructional Skills and applications.
The week proved to be a handful of work as we put 40 hours of hard work and hands-on experience on the ISW process.
The ISW is a program is designed around a small group format to improve the teaching techniques of new and experienced professors and instructors.
The sessions are build around a teaching-feedback cycle in which a real 10 minute mini-lesson is presented to a group of peers (professors, instructors) followed by a feedback session that contains video, face-to-face verbal and written components from the participants related to the teaching practices of the presenter. The feedback is carried on with the help of a ISW trained facilitator (currently, Kim, Claire, Pam, Jim, Carrie, or Juan) and the results are noted and tracked.
The cycle is repeated two more times (for a total of 3 cycles) trying to incorporate the feedback from the previous sessions into the next one.
The ISW process is highly experiential and it allows the participants to reflect on his/her teaching practices with a focus on the learning process and not on the content of the session.
During the 5 days of training, I can say that I had a real chance to learn a great deal of new concepts that I will be implementing in my classes.
As value added, I had the opportunity to interact, get in touch and learn from Earl, Charles, Kim, Claire, Pam, Carrie and Jim, not only as co-participants but also as colleagues and members of our Lone Star College System Family.
To Earl and Charles: Thanks for your expertise, honesty, and more important, for caring.
Thanks for doing this "good work" Juan, to start this blog! As confessed during the practice sessions, use of technology is not my forte BUT I believe strongly that we need to model the use of the best of the new for our students. SO I am enthusiastically signing into this blog with the hope that it will continue to be a communications medium we can use at Lone Star as we move forward with this project.
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