Just In Time Teaching
The excerpts below were taken from the editorial "Just in Time Teaching" by James Rhem featured in the Tomorrow's Professor mailing list. Rhem's editorial highlights presentations by Scott Simkins, professor of economics at North Carolina A&T and colleagues from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) at the inaugural meeting of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
A quick and dirty description of "Just In Time Teaching" (JiTT) compares it to putting the "Study Questions" once found at the end of textbook chapters up on the Web. But there's a lot more to it. For one thing, the affect generated by JiTT differs markedly from that associated with a student pondering study questions alone in the dorm. The questions and exercises posted for students on the Web before each class meeting become the grist for that class meeting, not a quiz per se or a tidying up of understanding before getting on with the dispensing of another huge chunk of content. In this pedagogy, student questions, student understanding (and misunderstanding), student learning become the focus of instruction, and dialogue replaces lecture.
..."This approach lets us get into students minds," says Simkins, "it helps make their thinking visible." "It changes the character of the classroom," he continues. "The comments we are responding to are 'their stuff,' not my stuff from lectures or stuff from the book; so there's a different kind of involvement and a different level of involvement."
To view the entire editorial follow this link: Just In Time Teaching