techniques

The technique I've seen work the best over my schooling and this year has always been personal attention. Teaching the students as a class the basics then going and working with the students on an individual basis to see where they're at and helping them get as far as they are able to go. I've seen it work this year with me in 125 and me fail when I haven't had that one on one attention. This is something my Drafting teacher was good at. He would teach us the basics of CAD and let us out on our own and we would get help when we needed from him or other students. It was very effective and at the time I felt that i knew Autocad very well, along with every student in the class.

Learning for an immediate purpose I think is important also. Not a test but for something the student will enjoy preparing for. With drafting we participated in TSA very heavily and won state championships in different divisions every year I was in the program. Every student in the class worked together to make sure we had plenty of drawing and other different models or bridges to enter. At the end of the year when we would all get our rewards it was a good feeling to get that state champion patch.

Outside of TSA competitions there are plenty of class competitions that can give that extra motivation to students to work hard. I watch those in shum's 340 class and I know most of them are driven just by the desire to be the best. If the students have a good, fun, effective reason to do their work that itself is a motivator.