Teaching Strategies
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Coherence between learning outcomes, assessment activity, and teaching and learning approaches is essential for effective programme and module design. Keeping your learning outcomes in mind will help you select appropriate assessments and teaching strategies.
Select teaching and learning strategies that align with your intended learning outcomes and support students in completing the assessments.
It can be useful to think of teaching strategies in terms of how they support learning outcomes developed using Blooms taxonomy. The diagram below links teaching strategies to Blooms taxonomy.
Selecting Teaching Strategies – what needs to be considered
- Which teaching strategies will guide and facilitate learners towards the achievement of learning outcomes?
- Do those teaching strategies align with the mode of delivery selected for the programme/module?
- Are there discipline specific pedagogies that need to be considered?
- Are the teaching strategies consistent across the programme/module?
- How do you envisage the architecture of the individual modules? E.g. long and thin / short and fat?
- Are the technologies required by the teaching strategies available and familiar?
Further detailed mapping of verbs to teaching strategies
The table below outlines a range of teaching and learning approaches commonly aligned to particular learning outcomes using Bloom’s revised Taxonomy as a framework (particularly his work in the cognitive domain of learning – see Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001). Keep in mind that baseline expectations of knowledge acquisition and retention often underpin learning outcomes framing complex knowledge, skills, and behaviours.
Learning outcome |
Related verbs |
Teaching strategies |
|---|---|---|
| Knowledge acquisition and retention | Recognise, Recall, State, Outline, Identify, Describe, Match, Order, Name, Label, Reproduce. |
|
| Understanding and comprehension | Interpret, Exemplify, Clarify, Classify, Paraphrase, Summarise, Infer, Compare, Explain, Represent, Translate, Illustrate, Categorise. |
|
| Application of knowledge in a given situation. | Apply, Implement, Demonstrate, Illustrate, Interpret, Execute. |
|
| Analysis, classification, structural understanding, hypothesis testing, and evidencing. | Analyse, Differentiate, Organise, Attribute, Appraise, Critique, Compare. |
|
| Evaluating, evidencing and defending judgment or analysis. | Evaluate, Critique, Appraise, Argue, Justify, Explain, Predict, Support, Defend. |
|
| Creating, integrating, or synthesising ideas, concepts or practices coherently. | Create, Generate, Plan, Produce, Design, Modify, Develop, Invent, Write. |
|
These strategies may be used as part of problem-based learning, inquiry-based learning, case-based learning and other teaching and learning pedagogies. Strategies suggested here are neither exhaustive nor prescriptive.
Example of teaching strategies that worked
Examples of digital teaching strategies were presented as part of the Practices in the Disciplines - Opportunities and Challenges of Digital Education event held in November 2021 – Follow this link https://www.tcd.ie/CAPSL/professional-development/workshops/events2122/practices_in_the_disciplines.php
Discipline Specific Pedagogies
Discipline specific pedagogies, often referred to as signature pedagogies are forms of teaching that are common to specific disciplines. Follow this link for more on Signature Pedagogies
Key Takeaways
- Select teaching strategies that support students in achieving the learning outcomes
- Using Blooms taxonomy will help you select the appropriate teaching strategies
- Use teaching strategies that facilitate students learning in order to successfully complete the assessments
- Make sure the teaching strategies align with the modes of delivery selected for the programme/module
- Ensure consistency of teaching strategy across the programme/module.