So it begins. The Art of Teaching: Best Practices from Master Educators.

The first lecture sets the scene and Professor Allitt talks about the changing nature of education and his own career as a student, a lecturer and as Director of the Emory Centre for Teaching and Curriculum. All very interesting. It’s the second lecture, ‘The Board Range of Learners’ that where the course really starts. Why does everything really start in the second lecture? He argues that we are all teachers in one way or another and that teaching is one of the fundamental human activities. In addition, if you want be a good teacher, you have to be a good learner. To that end he thinks that one of the best ways of learning is to teach and that we should give our students every opportunity to teach each other. Several students are interviewed to say how much they have gained from doing this. Peer teaching? Peer marking? All very MOOCy form the Old Skool Prof :-).

There are various interviews with lectures and students throughout the course who talk about their various experiences in a wide range of disciplines. This makes the watching experience a bit more like a documentary than a traditional lecture and gives viewpoints other than Professor Allitt’s. Professor Allitt's philosophy (his inner teacher?) seems to be to help every student to be their best whereas one lecturer in Business marks on a curve, making marks a competitive process in an attempt to mirror the business world.

Prof A, as I shall now call him, argues that one of the key elements is building a rapport with your students and then inducing them to think in new ways. Teaching is not just about transmitting a body of knowledge but also a way of thinking. For example students need to know about being an historian as much as they need to know about history itself. Also, as a teacher you need to know when you don’t know and a capacity for self-criticism is an essential part of professional development.

This lecture, and to an extent the one before, made me think about teaching, which is I guess the aim of any lecture. Prof A and the other lectures interviewed seem to care about their subject, teaching and their students. So far all of them seem to see teaching as way of passing their excitement about their subject onto others. The key themes that have come through to me so far are that teaching is a vital component of being an academic and the role of reflection on their professional development. All things that are at the heart of the HEA Fellowship scheme that I’m involved in setting up and in the Post Graduate Teaching Certificate we are about to rewrite.

“Teaching is more than a job. It's a responsibility"

“Teaching is more than a job. It's a responsibility—one of the greatest responsibilities in civilized society. Teachers lay bare the mysteries of the world to us. They train our minds to explore, to question, to investigate, to discover. They ensure that knowledge is not lost or forgotten but is instead passed on to future generations. And they shape our lives in limitless ways, both inside and outside of the classroom.”

So says Professor Patrick N. Allitt of Emory University and the lecturer on ‘The Art of Teaching: Best Practices from Master Educators’, a course from the Teaching Company. The Teaching Company has been running since 1990, based on the concept of finding the top 1% of college professors in the world selected entirely for their ability to teach (now there’s a thought) and using feedback from customers to help craft courses into formats uniquely designed for the lifelong learner. Over 10 million courses have been sold and they have a 100% satisfaction guarantee, “If a course is ever less than completely satisfying, you may exchange it for another of equal value at any time. You may also return any course, within one year of initial purchase, for a full refund.” Shall we try that here?

I know I’m a bit sad but over the last few years as I walked to work along the seafront, I’ve gone through the following ‘Great Courses’ -

• Origins of the Human Mind
• How We Learn
• Theories of Human Development
• Story of Human Language
• History of the English Language
• Legacies of Great Economists
• Economics
• Understanding the Fundamentals of Music
• Elements of Jazz: From Cakewalks to Fusion
• History of Russia: From Peter the Great to Gorbachev

However, times are changing and what place does the Teaching Company have in this brave new world of MOOC and OER? (I have signed up for numerous MOOCs but sadly never completed any. Their time based nature means if you fall behind you’ve had it. Perhaps MOOCS are the new exercise bikes?) The Teaching Company are still here but do have a 70% sale on all of their courses at the moment. Hence my £29.99 investment in ‘The Art of Teaching: Best Practices from Master Educators’. There are twenty six lectures each lasting around thirty minutes on topics including Teacher Student Relationships, Creativity and Innovation, Dynamic Lecturing and Maintaining Your Enthusiasm. There is also a course booklet with a summary of each lecture, a toolkit of tips for each topic and a bibliography. I get a DVD and online version of the lectures and they can be watched at any point in the future. So far so good but is it any good? Can I learn anything form this ‘course’? Will I make to the end? Does it matter? How does this slightly old skool approach match up in 2014? I bet you can’t wait to find out! I’m going to make notes as I go through and blog about it here.

Wish me luck :-)