Challenges
Providing a suitable degree of challenge for learners in each session is key to helping them progress. Your task as a tutor is to combine the right level of challenge with appropriate personal support and encouragement.
The information you gain about learners through initial and formative assessment will help you do this.
Get the level of challenge right, and learners feel they have had a rewarding experience.
But if there is too much or too little challenge, many learners will leave the course.
Even where learners say that their main reasons for attending are social ones, part of your role is to encourage them to fulfill their potential and have a rewarding and personalised learning experience.
Five ways to make learning challenging and rewarding
- Promote active learning so that learners take an active role in the learning process and contribute to planning for their ongoing development.
- Differentiate learning activities and the way you handle them so that each learner is challenged appropriately.
- Increase the variety of methods and resources to make learning interesting and memorable for all learners.
- Encourage learners to practise or study independently between sessions.
- Constantly evaluate your own practice to make sure learners are achieving what you hope they will achieve.
Discuss with your Subject Learning Coach and other colleagues further ways in which your teaching and learning can be more challenging.