The 12 Teaching Techniques of the Holidays – An Introduction

The 12 Teaching Techniques of the Holidays – An Introduction

12 Techniques of the Holidays is a series of micro-lessons that showcase techniques Lakehead University (LU) faculty are using to engage with their learners! Micro-learning, a way to deliver learning units and activities in small bite-size chunks, is becoming increasingly popular and is an important support to lifelong learning. Most important to micro-learning is that the learner is in control of what and when they’re ready to learn.

On December 1 of each year, since 2020, a new season begins. A new lesson is published to the Teaching Commons web space each weekday for 12 days, and ‘followers’ wake up to lesson highlights in their email inbox. Each lesson is a gift from an LU faculty member in the form of a micro-lesson about a teaching technique that works well for them, with a suggestion for how it might work effectively for you in a teaching context.

Now that we have ‘wrapped’ 3 years of the Teaching Techniques of the Holidays series its time to publish the Trilogy in an easy to download format!

A shout out to the Noun Project

Throughout the 12 Techniques of the Holidays experience, no matter the year, you’re going to notice a series of icons used to visually communicate topic areas and to connect elements together. All icons utilized were retrieved, ready to use, from the Noun Project.

The Noun Project believes that visual language has the power to change the world, so it has built a space to share icons as visual language — a language that allows quick and easy communication no matter who you are or where you are.

Check out their collection, built by a community of designers from 120+ countries. It is the most diverse and extensive collection of iconography ever created.

How might you use ready-made icons in your practice? You don’t have to be an artist to create eye-catching and communicative:

• concept maps
• learning cycle flow charts
• ‘breadcrumbs’ so learners can see paths they can take through your online course space, and
• ‘callouts’ that highlight quick tips, activities, quizzes, etc. to be completed by learners in your online course space.

Hashtags?!

Throughout the 12 Techniques of the Holidays series, you will see these [ # ]. If you are already in the Twitterverse, then you are aware of how to collect information using hashtags (#). If you have been interested in starting to use Twitter, consider starting the adventure now. We have provided you with a set of hashtags connected to each element of the site, along with questions we would love to know your answers to. It is completely up to you, but if you do share what you are learning in your micro-lessons, use the hashtags [#] to give us a ‘shoutout’.