Topics Covered

Questioning, listening and responding; Building rapport; responding to student questions; modeling response; sharing personal experience

• Instructor: Robert Kegan, William and Miriam Meehan Research Professor in Adult Learning and Professional Development
• Student Group: Graduate
• School: Harvard Graduate School of Education
• Course: Adult Development
• Clip Length: 1 minute, 57 seconds (1:27:58-1:29:55)

Go to Kegan Clip 5

Topics Covered

Questioning, listening and responding; Building community; Using humor; Eliciting participation; managing discussion; responding to students; showing appreciation; reporting out; wait time; just-in-time teaching

• Instructor: Robert Kegan, William and Miriam Meehan Research Professor in Adult Learning and Professional Development
• Student Group: Graduate
• School: Harvard Graduate School of Education
• Course: Adult Development
• Clip Length: 4 minutes, 54 seconds (1:00:37-1:05:31)

Go to Kegan Clip 4

Topics Covered

Using humor; Peer learning; Eliciting participation; Making thinking visible; polling; think aloud; lesson planning; time management; small group work; using the space

• Instructor: Robert Kegan, William and Miriam Meehan Research Professor in Adult Learning and Professional Development
• Student Group: Graduate
• School: Harvard Graduate School of Education
• Course: Adult Development
• Clip Length: 2 minutes, 55 seconds (46:26-49:21)

Go to Kegan Clip 3

Topics Covered

Using humor; Eliciting participation; Peer learning; Case teaching; Questioning, listening and responding; Making thinking visible; setting up discussion; reading the room; disciplinary language; taking the temperature; pair share; engagement; time management; rephrasing; polling

• Instructor: Robert Kegan, William and Miriam Meehan Research Professor in Adult Learning and Professional Development
• Student Group: Graduate
• School: Harvard Graduate School of Education
• Course: Adult Development
• Clip Length: 10 minutes, 54 seconds (25:01-35:55)

Go to Kegan Clip 2

Topics Covered

Opening class; learning objectives

• Instructor: Robert Kegan, William and Miriam Meehan Research Professor in Adult Learning and Professional Development
• Student Group: Graduate
• School: Harvard Graduate School of Education
• Course: Adult Development
• Clip Length: 1 minute, 37 seconds (0:08-1:45)

Go to Kegan Clip 1

To invite quieter students into the conversation and afford students a chance to process and articulate their thoughts before sharing them with the whole group, many instructors intersperse think-pair-shares into their lectures. Using routine, structured think-pair-share activities, Kegan gives every student an intellectual partner with which to react and respond to material in real-time. Such exercises also help to break up the potential monotony of the large-enrollment lecture course while ensuring that all students share in the thinking process instead of the outspoken few.

Paying close attention to what’s going on in a classroom can help determine when to delve deeper on a given topic and when to re-teach something that may have been confusing. Through keen observation and “show of hands” solicitations, Bob Kegan stays attuned to the classroom’s ebbs and flows. Regular “temperature-taking” allows him to adapt lesson trajectories accordingly and gain insight into student understanding.

Silence in the classroom can feel uncomfortable for students and instructors alike, but processing information takes time. Waiting for several seconds after asking a question so that students, particularly introverted ones, are able to gather their thoughts before responding is proven to expand participation and improve the quality of student responses. In this video, Bob Kegan and Dan Levy discuss their strategies for using wait-time in the classroom, which Levy calls “one of the most underused weapons that an instructor has at his/her disposal.”

Instead of the “I talk, you listen” structure of traditional lectures, mixing up the activities in a lecture course is likely to nurture deeper understanding. Bob Kegan peppers activities throughout his lectures, adding variety and dynamism into what could otherwise be a lengthy, teacher-centered lecture. In this video, Kegan suggests that university instructors think more like bike instructors: It’s not enough to just talk about your content, you must give students a chance to “get on” and try it out.

Students enter each new classroom asking themselves a flurry of questions: What will the instructor be like? Do I have enough background knowledge to be successful? Will the classroom feel safe enough for me to share ideas? Research shows that when instructors create learning environments where students feel safe, valued, and respected, those instructors create the conditions necessary for all students to achieve at their potential. In this video, Bob Kegan discusses the steps he takes to cultivate such an environment.

An unenergetic, monotone delivery of instruction can easily stifle a student’s intellectual curiosity. The simple addition of humor, however, might keep students more engaged. It has even been shown to increase student learning. By cleverly sprinkling witticisms, amusing anecdotes, and self-deprecating quips throughout his lectures, Bob Kegan keeps the tone light in what can oftentimes be serious, tense subject matter. The result is a welcoming environment in which students feel comfortable and close to their professor.

It is tempting, even natural, to want to present material exactly how you like to receive it, but if you do this you may be reaching only a small cohort of students. In reality, students receive and process information in a variety of ways. Lecturers may reach more students by varying the ways they present material and offering multiple entry points for complex concepts. In this video, Bob Kegan describes the range of tactics he uses to teach students in his large-enrollment lecture course.

Instead of using class time to deliver a pre-written speech, it can be helpful to spend part of the lecture thinking aloud for your students. Exposing your own thought processes can be a powerful, authentic way to acclimate students to a discipline. Sharing experiences that helped you understand concepts more deeply can additionally offer students a window into your intellectual journey, adding a human dimension to the subject matter. In this video, Bob Kegan discusses how thinking out loud during lectures models the reasoning with which he expects his students to become fluent and...