Geoff Cooper and Sato Juniper - Innovation Award

'Excellence in Teaching - what is it?'

Teaching and learning strategies that work in one context may not be appropriate in another. Our 'tip' therefore is of a general nature. Since we believe that what students do is more important than what teachers do, our main task is to create optimal learning situations. In our context, which is teaching learning and research skills, an open-ended, non-didactic approach is appropriate. We therefore spend 90% of our effort on creating active learning exercises, devoting only 10% effort to presentation. We believe that the more the student is actively engaged the more they will learn, from each other as well as from us (the last resort!).