Your major project is your proposal for a 40–60-minute teaching session primaril

Your major project is your proposal for a 40–60-minute teaching session primarily incorporating
the following:
• Higher-order thinking skills*
• Active learning strategies**
• Adult learning theory (andragogy)
The Class Project: Teaching Demonstration Assignment is due in a later module and weekly
modules will include assignments contributing to your final project.
During this module, you will suggest a topic for your proposed teaching session. You can
reference the Class Project: Teaching Demonstration Assignment Instructions as you
develop your idea of an appropriate topic. You will not actually present a teaching
demonstration but will simply propose what you would do. Nonetheless, the project is extensive
and will require doctoral level thought and effort.
INSTRUCTIONS
As you consider possible topics, use the following as guides:
1. Envision a graduate level class which means to us that you’ll primarily emphasize the
higher levels of thought (we’ll review Bloom’s Taxonomy and Anderson and
Krathwohl’s revision of Bloom) rather than just sharing information. Many of your
earlier assignments will emphasize that focus.
2. Choose a topic with which you have experience, or have a high level of interest.
3. Since your presentation is for just one class session, you’ll need to narrow your focus. In
40-60 minutes, at a graduate level depth, you will not cover all of attachment theory, for
instance, but you may be able to focus on one aspect of attachment theory (and analyze or
evaluate that aspect at a high level).
4. Choose a topic that is counseling related—counseling theory, popular/controversial
counseling therapies (for example, individual emotion-focused therapy), a particular
population (for example, eating disorders, childhood physical and sexual abuse, etc.), a
particular area of the counseling field (for example, assessment, psychopathology,
developmental counseling, or multicultural counseling), topics in addiction counseling,
marriage/family counseling, etc. General “counseling” areas such as life coaching could
also be considered but your professor will help you ensure that your topic leads to a
graduate level experience. Whatever you choose, you will have to narrow your focus to
cover the topic in-depth for a graduate level audience. Review topics you encountered in
your counseling-related graduate study and you will find numerous options. Your
professor can add ideas if you get stuck. Your topic needs to have a strong foundation of
scholarly research as expected in graduate study.
5. Write a paragraph that you will submit to the class link. In the paragraph, briefly explain
your idea and provide a rationale for choosing the topic. At this point, you will have only
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a general idea of your focus in your final teaching proposal and the essential elements
(highlighted above) will become more clear as you master the content from the class
texts, videos, and supplemental documents.
At the least, your general proposal for week one will need to include these basic elements:
• What is your narrowed focus? You won’t cover all of CBT for instance, so what
narrowed aspect of that topic will you critique?
• What about your topic needs critique? What problems in the topic need to be
addressed? How could your topic apply in unusual ways? How could you resolve
contradictions in the research? Etc.
• Basic indication of how your narrowed topic may fit into active learning/teaching
strategies, vs. lecture, as a teaching approach.
• In general, what will you critique (recall the project is NOT about sharing
information, per se).
Your professor will give you feedback and most likely will need to help you narrow your focus.
Keep in mind that you will not primarily share information in your proposed lesson (this is not a
lecture proposal), but you will take your students through active learning activities, emphasizing
higher-order thought, and incorporating adult learning principles.
What you choose as your topic is very important since all subsequent assignments build on this
topic, so give it adequate consideration.
In order to get acclimated to using correct APA, please use a current APA title page and in-text
citations and reference page (if needed).
Note: Your assignment will be checked for originality via the Turnitin plagiarism tool.
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Notes
*For the purposes of this class, Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) will include application,
analysis, evaluation, and creation (from Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Anderson and Krathwohl
revision of Bloom)
**All three class texts mentioned active learning/teaching strategies, vs. traditional lecture,
which can be very passive. Here are some of the active learning strategies to which you are
introduced in class:
• Cases analysis/application
• Examination of viewpoints
• Devil’s advocate
• Scenario analysis
• Discussion techniques and questions (Svinicki & McKeachie have excellent content on
this as well as Brookfield; the class content on using discussion for active learning was
rich in detail and suggestions)
• Think/pair/share
• Assumption inventory and analysis
• Point/counter-point
• Critical conversations protocol
• Critical incidents exploration
• Simulations/games, etc.
• Questions formulation techniques
• Peer questioning
• Project based learning
• Peer teaching–several strategies mentioned in the class sources
• Team based learning—several strategies in Svinicki & McKeachie
• Cold calling
• Speaking in tongues