More effective teaching: one year after the National Effective Teaching Institute

There are many opportunities for instructors to learn new instructional techniques that can enhance their teaching experience and make the learning experience move rewarding for students. After attending some seminars at national conferences and on campus, one of the finest is the National Effective Teaching institute (NETI), held annually in conjunction with the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) National Conference. The NETI allows participants to try some of the techniques in the workshop setting, demonstrating how useful and interesting these techniques can be. One of the challenges after attending one of these workshops like the NETI is to decide which techniques to implement. Implementing a lot of new techniques and ideas at the same time can be counterproductive, and can create confusion the students. However, implementing some of these techniques at the appropriate time at the beginning and throughout the semester can make classroom instruction much move interesting and effective. This paper discusses different techniques that the author considered implementing, those implemented, and success stories associated with these techniques, many taken directly from the NETI.