A Practical Guide to Incorporating Best Practices into a College-level Instrumental Methods Course

Abstract

There are a great number of teaching methods and practices which have been thoroughly studied and supported by research, but have not yet achieved widespread use in academia. An Instrumental Methods course offered at the College of Brockport presented a unique setting within which to examine some of these practices. Tools such as POGIL (Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning) and PBL were utilized in place of traditional lecture with a number of other innovative methods being used, including alternative grading and computer simulations. A review of the relevant research on these methods was conducted and summarized. Following this, a scholarly critique was performed on the curriculum of the aforementioned Instrumental Methods course, assessing how successfully these methods were utilized. The educational methods utilized in this course are summarized, with notes addressing their implementation and appropriate usage. Exemplars from the coursework are quoted and linked. Commentary has been provided throughout the attached coursework, outlining suggestions for implementation, explanations of certain elements of activities, and other useful information for teaching them. Whenever possible, emphasis has been placed on the practical implementation of these methods as supported by research conducted in classrooms.