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DAY 6 Microteaching Session (1)
・Goals and Objectives
・Mini-lectures, Feedback, and Discussion
・Reflection

On DAY 6, participants finally conducted their 6-min mini-lectures, which were followed by feedback and discussion to refine the lectures.

A little more than 20 participants were divided into four groups of 5–6. There was an instructor per group, who facilitated the approximately 25-min sessions with a cycle of “Mini-lecture (6 min),” “Feedback from the instructor to the lecturer (3 min),” and “Group discussion on how to improve the lecture (13 min).”

Structuring a 6-min mini-lecture that makes students satisfied with their learning while incorporating an introductory section, main section, and concluding section, is so difficult that you can easily surpass the time limit should you slightly wander from the subject or take a little extra time to explain a topic. Polishing the design for a short-time class lets the lecturer face up to the question, “What are the essential things that I really want the students to learn?”

According to the instructor of the program, the art of advising the trainees in microteaching is “to try to think about ‘first-of-all’ issues instead of techniques.” Students need to restructure the knowledge they received from the teacher to really feel that they learned something in the class. Are there any structures missing when students try to restructure knowledge? First of all, is the knowledge structured correctly so that they can easily restructure it? I realized that it is important to focus on the “structure of knowledge” before “teaching techniques” with these questions to become an expert in conducting classes.
“First of all, did I examine whether the structure of knowledge of this class is appropriate for learning to occur?” I would like to ask myself this question every time I work on class design.