Tips for teaching gifted and talented students in an online course.
1.Ramp it up. Make it as challenging as possible.
2.Rely totally on testing, not on homework. No busy work. Smart students want and need the challenge, but not the boring repetitive simple stuff. Challenging is good, more work is not.
3.Allow quiz outs. If they know it, let them prove it and move on.
4.If you grade based on attendance and penalize for late work and other
stuff not related to learning and knowledge, your smart, and really smart, male
students will drop out, mentally if nothing else.
If you would have flunked Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, don't even try
teaching the gifted and talented.
5.Let them teach. Let them create content.
6.Let them go. Forget your control urges, and if they go off on a tangent, let them. It's called a "teachable moment" when you lose control and it's almost always the most exciting time of the course for both students and you.
7.Get ready to have a great experience.
From "Enabling Learning and Completion," a new chapter in the Fourth Edition of Advanced Teaching Online, by William A. Draves, just released.
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