Making the Invisible Process Visible

The role of an instructor involves making abstract ideas tangible and complex processes comprehensible.  Doing so often requires showing, not just telling.  A more active or hands-on approach is often called for. As such, we frequently need to walk our students through a process (sometimes literally) to understand it and guide them as they construct meaning and understanding of new information.  By doing this, we are making what could be an invisible process visible to our learners.   In other words, we are creating new knowledge or skills comprehensible via interactive instruction.

Instructional Approaches and Strategies

Modeling
It is a strategy in which instructors demonstrate how to complete an activity or task prior to the students’ beginning to act (Coleman, 2020). 

Active Learning
Teaching for active learning is a teaching approach in which the instructor designs and implements classroom activities that offer students an ongoing opportunity to engage with the new knowledge during the lesson/unit/course.

Scaffolding
Scaffolding involves breaking up the learning skill, activity, or process into manageable bites and providing students assistance with each part as needed. 

Flipped Learning
According to the Flipped Learning Network (2014), “Flipped Learning is a pedagogical approach in which direct instruction moves from the group learning space to the individual learning space, and the resulting group space is transformed into a dynamic, interactive learning environment where the educator guides students as they apply concepts and engage creatively in the subject matter.”