Joanne Beriswill, the Mississippi State University John Grisham Master Teacher for 2017, gave a lecture at the Mitchell Memorial Library Monday. In her lecture, Beriswill, an associate professor in the MSU Department of Instructional Systems and Workforce Development, discussed her personal teaching strategies for both graduate and undergraduate courses.
Beriswell said one of her favorite teaching tools was the attention, relevance, confidence, satisfaction (ARCS) model.
“If I were on a desert island with one teaching strategy, I would take (John) Keller’s ARCS model with me, because it is that powerful,” Beriswill said. “It’s powerful enough that it helps me get my nephews and nieces to take the garbage out. I can get different people to do things for me when I need it done. I can get my students to wake up and pay attention. It is the be all-end all.”
The ARCS model is based off the idea of the four key elements in the learning process sustaining a learner’s motivation.
“If you’ve got someone who’s not motivated, I guarantee you can go down the list and find out why they’re not motivated,” Beriswell said.
Beriswell also discussed a teaching technique called scaffolding, where students are given much support at the beginning of learning a new concept, with support being gradually removed as the concept becomes more familiar.
”Sometimes, when there’s a new task, they’re not strong enough to hold themselves up yet,” Beriswell said. “There’s too much going on, and they just need a little bit of help.”
She said students would always need scaffolding the first time they do something, and it was important for instructors to remove it gradually enough for students to absorb the concept. She said detailed descriptions and examples were forms of scaffolding she used in her teaching.
Grisham Master Teachers represent a small number of MSU faculty recognized for teaching ability with an endowment given to MSU by the Family of MSU alumnus and bestselling author John Grisham.
The program has been in place since 1993.
“There’s a committee that meets every fall semester and into the spring called the University Instruction improvement committee, and they’re task is to get the nominations for various awards and they select the Grisham, among some other awards,” said MSU physics professor and Center for Teaching and Learning Director Jim Dunne.
Beriswill holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of South Florida and master’s and doctorate degrees from Indiana University