Introduction

Just as you should know your audience before designing and delivering a conference presentation, you should know about your college students before facilitating college course meetings. Teaching a college course the same way every year will yield mixed results, because every year students bring a unique set of learning needs. Some needs will be the same over time, some needs will change gradually with demographic trends, while still others will be radically different for no apparent reason. picture of a diverse group of students So, what does this mean? It means that if you take the time to determine and address a greater number of students' needs, you will increase the probability that more students will have a successful learning experience in your course.

There are a number of things to consider when determining students' learning needs. For instance, English may be a second, third or, in some cases, fourth language for some students. Knowing this will help you decide how many vocabulary words to define operationally. Moreover, teaching college science courses introduces its own set of challenges. After going through this module you should have an idea of the different student characteristics that impact learning, know how to collect and analyze data about those characteristics, and know how to plan or modify learning activities based on this data.