Teaching for OLLI: A Free Course

Teaching for OLLI: A Free Course

Are you a volunteer OLLI instructor who would like to sharpen your skills, or an OLLI member who dreams of teaching an OLLI course some day? Join us in June for one or more classes on teaching for OLLI, taught by one of OLLI’s best instructors with decades of teaching experience. The course has four sessions and participants may take one or all of the sessions they think are appropriate. This class is free to all OLLI members.

Instructor Katherine Kidd has taught three courses for OLLI and loves crafting courses for OLLI students. Katherine earned her master’s at Harvard and her doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania. She was honored as Teacher of the Year at Fairfield University where she directed the International Studies major.

All classes are held at Berkshire Community College, located at 1350 West Street in Pittsfield. To register, click here or call 413.236.2190. Pre-registration is required.

Monday , June 4: 1:30 – 3pm

Session One: Teaching for OLLI 101 This session reviews the basics about the OLLI course structure, the instructor form, working with the A/V team, requests for assistance with marketing the course (interviews on radio and TV and the OLLI open house), flexibility in length of courses, variety of formats, enrollment limitation options, course evaluations etc.

Monday , June 11: 1:30 – 3pm

Session Two: Teaching Adults in a Non-credit Environment Even experienced teachers may not have taught adults in an environment where there are only carrots and no sticks to encourage engagement. This session includes information about how adults learn differently from younger learners, successful methods for engaging adult learners, teaching strategies to avoid, ways to build in options for deeper engagement in the class, and more.

Monday , June 18: 1:30 – 3pm

Session Three: Structuring a Course Most courses that OLLI instructors offer could be taught for a full semester or a year but OLLI semesters are traditionally 4 – 6 weeks. In this session, we will consider how to narrow and prioritize the material to share in a course. The goal will be to help participants find a good balance between depth and breadth when preparing their course materials. The option of planning a series of courses on one subjects, such as Greig Siedor’s courses on World War One, Richard Matturro’s series on Shakespeare’s plays, or Phil Halpern’s History of 20th Century Comedy series, will also be discussed.

Monday , June 25: 1:30 – 3pm

Session Four: Sharing Teaching Plans In the final session, participants will have the option of sharing ideas for how they would like to structure their course and to get feedback from each other, experienced OLLI instructors, and curriculum committee members.

Click here for more information on Teaching for OLLI.