Planning lessons in advance is common practice for college instructors. However, instructors should also be flexible enough to change lesson plans when they are not working. In an evening course in which many of the students also work full-time, an instructor may find students to be particularly tired. Thus, she may want to shift her plan of starting the class with a lecture and instead begin with a group activity that gets students engaged. For example, in a political science course, the teacher may have small groups of students select one current event about which they will create discussion questions to ask the class.
Flexibility is also necessary when a teacher finds she does not have sufficient time to complete a lesson. In that case, she can substitute a meaningful exercise that takes less time. For example, in a remedial reading class an instructor may have only ten minutes remaining to introduce and assign a peer review. She then decides to substitute a pop vocabulary quiz and incorporate the commonly missed words in homework for the next session. Detecting the impact of time constraints and students' needs is key to being a good college teacher.
By far the teaching approach that students find the most boring is when a college instructor lectures for the entire class. Lectures are valuable, and when done with enthusiasm, they can be educational and engaging. However, they should not be the only strategy in a college instructor's tool belt. For example, in a math course a teacher may write five difficult problems on the board and assign each problem for solving to a small group of students.
A dynamic teaching style keeps the classroom energized and prevents the teacher from becoming predictable and boring. Students need to be given an opportunity to ask and answer each other's questions about the course material. Group work is valuable because it allows students to actively synthesize information through discussion and lets them get to know one another better, which improves the community dynamic of the classroom. Small group work also gives shy students a smaller, less daunting audience with which to share their analyses and viewpoints.
Instructors must hold office hours so that students get the one-on-one attention they sometimes need. A good teacher lets students know that they can ask any question and that she will never demean them for it but instead do her best to answer and promote the student's success in the course in every way she can. In addition to holding office hours, a good college instructor is accessible through email. Responding to students' questions through email conveys a concern and commitment that goes beyond the hours spent in the classroom.
Setting and sustaining rules in a classroom are crucial to maintaining order. Good teachers know that rules provide a structure for the classroom as well as an unambiguous map of accountability for such issues as absenteeism, cheating, and using phones in class. The instructor should communicate her rules and expectations clearly to the students at the beginning of the semester. Sticking to the rules that have been set and publicly announced avoids the problem of being a "pushover" -- a quality that some students may celebrate, but that no student respects.
College instructors are usually teaching in a department or field that interests them and for which they have been educated. However, even the materials that teachers select and assign to students must be of interest to the teacher -- because if the teacher is bored, so are the students. For example, in an English course, good teachers select texts that have inspired them and about which they feel they have something important to say.
Good teachers also keep the material engaging by making it relevant to the students' time and circumstances. Showing students how and why the coursework is relevant outside of the classroom can garner their enthusiasm for the work. For example, in an American Government course, the teacher can tie an explanation of a particular law or process to a current event such as an election or a scandal. Students can then understand how classroom concepts are manifested in the real world, and the class discussion allows students to give their opinions on recent news.