There is only three months left in this license renewal CE season. Many of us that teach continuing education classes will probably have more students during these 90-days than any other time during this license renewal period. If we apply the new teaching techniques we learned in the CREI classes over the past 18-months, we have plenty time to impress some students and insure that they will take classes from us during the 2020 license renewal period. If students enjoy our classes, if they find us interesting and easy to listen to, and they leave class with new information they can use in their business, they will return for another class in the future. They will also tell their fellow agents about their learning experiences and will encourage them to attend one of our classes. Becoming a proficient instructor is the best way to grow your class attendance. Becoming complacent and not implementing better teaching skills is a sure way to destroy the business you once had.

Let's focus on instructors that teach continuing education because they are the majority of all instructors. Even though there isn’t that many instructors that teach prelicense, when compare to the total number of instructors, they can and should apply the same techniques to their classes.

A good way to begin improving our teaching techniques is to honestly evaluate our current teaching skills. To do this we should grade our own classes, just like we were sitting in the classroom ourselves. When an auditor sits in on one of our classes, they are checking to see if we covered all the material in the course outline. They are also watching to see if we follow all the commission rules. For the purpose of our evaluation, let's ask ourselves if we are making use of specific teaching tools.

What images are we using to stress importance of a specific point we are trying to get across to our students? A picture is worth a thousand words; especially for visual learners. I imagine there are more visual learners attending our class than other learning styles. Generally we retain 10% of the information we read. We retain 30% of the information we see. Images are seen. Images sell product. Look at the corporate world. Almost all advertising makes use of images and we remember them.

What type of multi-media (videos) do we incorporate into our PowerPoint presentations? Videos aid the both the visual and auditory learners. We retain 50% of the information that we read, hear, and see. Videos also assist in recapturing the attention of a student that has lost interest in the class material or we possibly haven't used teaching techniques to reach their particular learning style. Many times a short video clip will bring the point we're trying to make to full circle and make a lasting impression on us. The key of a successful video presentation is it must relate to the point we're trying to get across.

Are we incorporating stories into our classes? Story telling helps the student relate material to a real life situation. People retain 20% of what they only hear. A good story also produces images on the human mind. Stories should confirm what we are telling them in an interesting way. Some people have the ability to incorporate humor into their stories, which makes the story more interesting. Story telling really takes practice. If we use humor in our stories, we must make sure it is funny. If not it may backfire on us and cause our students to loose respect for our teaching style.

I just finished grading my last class and I admit that I have plenty room for improvement. It really brought home to me that I need to spend much more time in course writing and developing presentation skills.

Respectfully,

James Anderson
2018 AREEA President