Teaching to mixed levels...

Here's another issue that we battled with all the time -- students with varying skill and/or knowledge levels. Some instructors taught strictly to the specific level the class was advertised at, even if only 2 of the 10 students fit that profile. Other instructors would look for where the majority was at, and teach to that.
It must be very different in, say, a college environment -- but certainly in corporate IT training we're really faced with it a lot, because, um, nobody's going to refuse someone's money because they couldn't prove they met the prereqs. ESPECIALLY not in today's environment, where it seems like we have to pay the students to come take a class... ah for the good old days of 2000 when we had a huge waiting list for classes, and our biggest issue was how to find, recruit, and train Java instructors to meet the demand

So, any thoughts or strategies for coping with differing levels and speeds?
cheers,
Kathy

I try to teach to the class. This might mean that some classes will cover more material than others but I figure that it is better for students to get and understand 75% of the material instead of getting 100% and understanding 50%.

Ugh. That is such a hard problem. Usually I try to talk to both groups. I go over the basics, then add a few advanced comments for the more advanced students. By talking to them directly, they feel included and are less inclined to be bored. I also take them aside and suggest that when we do labs, they should go on and add additional functionality of their own choosing. During the lab I often sit down with them at the beginning and offer suggestions of things they might try. That usually leaves me time go to talk to the less experienced students who are having more fundamental problems.
Our Intro Java courses used to divide into groups of students from COBOL and VB, and groups from C++. Of course the OO students moved much faster. These days, however, it seems that most of the OO people who were going to move to Java have already done so, so the classes are dominated by non-OO people.
I've had bunched of "Advanced" Java classes, though, where the students' previous Java experience was an Intro Java class taken a year or two ago. For that reason, our Advanced Java outline includes topics on I/O and Exceptions that can be skipped or done if necessary. If the students do have the relevant experience, we can still do the topics, just in greater depth.
Even the less experienced students always appreciate "big picture" discussions of architecture and how all these topics fit into their work. That helps bring everybody together again, too.
I also like the paired programming idea here, too, because it can keep people from losing their way as we move on.

Having to think on your feet, fast. I think this is one of the big challenges (and pleasures) of teaching. It's also why no two classes are ever quite the same, which is really nice.
I don't teach classes, I give workshops. They're based on exercises, so I try to have advanced options in mind for the folks who get through something quicker. Once I considered tacking them on to the standard exercises (noted with "for a bigger challenge" or some such) but decided against it - didn't want to discourage those who felt plenty challenged otherwise.
At the beginning I warn everyone that they won't be hearing *everything*, only enough to do the exercises, to encourage both struggling beginners and curious advanced types to yell when they have a question. I think that establishing a question friendly atmosphere helps the advanced folks as much as the beginners. Floating around the room makes a big difference too, giving more chances for contact.
There's a couple advanced questions that come up almost every time, so for those I have a canned extension; others just get covered more spontaneously, which is fun for them and for me.
For the next workshop I'm giving I was able to ask all the participants a few questions already to see where they were and what they wanted to learn. Adds to email work, but makes planning more targeted. I imagine that in a corporate setting this might be possible since people have to sign up in advance?
[ August 20, 2003: Message edited by: Pauline McNamara ]