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When I was doing my PGCE, the tutors told us to remember two things:

1. The average student attention span is 15 mins.
2. The key to successful teaching is group work.

From experience (as a full time lecturer in a University), I have always found the best approaches to ensure students learn the material is through task or even scenario based group work, supplemented by short 15-20 minute lectures.  with this mix, I have always gained positive feedback from students and very high success rates in assessment.

hope it works out for you.

Hi All

I hope you can help me with this one, one of my supervisors has told me to start writing chapters for my Dissertation and then develop papers from these. My 2nd supervisor has told me to do the opposite, write papers and then develop these into the dissertation during the writing up period.

I am now totally confused, as both are accepted experts in the field which should I do?

Hi JB

Everybody has given you some really good advice here, I would suggest using your dissertation or project as a test for your PhD research question / topic. What I mean by this is using your dissertation / project to articulate and test the problem, thus providing the foundation for further and more detailed research (the PhD), whilst also justifying the need for the study.