I have a fairly simple teaching style. I know as much about the subject as I can, and I try to figure out what the most important information is to deliver. In the case of the CISSP seminar, I knew, from my own analysis of the exam when I wrote it, that the fundamental principles in the field of information security are the most important items to know. Yes, it's good if you know a bunch of technical details, because there will be questions on technical details, to determine whether you know about the technology at all. But the really crucial things to know are the principles of security. So, I have analyzed the enormous amount of material that can be covered in the seminar, and concentrate on stressing these principles. I know an awful lot about security, and have learned even more from facilitating the seminars, so I always have much more material then can be delivered.
But others have different teaching styles. One of the instructors had an extremely interesting style, which it took me a while to analyze. As I taught with him, multiple times, I realized that each time he taught he presented the material in a slightly different way, even though he presented the same actual material, every time. Eventually I realized that he was working with cycles of the volume of his voice, the emotional intensity that he was using to deliver the material, and the speed that he was talking at. Because the number of stages in each of these three cycles was different, he would cycle through differences in volume, tone, and speed in an almost inexhaustible variety. None of this had any relation to what he was actually talking about: as I said, the information was always the same. But, because of the variety of volume, timing, and intensity, he always got very good reviews as an instructor, because he kept the candidates entertained by the variety of the ways that he was presenting.
One of the other instructors was very big into mastery teaching. Mastery teaching is a style that emphasizes that I am the teacher, I am the one who knows, and you are the ignorant peasants to whom I am forced to deliver this information. In order to do this, whenever he was asked a question he would snap back an immediate answer. He never once indicated that he didn't know, or would do some research and get back to the questioner with an answer later. Unfortunately, his mastery of the subject was not as solid as his mastery of the students. He would immediately answer a question, whether he actually knew the answer, or not. And very frequently, it was not. When I taught with him, I had to be extremely careful, when he had given an egregiously erroneous answer to some questioner. I would try to imply that I was simply restating what he had just said, in a different way, and then present the actual facts of the situation.
I, of course, reviewed the textbooks that were produced for the CISSP seminars. There was one particular book by one Shon Harris, that was very popular. The first edition of her book that I reviewed was an interesting experience. Because I had reviewed so much of the other security literature, I was able to identify individual sentences, sometimes paragraphs, and sometimes whole pages that she had cribbed from other works. However, as the academic joke has it, if you steal from one person, it is theft. If you steal from two people, it is plagiarism. If you steal from three people, it is research. Subsequently, Shon did try and expand her work, and to explain things in her own words. Unfortunately, as with the one particular co-instructor, Shon was quite willing to explain things that she did not, in fact, understand. Her books were readable, and, for the most part, they were valuable study guides. But it got to the point where I would tell seminar groups that I refused to answer any question that started out, "Shon Harris says ..."
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