The reading this week seemed to refresh many of the activities and concepts that have been covered thus far this semester, mainly activities that deal with large lectures and how to shape a course syllabus for a semester.
The first thing that I found to be useful in my own teaching environment came from McKeachie’s chapter on ‘facilitating active learning’. The section first touched back on active learning along with learning cells and student discussion. McKeachie suggested a few different possible techniques that could help promote positive, successful discussions within the classroom. Although he focused mainly on large lecture oriented classrooms, I believe that the techniques could also be used in a smaller classroom, such as my current class size of 22.
One idea that I would like to incorporate into my own teaching would be ‘buzz groups’. This activity suggests breaking the students into smaller groups to discuss relative readings or material that is currently being presented. The reason I like this tactic is because students in my classroom tend to have a hard time answering questions when asked in front of the class, leading the questions into a discussion, and really just talking in general. I also like the idea of comparing notes with one another in hopes that someone would ask another a question. With a few in class activities I have done earlier on in the semester, I found that the majority feel more comfortable speaking when there are less people listening and less pressure. Although the discussion groups I have done in the past didn’t revolve so much around the exact material presented, it is something that I will like to incorporate in future group activities.
Another subject that McKeachie presented was the roles that a teacher plays. Although some of them may come across as obvious, others were new to me such as ‘socializing agent’ and ‘ego ideal’. The one that I would like to focus on is the ‘socializing agent’. Before reading this I had never really applied the term to any of my previous or current professors, but now the term has become clearer through the examples McKeachie presented.
Looking back on some of my previous professors, the ones I seemed to understand the most and enjoy the class were those who implemented their own personal experience in the field to the classroom.; not only through discussion and examples, but through numerous assignments and large projects.
In the current class I teaching, most of the assignments (speeches) they will be able to take with them forever whether it be in school, work, or personally. However, I will be adapting this idea to the course I am designing for our final project. The class I am working on will have many components that the students will be able to take with them after they graduate and even to interviews to show their real-world project. Students, including myself, seem to adapt best when they can actually see their work being applied outside of a classroom setting. Looking back, I still keep in contact with a few professors because they were there to help me adapt new skills and take the ones I already had and make them stronger through assignments, projects, and their personal knowledge of the subject.
The last thing I will take with me from the reading is the tips and suggestions for sketching out the shape of a course. I find this useful because I am currently struggling with particular aspects of the course I am designing for our final project. There were examples that McKeachie used that I had never really thought about. For example, I would have never thought to chart out what I should be producing for 90 hours of class time and fitting that into a 15-week course. The weekly schedule has a great layout and could be very useful in any field. It has an interesting design along with various distribution categories. Categories that I wouldn’t have thought about, even as simple as study guide hours. The chapter also presented a lot of detail about how to set up assignments and distribute such time for each specific assignment or reading.
Toward the end of the reading, McKeachie listed a few things that I found very useful when trying to figure out what students can or can’t handle:
1. Choosing the familiar rather than the strange
2. Work with the concrete rather than the abstract
3. Keeping the topic simple
4. Using everyday language as much as possible
I would like to make an attempt to this for my final project in this class, however I do see how it could be quite time consuming and it looks as though you will need a lot of prior knowledge and be aware of text choices. I think I’m going to try anyway.
The additional reading that I found for this entry deals with course planning and tips for writing a syllabus.
http://ctlt.jhsph.edu/resources/index.cfm?event=topic.view&topicID=2
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You make a good point about the active learning strategies (like buzz groups, or one-minute papers) working just as well in small classes. I agree that they are particularly useful when you have a quiet class that doesn't seem to be willing to engage in full class discussion. I wasn't sure what you meant by discussions not revolving around the exact material presented? I think, as long as there is some connection between the day's topics and the discussion, it's still valuable.
ReplyDeleteI liked how you connected this week's reading to both the public speaking class you are currently teaching, and the course you are designing for your final project. I'm happy to help you with setting up the course schedule and/or selecting the readings. Just let me know.
Overall, you've done a good job addressing the areas for improvement identified earlier in the semester, particularly when it comes to talking about why you found the selected ideas useful and how you might go about implementing them in a classroom. For the remaining entries, focus on bringing in more of the reading. You can do this by summarizing what the author had to say about each idea, along with their rationale for using that particular technique.