The Top 5 List

Through the course of our readings it has become abundantly clear to me that while we know a lot about how people learn, we still need to continue to explore new and innovative ways to teach. The ever-changing “climate of the classroom” is a challenge for new and seasoned teachers.

The higher ed. environment may be more in need of exploration of new teaching methods but I have also discovered that there are some real basic ideas that, if practiced more fully, would lead to better teaching and better learning.
So, in the manner of late night TV, I give you my top 5 ways to better learning.
Drum roll please!
#5- People must achieve a threshold of learning that is sufficient to support transfer.
#4- Learning with understanding is more likely to promote transfer.
#3 – Knowledge taught in a variety of contexts is more likely to support flexible transfer.
#2 – Assessment should mirror good instruction.
And the #1 way to better learning . . . . . .
Teachers need expertise in both subject matter content AND teaching!

These five things come straight from “How People Learn”. There are many more ideas that could be on this list but to me, these 5 are paramount. During this semester, they have become my creed and I have proclaimed them on more than one occasion in faculty meetings and in conversation with my colleagues. Some of these things seem to be revelations. My comments have actually affected change in my department. So, as I learn how to be a better teacher and how to help my students learn, I find myself teaching others around me. It is a good thing.

I believe that while we must move forward in all kinds of research in various areas; we need not loose site of the 5 items I have mentioned above which, to me, are the basis for good teaching AND good learning.

A very good friend and colleague of mine, Blaine Greenfield, was always concerned that students would be engaged in the class. He hoped that they would want to come because it was important to them and meant more than just a grade. As a way of making sure he was true to his intentions he would often start class off by saying,

“I promise you will leave class today with something you can use!”

At first I thought that was kind of odd but after all, isn’t that what learning is really all about?

Addition vs Incorporation

Last Spring I attended a technology conference that primarily addressed and highlighted issues for the K-12 crowd. I went hoping to get some info that would be appropriate for higher ed. What I came away with was a better understanding of what technical expertise incoming college freshman may have.

I address this week’s issue, once again, from the perspective of higher ed. Based on what I have seen at the previously mentioned conference and several others I have attended, I feel that in most cases the inclusion of technology in the K-12 classroom is done with teachers and students in mind. I realize that this may not be the case in every situation but I feel at the very least that there usually is some form of training for teachers and some sense of how these new technologies can expand and assist in the learning process. Once again in higher ed. I feel that this is usually not the case except in specific areas.

I feel that technology in teaching and learning environments can be a most amazing thing so as I look at this week’s reading many things come to mind but two things specifically:

1. My first concern is that not only is technology used to support the teaching and learning that already occurs but that we also take the time to explore new ways of teaching and learning that can be inspired by technology, like many of the examples in chapter 9 of How People Learn. In my experience in higher ed., there are many situations where new methods are overlooked and faculty and staff get hung up on how we continue to do what we are doing, in the same way we have always done it. Technology gets included but nothing really changes and the technology is looked at as an “addition” rather than an “incorporation” into the learning process. My belief is
that the technology should add a new component to learning, perhaps even cause a teacher to rethink a teaching method.
2. My second concern is the inclusion of technology but not using it to its fullest extent. I believe if we are going to include a new technology into our class we should do what is necessary to explore that technology to the fullest. What can it do for our students? How can it facilitate the learning process? What kinds of features does it have and how can they work in this particular class? I have seen folks proclaim to use Blackboard or WebCt, for example, and all they are really doing is using it to email their students when there are so many more things it can do for the student and the teacher. There are so many possibilities that are not even considered.

The inclusion of technology in higher ed. needs to be more fully supported and encouraged. It needs to become a priority to address the needs of these technically savvy students and to open up new ways of learning that will serve students far into their future.

One Small Step . . .

I seem to come at the topics we are assigned to read about with a different perspective since I am teaching in the higher ed. environment. Unlike many of my classmates I do not have a background in education and I have come to learn over the past 19 years that having that knowledge would not only be a great thing for me but for many of my colleagues.
Once again this week I was faced with a situation where my department would have clearly benefited from the discussion we had in last week’s class about assessment. My department is required by the administration to give a comprehensive exam to students that they must pass in order to graduate. My department, which teaches mostly all hands-on type classes, uses an exam that they designed that is made up of 5 short essay questions that almost anyone off the street could answer. I was bewildered at best, to find that this exam had been given for the last 20 plus years. My comment was that perhaps we should assess the students in the manner that they learn, and that we teach. “How about requiring them to prepare a portfolio, much like the art area, that we could review before graduation?” I asked. I was met with glares and silence. This is just an example of teachers who have not made changes in their routine or in their classes in a long time.
Their resistance to change is very reflective of the fact that they are not actively learning to teach. That ceased for them years ago. The notion that teachers continue to learn how to teach is so appropriate to our educational system today. In this week’s reading, I am particularly partial to the community centered environment approach. I work in a department that is very much a community in that we all teach a small group of students and the material they learn in one class builds skills for the next. We have, by the shear nature of our hands-on program, a community centered environment and yet we do not commune effectively. Additionally, the assessment centered environment is a model we need to adopt as trying out new things in the classroom should be discussed in our “community” so that we all benefit from the trial of new methods of teaching.
As I thought about this week’s dilemma over the comprehensive exam, I was reminded of a course that I team taught with two other faculty members from different departments. Without really knowing it at the time, we employed all the methods of teacher learning discussed in the reading. We met outside of class regularly to discuss assignments. Did they worked? What could we change? What did we learn? How could we make it better? We asked each other if we thought the students were learning what we wanted them to learn and then worked together to make changes to improve the learning.
I think this lack of instructors wanting to “learn” at the higher ed. level is due to a variety of reasons, tenure being one of them, but I strongly feel that the lack of a background or coursework in the education area is a big reason. Additionally, I feel that the professional development opportunities and in-service activities are seen as a secondary ed. function and not one of higher ed.
The system has a long way to go to make changes. I feel like bringing things from my coursework to my department may be a small contribution but a needed one. I think my comments regarding the comprehensive exam have caused some chatter. Maybe I have pushed in the right direction . . . .
"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

XTRA! XTRA! College Professor Scraps Lesson Plans 20 Minutes Before Class!!!

I was so inspired by this week’s reading from “How People Learn” that just 20 minutes ago I tossed my planned lesson for my 5:00 class today. I didn’t really like it anyway. . . it was a boring powerpoint. As I was driving to the college this morning, I was listening to NPR on the radio. This morning’s topic, along with the Phillies win was the Obama infomercial. Additionally the BBC was commenting on the 70th anniversary of “The War of the Worlds.” Right there, coming out of my radio was the impetus for a really great and inspired class. My 5:00 class is called Media Programming. It is about why broadcast and cable networks, put shows on at certain times. It includes learning about programming strategies for both television and radio and covers demographics and day-parts and all that media terminology. For the most part this stuff is not new to the students, they have heard it in some introductory class before they get to me. My real challenge is to determine whether or not they understand it and then to find out if they know why they should understand it. I do try my best to make it interesting but there are times when that can be really tough.
So, inspired by the reading I tossed my lecture and will be spending time today relating current events to concepts the class should already know. We will cover the “War of the Worlds” broadcast by having class members contribute what they know to the conversation. We will discuss the effects that this event had on those who listened and we will talk about why the radio station chose to air this program in the manner it did. They will listen to the short segment on the original broadcast from BBC News Hour. From there we will move to a more current media occurrence – The Obama Infomercial. I will have the class go online and get overnight ratings, info on the target audience and demographics, and any background on this political ad technique and then we will come back together for a discussion on the why’s, the how’s and success of this event from the standpoint of the networks and of Obama. By using this current event to illustrate all the terms and practices we have covered, I will be able to create an engaged learning community, see if the students are really aware of the applications and programming strategies we have covered, and use concrete examples to clear up confusion. To be sure they “get it” I will post a required discussion topic in the Blackboard space that will extend our in-class conversation.
I am really excited about this change in plans! The discussion could lead to so many great insights and learning opportunities for the class, and as I am always looking to understand and improve . . . it could lead to learning opportunities for me as well.

Why Football Coaches Should Never Teach Geometry . . . . .

This week’s reading was very beneficial to me as an educator but it also sent me back to when I was a student and brought to mind two very different experiences that I had in high school and college. Some of my “favorite” teachers were the ones who had all four perspectives mentioned in the chapter incorporated in their class. The ones who I would say I disliked were teachers who were lacking one or all of the perspectives mentioned in the chapter.
In high school, I had a geometry teacher, who also happened to be the football coach. Mr. Sorber was one of my least favorite teachers and I can honestly say that I learned very little about geometry from this man. In his classroom we sat in rows, would listen to him talk a bit and then would go straight down the rows to give our answers to the homework problems that had been assigned the previous class. He was not a happy person. (Our football team was not very good.) If you did not give the right answer he would humiliate you and then go to the next person. There was such a sense of dread in that class that the students came together as a community out of fear. We learned some geometry but not from the teacher, rather from each other in an effort to survive! So, the class was not student centered, not knowledge centered, and certainly not assessment centered. The only one of the four perspectives we touched on was a sense of community . . . a community of students who were scared to death. While Mr. Sorber was responsible, in a back handed way, for creating that community, he certainly gets no credit for the little knowledge that we gained that year.
Conversely, a professor I had in college for Comp. I, Dr. August Nigro, was one of my favorite teachers. He took the time to get to know you by talking to you, assigning papers that would allow you to mention past experiences and info about your life(student centered), provided opportunities for ideas to be shared in class(community centered), gave direction on appropriate writing techniques and how to adequately express ideas(knowledge centered), gave innovative assignments that let you apply previously acquired skills but stretch to practice new ones and took time to review your work with you(assessment centered). He never just handed back a graded paper without having a very personal conversation with you about your work. I will never forget this man. He made a huge impression on me and my writing style and much of my teaching style is reflective of his influence on me.
I am certain that designing learning environments with these four perspectives in mind is crucial to the teaching and learning process. Not only will students benefit from the learning experiences, but their personal contacts with teachers will become part of their life experience and influence them well into their future.

DeFragging Our Brains . . . . .

In the book How People Learn it is stated, “guided learning and learning from individual experiences both play important roles in the functional reorganization of the brain.” I completely agree with this statement based on experiences from my own teaching over the last 19 years.

Two specific examples come to mind:

1. 10 years ago I had a student in my Television Studio Production course whose name was Ken. He was twice my age and had many experiences to share with me and the class. Ken and I quickly became friends. He had revealed to me that he was a Vietnam vet, that both he and his wife were cancer survivors and that he had been recently diagnosed with MS. He explained that when you have MS, signals do not pass between nerve cells at high speeds and that affects your Central Nervous system. He was taking my class because he and his doctor believed that learning things he had never learned before would regenerate or activate unused parts of his brain and nervous system which in turn would help him control the disease.

2. At an In- Service Day activity at Buck County Community College, the faculty was introduced to a gentleman who gave a presentation on how our brains work. He talked mostly about how folks with Dyslexia learn and showed pictures of MRI’s that were color coded to show us which parts of the brain were activated in problem solving. It was intriguing how the comparison of the MRI’s from the dyslexic and non dyslexic person showed that entirely different parts of the brain were working in each individual to solve the same problem. It was a prime example of how people’s brains organize material differently based on previous learning and experience.

Both of these examples show how different the brain can react in different situations and how it accesses and stores information based on experience and learning. When I think back to educational experiences where I feel I learned the most, they are all in a situation where there was hands on learning, an actual activity. . an experience. In college, we would take our remote production truck to cover the football games or another live event. The learning was intense, very active, charged and at times stressful, but it was robust and totally worthwhile. I am certain that many foundational items from that learning experience are accessed by my brain as I learn new things each day.

The concept of experiential learning is a very important one, especially to those of us in Higher Ed. We are faced with an interesting challenge. In many cases, we are the last line of guided learning that many individuals will experience before they enter the workforce. We need to find out what experiences our students come with, figure out how to build on those and we then need to provide them with additional experiences that prepare them for the road ahead.

"Where before there was a spectator, let there now be a participant" (Bruner, 1983:60).

After reading the information on “How Children Learn,” I really related to the section on “Learning to Read and Tell Stories.” I have always believed that having a parent read to their children was part of growing up. I have fond memories of my mother and father reading to me alone and also to me and my brother together. I remember certain books and purchased those for my own children because I loved them so much. That reading time with my parents brings back warm and comfortable memories but apparently it also provided an impetus to the growth of my language skills and my connections to personal experiences. I think most parents know that reading to your children is a good thing but I am sure that they don’t think through all the learning skills that this activity enhances.
I see reading to your children as a bridge to many skills that help children develop. Reading leads to practice with language, increase in vocabulary, development of narrative skills, dialogue and comprehension-fostering activities. It is also the stimulus for parents and children to share common experiences that come up as a result of reading a book and thereby increases the opportunity for communication.
I must confess that I read more to my son Steve, than I did to my twins, Sydney and Samantha. Steve is 2 ½ years older so we had time together, just the two of us. When the twins came along, I still spent time reading to all of them but things were much busier at our house. I can see a difference in the writing levels of Steve as compared to the twins and also in their ability to tell a story verbally. Steve has always had a great grasp of vocabulary and organization where the twins must work much harder to accomplish the same thing. I don’t know if I would attribute the difference solely to less reading time with the twins, but I am certain it played a factor. The girls are hard pressed now, at age 15, to tell me a lot of book titles they remember from when they were younger, although they can remember a few. Steve, at age 18, can rattle off an entire list and frequently reminds me of one of his favorites, “The Grouchy Ladybug” by Eric Carle. Steve and I read this book many times and when he was about 4 he came to me one morning to tell me that he had an interesting dream. He proceeded to recall his dream in the form of a story with the same rhythm and sentence structure as in the “Grouchy Ladybug.” Steve replaced the Ladybug in the original story with his sister, “Grumpy Sydney” who led a band of escaped animals from the zoo on her motorcycle!!!
Sydney really isn’t grumpy and she and Samantha and Steve will occasionally dig out some of the old books, and we STILL will sit and read them together.