Dear Blogger –

We have reached the end of our creative relationship about teaching and students. The semester is going fast and closing in. My last entry is next week and will be the essay about My Freshman Year.

The beginning of the end starts with Chapter 23. Strategic learning was discussed in chapter 23 and was spilling over with detail and theory. Concisely, the idea of strategic learning is a description of students who are resourceful, approach learning with specific goals, and are able to recognize when they have a learning gap. This chapter attempted to take these characteristics and explain how teachers can facilitate other students in learning the same concepts. In this section, domain-specific and course-specific types of thinking were discussion. Domain-specific thinking refers to teaching how to understand material in a field and course-specific thinking helps students understand how to process material in our course.

This particular idea was new to me and caught my attention when McKeachie stated, “Many college students approach all their courses in the same way” (page 306). My attention was peaked here because I think I approached a lot of my classes with this mentality, and I find this idea useful as a teacher. The main reason is that if we want students to approach our course in a specific way, we must help them learn it. McKeachie gave the example of a science student and how they must be taught to write like a scientist. But, we must also teach students how to understand and develop skills necessary for the class. An example for classroom implementation is explaining the abilities needed for an assignment. An example of this is explaining how to approach an assignment. I am not sure if this idea would work in public speaking, but explaining to students about how presentation style is useful in formulating ideas and thoughts. This particular course doesn't lend itself to a specific domain.

Chapter 23 also discussed how people learn using structures and prior knowledge. The text explained on page 305 about analogical relations. This is using analogies to help students understand a new or complicated concept. The book gave the example of the structure of a bird to describe an airplane. The reason I like this ideas and find it helpful is because these examples help explain concepts. I know as a student I have had better experience with concepts that I have been able to create comparisons with. I think this can be implemented in a classroom by finding real world examples that students can relate to. An example of this would be when discussing persuasion would be to critique how persuasion is used in everyday life, such as advertisements. Another expample of how to implement the analogy in my classroom would be used when discussing the structure of a speech to that of an essay or even explaining how the intro/conclusion are like a sandwich and the three parts are the insides. (I might need to develop a better example for future use).

Chapter 24 is about higher-order thinking. This chapter provided information about Bloom’s taxonomy of teaching and also the updated version. This chapter discussed how teachers can use different levels of thinking in a course to maximize a student’s experience student benefits. I feel like I have discussed thinking-order in other blogs. What I found useful was the updated version because examples were provided with the levels on page 321. I think the taxonomy is useful for me as a teacher because it helps me think about what level of thinking I want my students to accomplish. One way to utlize this in my classroom is through assigning a paper. An example from public speaking would be to have students utlize the topic selection processes we covered earlier this semester to come up with a speech topic, then conduct an audience analysis realted to the topic, and finally discuss the processes they used for the assignment. I think this assignment helps me recognize that it pushes students to higher levels of learning by requiring them to implement and practic concepts.

And here we are, Chapter 26, my favorite number. The last and final chapter focuses on growth for teachers and the various ways that teachers can approach improvement. This section cites examples for growth by using evaluations, using video cameras to critique teaching styles, discussing with peers strategies and styles, observations, and also looking for new resources. When I was evaluated by my mentor this semester I felt nervous. I felt like I taught differently when she was present and maybe stumbled over things I typically would not have. I found these suggestions helpful because I think evaluation for improvement is on going and should happen more than once semester. I think one way for me to implement this would be to talk with other instructors about what works for them. It may also be helpful for us to evaluate each other. Another way evaluation can be implemened in my classroom is through personal reflection about what worked and what didn't. My last thought would be if it the department would consider an andvanced version of this course or other teaching courses that facilitated a deepter understanding and thought related to teaching methods and assignments.

Until we meet again Blogger –


Faculty Development Teaching Tips - U of Hawaii