THURSDAY 9-9:45am
Active Learning: Strategies for Engaging Undergraduate Students (David Silva)
- oversees QEP at UTA
- Think about yourself in the role of "teacher"
- What is your primary strength?
- What is your "weak spot"?
- You must show your students that you care about them - engage with students in ways that are professional, but that makes them walk out the door believing you care about them
- Are you a teacher who is talented in every way, but shows indifference to students?
- Imagine your students
- What is their most positive attribute?
- What about the difficult characteristics?
- What makes for a great teacher?
- engaging, love, passion, knowledge, patience, competence, reflective
- 4 C's - competent, creative, collaborative, caring (Sally Phillips)
- Who was that one fabulous teacher? Deborah Hepburn….
- Promise to model your teaching on that person
- Reach out to that person and tell them that they were the best teacher you ever had
- Teaching is a SKILL (like sports, music, artistic talent)
- talent + knowledge + practice + commitment
- "Teachers don't work for income, we work for outcome."
- What is active learning? (WDWS - what does wikipedia say?)
- shift the responsibility of learning to learners!!
- it's not about your teaching, it's about their learning
- place the student at the center of the process
- make the student a partner in discovery, not a passive receiver of information
- encourage students to communicate with others (teachers, peers, and beyond the classroom)
- What is the traditional model for T & L? teacher-centered classroom
- participants - teacher and Ss
- teacher possesses knowledge
- T's role is to transfer knowledge
- Ss role is to receive knowledge
- knowledge is a commodity that is transmitted
- students are empty baskets waiting to be filled with knowledge
- Active Learning Model?
- participants - teacher and Ss
- teacher AND students possess knowledge
- teacher must elicit knowledge and integrate it into teaching and make it relevant
- "I'm a physics major - I don't need to know anything about English composition. Oh really? Do you have elves that write your reports?"
- teacher's role is to help students construct knowledge; provide frequent and meaningful feedback
- student's role is to discover knowledge and interact
- knowledge is constructed - the students have to build it [scaffolding!]
- Higher Order Thinking - Bloom's Taxonomy
- we want students to be at the top 4 levels - evaluation, synthesis, analysis, application
- top companies want…
- problem solving and giving solutions
- collaboration
- communicative skills
- Active Learning Activities
- A variety of teaching and learning experiences, both formal and informal
- class discussions
- team-based learning - create subsets in class
- can be competitive or cooperative
- penalty-free questioning
- opportunities for reflection
- ungraded tasks
- undergrad research
- community-based learning experience (service learning)
- there must be a reflection component
- The basic premise - the "oops" principle… students must be able to make mistakes, so that teacher can have the opportunity to provide corrective feedback
- *mandate correction* - students can earn half credit back… give students chance to correct work
- In-class activities
- Wait
- you must be able to stand the sound of silence
- Listen, Write, and Read
- Ask students question, ask them to write down the answer
- give them a chance, then ask the students what they wrote
- this technique helps to deal with the "Class hijacker" - puts you in control so you can decide who will have the opportunity to speak and share ideas
- "Muddiest Point" Cards
- as students are walking in, hand them index cards - at the end of class, ask students to write down (no names) the "muddiest point" from the lecture…
- also, a great way to set up exam review sessions
- do this every couple of week
- One Minute Paper
- they get 60 seconds to write down the answer to a question
- these are non-graded activities… it's like "taking the Ss temperatures"
- Don't assume they'll "get it"
- model and explain - explicitly discuss learning… develop metacognition
- use the "flipped classroom" model (lectures online, in class students solve problems in small groups)
- A BOLD IDEA
- don't transfer content during class time
- delegate "knowledge tasks" to students - they must acquire facts outside of class
- create activities that are designed to leave out students who come to class unprepared
- students will start thinking in new ways
- Feedback is critical
- must be timely, contextualized, corrective, constructive
- Two Types of Assessment - Summative/Formative
- For more ideas… talk to each other, start informal support groups, self-educate, learn in community (conference, workshops, "Engaging Students Conference")
- activelearning.uta.edu
- "Dare not to teach the way you were taught."
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