Summary:
The main ideas I had from this week’s reading are presented in the bullets below:
· Active learning is involving students actively in the processing of new or incoming information.
· Telling is not teaching. Active learning goes with mindfulness listening. Telling without mindfulness listening does not yield the desired result.
· For active learning to materialize, there should be appropriate telling and mindfulness listening (Active learning=Appropriate teaching + Mindfulness learning [AL = AT + ML]).
· When students understand a given concept, they form the mental imagery or take notes in summary.
· Values of active learning:
§ The information is store in summary.
§ It helps eliminates the “Illusion of understanding” (p. 192) or what I will call ‘mirage of understanding’ therefore making understanding permanent.
§ Promotes intrinsic motivation which leads to lifelong learning.
· Peer interaction facilitates active learning because students learns best from peers.
· Effective cooperative or collaborative learning especially in small groups is a good channel for making students active in processing incoming information because it has cognitive and social advantages.
Cognitively, it provides opportunity for elaboration in that students get the chance to express their understanding in a more comfortable environment where they freely explain their thoughts in their own words.
Socially, there is mutual social support from peers that leads to the development of intrinsic motivation.
· “Teaching resulted in better learning than being taught” (p. 194). That sharing what you have learned on a concept with peers enhance comprehension more than listening.
· Effective use of grouping (especially small groups) promote group tutoring and assist students to become active learners.
· Strategies for initiating cooperative learning that lead promote active learning:
§ Instructor forming the groups instead of students helps create diversity in the group and reduces the tendency of having only friends in groups. This enables them have maximum benefits for learning from each other. But sometimes allowing students to form their own groups may work better. This depends on the nature and the composition of the class and the topic at hand.
§ Have intentional discussion on effective group functioning with your students to help them learn how to function effectively in the group. Grouping that will last for long should be asked to provide periodic feedback.
§ Clarify students’ task so that they know what they have to do and plan for it. For out-of-class group work, have student give you their plan on what (task), when (time), where (meeting place) of their group work.
§ For in-class group work, move from group to group to make sure students are on task. This is also the time that you can also provide the needed assistance to the groups.
§ Have both individual and group accountability in grading group work.
Reflection:
I had insightful and thought provoking information in this week’s reading though it is the shortest reading I have had for this course so far. One phrase that keeps ringing in my head is “Pay to be a tutor, not to be tutored” (p. 194). I am still reflecting on it and the instances I have recollected in my own life support the assertion that “teaching result in better learning than being taught” (p. 194) because I can confirm that when I explain things to others I get better understanding of that concept than just keeping it to myself.
Another thing that stood out with me in my reflection is the assertion that “… not all active learning requires feedback from the instructor” (p. 192). According to the authors, instructors can pause in the lesson delivery and have students write down their understanding of the concept under discussion to help them organize their thinking. From my reading of the earlier chapters prior to reopening of the semester, I learned the importance of letting students know the importance of writing down their understanding of concepts in their own language so I included in my first class’ power point this statement “Writing is one of the ways we encode information into long-term memory & translation: it’s GOOD to take notes even though you have the slides!” as my advice to the students. But my intention for this statement was to encourage them to take notes on salient points of the class discussion on their own volition. I never thought I have to intentionally train them for that. So this assertion and the discussion that followed it was very revealing to me because it has a lot to do with my inquiry focus for this semester.
Also, learning about peer or cooperative learning and the strategies teachers can adopt to enhance it usage was worthwhile. Fortunately for me, I had my first teaching observation this week with a colleague graduate assistant who is ahead of me in the program. I had the opportunity of seeing practical example of the strategies the authors talked about in this lady’s teaching. I had an empirical example of peer teaching providing mutual support through the activities the students engaged in. It got to a time I forgot I was an observation because I got engrossed in the class. One thing I learned from this observation was that, to have an interactive class where students genuinely take active part in class activities and discussion needs adequate advanced preparation.
One thing I have noticed is that, most of the strategies suggested in this book that I have implemented in my teaching have worked for me. For instance, when I met my class this week, I noticed most of them were not prepared for the “In-Class-Write” for the class, so when I asked them and they said they couldn’t finish the reading because of the assignment that was due that day, I cancelled the in class write with the intention of trying the “second chance” most of the articles I read for my inquiry proposal as well as the author of this book, Svinicki & McKeachie (2014) recommended and it worked out well for me. Though I cancelled the in class write, I asked volunteers to share what they learned about the chapter for the week, and turned out that every student had something to share with class indicating that they read they got distracted by the impending assignment. I also took time to discuss the assignment with them which took about 40 minutes of our class time. After this, we started the topic for the day and to my surprise, the students contributed like never before. They seemed to forget about the assignment and involved actively in class, even the shy ones spoke in class this week. So at the end of the day I did not spend the 43 minutes in vain, it added value to the success of the class.
Reference
Svinicki, M., & McKeachie, W. J. (2014). McKeachie’s teaching tips: Strategies,
research, and theory for college and university teachers (14th ed.). Belmont,
CA: Wadsworth.
The main ideas I had from this week’s reading are presented in the bullets below:
· Active learning is involving students actively in the processing of new or incoming information.
· Telling is not teaching. Active learning goes with mindfulness listening. Telling without mindfulness listening does not yield the desired result.
· For active learning to materialize, there should be appropriate telling and mindfulness listening (Active learning=Appropriate teaching + Mindfulness learning [AL = AT + ML]).
· When students understand a given concept, they form the mental imagery or take notes in summary.
· Values of active learning:
§ The information is store in summary.
§ It helps eliminates the “Illusion of understanding” (p. 192) or what I will call ‘mirage of understanding’ therefore making understanding permanent.
§ Promotes intrinsic motivation which leads to lifelong learning.
· Peer interaction facilitates active learning because students learns best from peers.
· Effective cooperative or collaborative learning especially in small groups is a good channel for making students active in processing incoming information because it has cognitive and social advantages.
Cognitively, it provides opportunity for elaboration in that students get the chance to express their understanding in a more comfortable environment where they freely explain their thoughts in their own words.
Socially, there is mutual social support from peers that leads to the development of intrinsic motivation.
· “Teaching resulted in better learning than being taught” (p. 194). That sharing what you have learned on a concept with peers enhance comprehension more than listening.
· Effective use of grouping (especially small groups) promote group tutoring and assist students to become active learners.
· Strategies for initiating cooperative learning that lead promote active learning:
§ Instructor forming the groups instead of students helps create diversity in the group and reduces the tendency of having only friends in groups. This enables them have maximum benefits for learning from each other. But sometimes allowing students to form their own groups may work better. This depends on the nature and the composition of the class and the topic at hand.
§ Have intentional discussion on effective group functioning with your students to help them learn how to function effectively in the group. Grouping that will last for long should be asked to provide periodic feedback.
§ Clarify students’ task so that they know what they have to do and plan for it. For out-of-class group work, have student give you their plan on what (task), when (time), where (meeting place) of their group work.
§ For in-class group work, move from group to group to make sure students are on task. This is also the time that you can also provide the needed assistance to the groups.
§ Have both individual and group accountability in grading group work.
Reflection:
I had insightful and thought provoking information in this week’s reading though it is the shortest reading I have had for this course so far. One phrase that keeps ringing in my head is “Pay to be a tutor, not to be tutored” (p. 194). I am still reflecting on it and the instances I have recollected in my own life support the assertion that “teaching result in better learning than being taught” (p. 194) because I can confirm that when I explain things to others I get better understanding of that concept than just keeping it to myself.
Another thing that stood out with me in my reflection is the assertion that “… not all active learning requires feedback from the instructor” (p. 192). According to the authors, instructors can pause in the lesson delivery and have students write down their understanding of the concept under discussion to help them organize their thinking. From my reading of the earlier chapters prior to reopening of the semester, I learned the importance of letting students know the importance of writing down their understanding of concepts in their own language so I included in my first class’ power point this statement “Writing is one of the ways we encode information into long-term memory & translation: it’s GOOD to take notes even though you have the slides!” as my advice to the students. But my intention for this statement was to encourage them to take notes on salient points of the class discussion on their own volition. I never thought I have to intentionally train them for that. So this assertion and the discussion that followed it was very revealing to me because it has a lot to do with my inquiry focus for this semester.
Also, learning about peer or cooperative learning and the strategies teachers can adopt to enhance it usage was worthwhile. Fortunately for me, I had my first teaching observation this week with a colleague graduate assistant who is ahead of me in the program. I had the opportunity of seeing practical example of the strategies the authors talked about in this lady’s teaching. I had an empirical example of peer teaching providing mutual support through the activities the students engaged in. It got to a time I forgot I was an observation because I got engrossed in the class. One thing I learned from this observation was that, to have an interactive class where students genuinely take active part in class activities and discussion needs adequate advanced preparation.
One thing I have noticed is that, most of the strategies suggested in this book that I have implemented in my teaching have worked for me. For instance, when I met my class this week, I noticed most of them were not prepared for the “In-Class-Write” for the class, so when I asked them and they said they couldn’t finish the reading because of the assignment that was due that day, I cancelled the in class write with the intention of trying the “second chance” most of the articles I read for my inquiry proposal as well as the author of this book, Svinicki & McKeachie (2014) recommended and it worked out well for me. Though I cancelled the in class write, I asked volunteers to share what they learned about the chapter for the week, and turned out that every student had something to share with class indicating that they read they got distracted by the impending assignment. I also took time to discuss the assignment with them which took about 40 minutes of our class time. After this, we started the topic for the day and to my surprise, the students contributed like never before. They seemed to forget about the assignment and involved actively in class, even the shy ones spoke in class this week. So at the end of the day I did not spend the 43 minutes in vain, it added value to the success of the class.
Reference
Svinicki, M., & McKeachie, W. J. (2014). McKeachie’s teaching tips: Strategies,
research, and theory for college and university teachers (14th ed.). Belmont,
CA: Wadsworth.