Teaching Tip #18

I had a very wise professor in my first graduate program. "If you want people to learn something, tell them what you want them to learn," he said. Now, he wasn't himself the greatest teacher who ever lived, and to be honest (this was the 70s) he actually smoked in class! But his advice was sage..

I have never understood how professors say, "Read the five chapters and there will be a test on it in two weeks." How would anyone know how to study for that? How would anyone know what's important? Even if all the Cornell notetaking methods, etc, are used, it still doesn't tell the students what the teacher thinks is priority.

I am a firm believer in reading and study guides. I don't think they have to be considered spoon feeding. Nothing in a study guide says, "You don't have to think critically" or "you don't have to learn very much." Study guides do not have to be pablum. They can be rigorous, but clear.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reflecting on Reflection in Learning

Reflection is the subject of my next couple of presentations, so here are my recent jottings. Hopefully a reader can make some sense of them;however, the whole point of this post is that reflection can follow a structure but will not necessarily create a structured record. The reflection record will need to be reshaped to be palatable for a "judge" or "critic" or "instructor." Reflection tends to be framed negatively. If we dig too deep we will only find bad stuff; if we reflect on teaching practice, we will focus on what failed rather than succeeded. Why? Assessment focuses on finding the nonlearners and changing to get more learners, but it ignores that most of the students did learn, so why were there successes? Leads to burnout. Boud & Walker’s idea of validation not well developed but relevant. It is most close to critical thinking—testing it against other knowledge, theories, internal consistency, other data (other learner’s data) Ref...
Read more

Calling all College Instructors

I had an interesting experience last semester. In a lecture on perception, I mentioned (because I had been reading so) that people with autism (my brother has it) do not perceive less than others, but they perceive more and that their behaviors are to block out or filter or deal with the overload. One boy in the back of the room said, "I know that's true because I'm autistic and .... " That's one of those "moments of truth." I often do not handle them well, but this one I did. Since the young man had not done anything that indicated autism to me (other than being nerdy), after he talked about himself I said, "Do you have Asperger's?" to which he said, "Yes, and ADD." Another young man in the class was giving me signals that he was in the same boat. There is something ironic and yet appropriate about this incident--only a student with Asperger's or Austism Spectrum Disorder would just announce it so boldly in class. ...
Read more

First Generation Students: Be aware

 I confess to not having blogged here for quite a while.  I will be in the future--I'm doing some relevant writing. My current research interest is gratitude, in general, in communication, in spiritual development, and in higher education. Although not quite linked to that, this article is thoughtful and reminds us of "the secret life of college students." https://diverseeducation.com/article/138698/?utm_campaign=DIV1902%20DAILY%20NEWSLETTER%20FEB15&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua
Read more