Teaching Tip #24

Environment matters. I remember back in the 70s when it was so radical to put the classroom in a circle or let the students (high school) sit on the floor. That was the beginning of casualness in education as the norm. Comfort=effective teaching. Now people think they can't learn unless they are comfortable, but comfort can be as distracting as noncomfort.

Not to say we should make our students uncomfortable; we should create an environment that facilitates attentiveness and focus and not take it for granted. We really can't take any thing for granted anymore.

How is that done? Well, you can list a lot of rules on your syllabus, or lead them in what I consider a fake exercise in "you make up the rules." Or you can just explain that there's a reason for expectations of behavior (minimization of distractions, for example) and be honest with them. I think there's a place for disclosure!

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