Teaching and Learning

The selections that we read about Teachers and fundamental philosophies that guide how we interact with our students in learning communities were all very good and encouraged me to think in a more theoretical way about my teaching style.  However, none rang as true as Vygotsky’s supportive assistance to the learner, and especially the concept of “fading.”  I have also seen this concept referred to as “vanishing”. The concept of scaffolding has been something that I have done for literally decades, and it has been very successful in producing confident learners that have a desire to go on and continue to learn more.  People love to learn, we are build to acquire information.  As Bill said, “try to go a day without learning something.”  We just have to convince the students that 1) they are learners and 2) what we are trying to show them is important and achievable. It is often negative experiences that cause people to think that they can’t: write, do math, sing, draw, learn a language, or acquire any new skill.

Since I work primarily in helping students with writing projects I’ve probably had over a hundred students tell me, “I can’t write very well” or “I hate writing” and after working at the Writing Center for several sessions to later tell me, “I wish I had known this before” or “this is really fun”.  One of the students who I first met a few years ago came in saying he hated writing, wasn’t very good at it, and just wanted to pass the class.  He loved to talk and he had a lot of opinions, once he learned the tools for writing he started getting 4.0 in all his classes (he had a 1.5 GPA before).  He now works at the LCC Writing Center and is majoring in Professional Writing. I used the principles of scaffolding and vanishing, but I also added quite a bit of direction in the very beginning of our interactions.  This student had a very poor self image, he had faced a lot of failures in his life and he wasn’t at the point where I could even give him a simple task and let him finish it alone.  We had to walk together through it. 

 I find that students often are very insecure at first, I know that I am also this way, and it helps tremendously to have initial guidance and simple tasks, so both the facilitators (instructor) and the learner (student) are able to work together through the task. First of all I think it is important to talk to the student and find out their goals…in a one-to-one setting this is very easy.  In an online setting this can often be accomplished through guided introductions –people love to talk about themselves and through their disclosure we can often find clues that help us to see their overall goals and their apprehensions in writing. I like to be more directive at first, demonstrate how things can be done.  Note: I always emphasize this is ONE of the MANY ways to approach writing, there is no “right” or “wrong” method.  I like to work like a chef on a cooking show.  I always discuss each step that I  suggest and tell the learner(s) why I do things in this particular way.  Then I step back and work more as a cheerleader and when needed sometimes give more specific guidance like a mentor.  But always giving honest evaluation, looking for areas that are really promising. Even the most basic reader can tell when something is written effectively. False praise doesn’t help them and they lose respect for the instructor.  But just criticizing doesn’t help at all either.  There needs to be a balance and a recognition of what elements are good in the learner’s writing and what elements need revision.

As I look to better refine my own writing, and especially my teaching philosophy statement, it helps tremendously to look at the theoretical background that other experts have already developed to see what we can learn.  And I guess that brings me to one of my other key beliefs.  The best teachers are also learners.  

Where you at? Peering through the Online Classroom Window and Getting a Glimpse of My Students

So, the title above is a bit of a preminision. I have yet to teach an online course and so have yet to encounter the challenges and joys of teaching students in a virtual world. Judging from the stories some shared during our F2F session and my own anticipated fears of online learning, I predict that it can be a challenge to engage or even connect with some students. And to be honest, this makes me sad because it is the opportunity to engage and connect with students in writing classes that made me enjoy and love teaching. I fear that teaching online would be similar to teaching in a black box, not knowing when the light (or student) will flash a light signaling their presence.

Additionally, I believe it was Megan who said that from her own experience it can be just as difficult for the teacher to feel attached and connected to the online class – often times needing to force oneself to “check in” on the class in a sort of Big Brother type of way. These fears/anxieties have made me then question how to better connect and engage with those students. Yet, the tool reviews that were presented and the scaffolding of activities/assignments that we discussed during our F2F session I think will better prepare me to make contact in that black box of students.

So above is my little predictive rant about online students, but then who are my students that sit in a classroom and make F2F contact? Well, the majority of them are college freshman. Young, sometimes nervous, sometimes overly confident. Knowing this, I purposefully try to structure my student-teacher interaction in ways that attempt to fight through the nervousness and issues of confidence in order to start working on a leveled field. Thus, I have my students write throughout the semester about a community that they belong to. This provides students the chance to connect with a community that may no longer be close to them (because they are now living at MSU) and it also provides a chance for their peers and myself to get to know these students. As such, while many of the goals of the class focus on writing and peer review, one “secret” goal is to form our own community – a place for engagement, interactive learning and overall support.

Now, this “secret” goal is unique to the fact that I teach freshman. Thus, the same goal would not work if I taught a more advance level of students, say juniors or seniors. But because these students are babies to the university world, I feel it my task and duty to assist in that transition and build an internal support system to encourage future learning goals. Therefore, part of my task in designing an online course for this same set of students will be to encourage the development of the same type of connectedness and support that naturally appears to occur due to F2F interactions.

A benefit of teaching freshman is that many of them quickly adapt to the use of technology in the classroom and typically enjoy the use of technology. These students have grown up with technology their whole lives and its use and educational application is a natural extension of their daily practices. They use Facebook (normally they are on Facebook even during class), twitter, Photoshop, iMovie, Google docs, Google chat, Google email, Google anything… These students have grown up with their fingers attached to a keyboard. This is why transitioning to teaching an online class is an interesting task. These students have grown up their whole lives naturally attached to screens and keyboards, clearly they will be comfortable learning and using technology. My concern/anxiety is will they be too comfortable? Is the fact that they are online and don’t necessarily need to show up everyday make my task 100x hard? Yes, I believe so. Thus, when I begin to design units for online spaces my goal will be geared to these students who will be able to easily use technology but may find it a forum to “hang out” in the class instead of “critically engage” in the class. Spending time with scaffolding, utilizing effective tools, and figuring out how to ‘decenter’ the online space will all be crucial steps to insure an engaged and lively interactive learning atmosphere. Doing so, I hope to avoid asking the question “Where You At?”.

Students, oh my students

My Students...

In thinking about who my potential students will be/ are/ have been  I realize that my student population will be every shifting and changing so I had best be prepared to be flexible. Despite the title of students- no longer is it a group of just graduated high school freshmen. Older students come in with a wealth of experiences and hands on knowledge that can help (and sometimes hinder) classroom progress.

Just because I have a class of students that are incoming freshmen does not mean that each of them is tech-adept and will be able to acclimate quickly to writing in a variety of spaces.  Asking students to compose on their smart phones or write a collaborative narrative in Facebook is daunting for most. Students are smart accomplished people with great innovative ideas and learning styles that keep me on my toes.

Technology in the classroom should be an augmentative source that blends teaching practices with practice concepts.  So what does that look like? A powerpoint slide to add some concepts to discuss in a group, a walk through video of how to format a paper, an audio file of the lecture for a review session, a class wiki or blog for group assistance, small manipulatives (yo-yo, squeeze ball, etc) on the table for redirection, a variety of writing implements (marker, crayon, chalk, etc), a variety of writing surfaces, concept driven video games,  art rendering programs, 3D puzzles... my ideal classroom would probably cost a half million to put together :)

I could probably write pages and pages about my students - these creative unique individuals that comes into a class about writing, certain that they will hate it and have nothing new to learn.  Leery when I ask them to  step outside carefully constructed composition formats and surprised that learning involves the 5 senses not just lecture.  Trust has to be formed, the learning space has to be safe, authority must be strong but approachable, humanism must be established.

Every class I teach I learn more about being a good teacher from my students, I learn where I fail and could do better and where I am doing well. So ends my thought wanderings about students for the moment. But I will end on the note that I always become a better teacher when I am being a student :)

Shenika’s Students

I could use a multitude of words to describe my students. They certainly are diverse entities. Their most important attribute is their individuality. Thus as an educator, I have to be able to embrace complexity. Who are my students? I do not believe that there is a concrete answer to this question, as my students are ever-changing. However, this is a non-exhaustive list:
My students are…
• Digital natives
• Digital immigrants
• English learners
• ESL learners
• A Vision of Students Today

Image Courtesy of LindaH

My students are visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners. Thus I need to be able to instruct to these unique learning styles. I need to utilize diverse instructional practices that allow my visual learners to conceptualize content via pictorial images, my auditory learners to comprehend content via my tone/language usage (explanation), and my kinesthetic learners to have hands-on mobility. Therefore, I need to use technological-based, group-based, presentation-based, and experiment-based instructional content.

Image Courtesy of aranarth

My students use technology for personal and professional purposes. They use technology to watch short and long video clips (YouTube, Hulu, etc.) find information (websites, databases, etc.), listen to music (Pandora, iTunes, etc.), communicate (social websites, email, SMS text, etc.), multi-task, and more.




Teaching diverse learners can be challenging. Ironically, the late Paulo Freire’s early era educational integration methodology can still be utilized today. Freire’s fully encompassed educational theory (three dimensional equation between the educator, pupil, and community) referenced in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, still inspires me today. It serves as a reminder for me to continuously recognize these educational constituents as a suitable totality. "Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world" (Freire).

Cait's "Students" - Part I

Before I post on the affordances/ disaffordances of the testing tools on bcpLearning, it'd probably help to give some background information on who our students are and why they use our programs.

Current "Students"
As I mentioned in my introduction post, my current work does not include teching students directly. However, a majority of my day is spent working in bcpLearning, an online training program for international trade professionals. Our students fall into three main categories.

1. Companies: Employee Training
   For companies involved in international trade, training staff members is an important part of maintaining compliance with the laws and regulations governing international trade. These companies need a cost effective way to train employees and demonstrate that training. This type of "student" comes with two distinct sets of needs: the needs of the employees (students) and the needs of their managers. The managers use our technology to select courses that are relevant to each employee's role within the company, create accounts for those employees, and assign the desired training courses without having to send the employees "off-campus" for training. They also use our "Reports" function to track students' progress through the assigned course and whether they've achieved "certification status."
   
   The employees (students) need to be able to use our technology to study and demonstrate to their employer that they've completed their assigned courses. They also need to actually learn the information in the course so that the can apply it to their everyday work. These students encompass a wide breadth of experience in using computers and the internet, so the courses require a very simple layout that can be navigated easily, even by the employees who are most uncomfortable in digital environments. The courses are also broken up into manageable sections to make it easy for students to digest the information and for their employers to track their progress.
   
   The main conflict comes at course completion and lies between the employer's need to receive quantifiable results and the employee's need to feel confident that they've acquired knowledge that can be applied in the real world. We've started using two different types of exams, multiple choice and situational, to try to address this conflict and meet the needs of both parties, but that's another blog post.
   
   
2. Trade Specialists/Consultants
   Certified Customs Specialist (CCS) and Certified Export Specialist (CES) are the industry-recognized accreditations for the international trade community. Students with these accreditations require 20 credit points annually to maintain their status as a CCS or CES. To meet these needs, we offer over 100 CCS points and are currently growing our CES credits by developing a new suite of export related courses. These students use technology to take courses online on their own time-table in order to fulfill the requirements for their accreditation. Once they complete a course, they need a certificate of completion to present to the NCBFAA to receive credit. Because they need to earn 20 new points each year, these students require a course selection that is constantly updated and expanded.
   
   
3. Customs Broker Exam Students
   These students are individuals who plan on taking the Customs Broker Exam with the goal of becoming licensed Customs Brokers. They are spread out around the country and need a course that they can access at any time from any location. Although it's technically an "open book" exam, the material tested encompasses over four thousand pages of regulation and classification sources. It's a difficult exam with an average failure rate of over 80%, which can often overwhelm students from the beginning.
   
   These students need to learn 1.) how to read and understand the regulations, 2.) how to perform the functions of a Customs Broker, and 3.) how to study for the exam. To meet their needs, this course offers a number of learning formats by providing an online lesson plan, textbooks, downloadable audio lectures/audio drills, 10 past practice exams, and a "mentor" for guidance. Because the regulations and classification texts are often difficult to understand, students frequently need a little more help than the often isolated learning experience provided by online training programs.
   
   That's where the mentor comes in. Students have the opportunity to make the course more interactive by posting questions in an open discussion forum (see right). The forum is monitored by the mentor, who answers these questions on a daily basis for the three month period leading up to the next exam, which is offered twice a year. Students can see the questions posted by other students and learn from them as well. There's also the opportunity for students to open threads and discuss areas of study with one another. (On a side note, I took the April exam this year and it's been mentioned that I might be able to work with a few of the mentor questions now that I've passed the exam. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for my first interaction with our students, even in a limited scope.)