American Studies Course, the Context
Aim: The aim of the course is to familiarize students with basic information about the geography, people, and history of the United States of America in the twentieth century. These areas will be studied through relevant observations and artifacts of American culture and Culture, including but not limited to literature and the arts, other writings and contributions, physical objects, and social and human sciences themes.
Topics:
* 20th Century historical sketch of the US
* Major American authors and other contributors
* Identifying and researching cultural studies topics
* Understanding America and Americans
Objectives: As a result of taking this course, students should be able to:
* sketch a history of twentieth century America including at least three or four significant events, people, or characteristics for each decade;
* give a conventional book report of a work written in English by an American author or thinker of the twentieth century;
* properly cite and accurately summarize three American Studies secondary sources from approved online sources; and
* use a simple "culture inquiry protocol" to showcase an insight into Americans or America from readings and research.
Unit: Identifying and researching cultural studies topics
Background Learning:
1. Go to [link no longer available].
2. Read the article (popular press secondary source).
3. Now ask yourself this question: What does this article tell me about America or Americans?
4. With answers to this question, you have at least one research hypothesis (cultural insight to test). You can now look for other examples of it to illustrate what the above article told you, or didn't tell you!
Assignment 6: Describe, explain, and/or discuss the meaning of an observation of America or Americans. Use primary and secondary sources to support your insights. Submit a detailed outline and list of references for your research.
An observation is a cultural studies topic (from the previous assignment). It is specific and small. Be careful if you choose a history topic, because it will only be a very tiny observation of America or Americans about that.
Get these points clearly in mind before proceeding with identifying and researching cultural studies topics.
1. What is DESCRIPTION. At the surface level, you or someone observes a phenomenon that is possibly unique or characteristic of a culture. There is always a source--you or other.
2. What is EXPLANATION. Once that is described, one asks the question, "How is that so?" What is an explanation for that phenomenon? Usually cultural informants help with this. With an answer that is defensible, we have begun to penetrate.
3. What is UNDERSTANDING. Once we have an explanation, the ultimate question is to ask what it (the phenomenon) means to those who do it, or are in it, etc. "Why do you do that?" The only way to get to this level is to ask those who actually or should know. Sometimes even the natives can't tell you very well or easily. At this level, you or someone needs insight.
Finally an INSIGHT, especially if it stands up to rational and empirical critique, can be a little something that we can say we understand. Whew!
DON'T WORRY. An example of this assignment will be provided in class with documentation online.
How to Proceed
So, how do you do Assignment 6? Well, the easiest way is to try to follow the outline (above).
1. What is your observation? This you have yourself, or you get from your source. You should already have an idea for an observation, if not the actual observation or phenomenon, from Assignment 5!
2. Try to find out how or why it is--an explanation for your observation. Look at what you have observed and ask why is that? or how is that? where does it come from? etc.! (Remember, asking questions is important for this course and is the key for success.)
3. Try to find out what Americans say or think about this thing you have observed. Talk to one. But if you cannot find one live here in Liberec, go to the trusty Internet. Find a forum related to the subject and post your questions and watch for answers. Or, find news articles about the observation, or where people have been quoted on the subject. Or, find a book about it, or a secondary source (e.g., an article). In other words, go deeper with your observations. Maybe you have an answer (insight) right in front of you! Gather data and look at and think about them!
Showing posts with label model. Show all posts
Showing posts with label model. Show all posts
October 9, 2009
July 5, 2007
July 3, 2007
Speakers bureau
Web Support for the Speakers Bureau
DRAFT: September 5, 2001
DRAFT: September 5, 2001
The basic structure for the Speakers Bureau is up on the Web for review. However, it is not "apparently" accessible to the public. That linking and needed promotion will wait for any necessary approvals.
The intranet piece of the Bureau has faculty members self-registering, giving details about themselves and the topic(s) they wish to offer. Registration populates a members database and sends e-mail messages to the coordinator for the Bureau and the database administrator. The e-mail messages alert these people--perhaps one and the same person--of some activity. Database monitoring ensures that the public user on the Internet will read properly formatted entries.
The public user accesses the Speakers Bureau on the college Web site. From this location, s/he can evaluate a speaker's performance. Evaluate may be a strong word. Give feedback? The details of the form need to be worked out, but once submitted, the results are monitored by the coordinator and a copy sent to the speaker. The public user can also view the Bureau's speakers and what they are offer from this start page. From the results page, the user can request that speaker.
If the user makes a request, it goes via e-mail to the speaker, who is then to follow up as necessary. E-mail messages also go to the coordinator and database administrator, who monitor that the technology is working and what levels of activity the Bureau experiences via the Web. Requests are also dropped into a requests database which can be copied whenever anyone--the committee?--wishes to see a summary of requests and perform any analyses.
Transactions
Background*
Online voting as a process is much like that in so-called real life. One registers to vote. To do so, s/he proves his or her identity and eligibility to vote. Then when an election comes, s/he gets a ballot after s/he has shown proof of identity and appears on the list of eligible voters. The voter then votes using an authorized ballot and submits it to be counted.
In computerese this is registering to access a Web page form, getting an e-mail confirmation of registration with the address of the protected page, logging in by providing a user name and password to access it, accessing it, filling in the form, and submitting it.
Someone with access to the ballots (in a physical locked box or on a Web server) gathers the data, summarizes them, reports them, etc., including seeing that no unauthorized input is included. Or, this person gives the raw data to others to do with what is appropriate for indubitable results.
Admittedly, there is a difference between the online solution built for the Faculty Senate's study and that in real life in that a user name is associated with a ballot. In turn, that user name is associated with a person's e-mail address. If the e-mail address is "one eligible to vote," then the user name is accepted in its place as eligible. And if one wanted to see who voted which way or that, or wanted to rig the results somehow, that is possible, as it is using other voting procedures and media (e.g., paper ballots).
Who sees the file or files where user names are associated with e-mail addresses? The person with the permission to read that file on the Web server. This can be someone in Computing Services, or the election administrator, or the committee in charge of the election. Set it up one way or another and that will be who can read the different files.
The server makes three files in online voting:
1. A registrations file holding e-mail address, chosen or given user name, password, and date;
2. A user names file with encrypted passwords; and
3. A results file holding IP address, date, time, vote(s), and user name.
Whoever is authorized to examine these files for illegitimate votes (whether by ineligible voters or multiple voting) looks first at the registrations file to see if the e-mail addresses represent eligible voters. Next, s/he, or another person looks at the user names file to determine if only eligible user names have logged in to vote. Finally, the authorized person or election oversight body examines the results file to see that there is only one eligible user name per vote.
Those in charge of an election can set different levels of information access. In other words, the person charged with examining the registrations file only sees that and reports irregularities. The person or person charged with examining the user names file sees only that and reports these are the users (fictitious names, really) who logged in to vote. And the person or persons charged with examining the results file uses the irregularities reported above to weed out ineligible voters and deletes multiple votes by the same user name.
Checks and balances? You build them around what the technologies are capable of and provide you.
In lieu of a better mousetrap, this is the solution that has been built. Rapidly developing Web world tools and greater resources devoted to a more satisfactory solution bode well for WNCC's participation on the frontier of electronic democracy. For now, this is something to use, or not.
Secured Transactions, Medium-Tech Solution
A medium- to low-tech solution has been prepared to serve both online voting and logging evaluations. It is the result of developing a "voting/evaluation protocol" and then employing various Web technologies to actualize it. This is the protocol.
1. An administrator (in consultation with Web Support and a teacher or group interested in asking for a vote/poll) creates a transaction form;
2. The administrator announces the participation window and transaction procedures;
3. The administrator lists or receives a list of eligible users;
4. The user registers with his or her e-mail user name and any password;
5. The system (computing resource) distributes registration confirmation and the address (URL) of the transaction;
6. The user enters his or her e-mail user name and password;
7. The user accesses the transaction page, enters data, and submits them;
8. The system deters the user's return to the transaction page;
9. The administrator checks for duplicate transactions;
10. The administrator checks for unregistered users; and
11. The administrator collects and posts results.
Online voting as a process is much like that in so-called real life. One registers to vote. To do so, s/he proves his or her identity and eligibility to vote. Then when an election comes, s/he gets a ballot after s/he has shown proof of identity and appears on the list of eligible voters. The voter then votes using an authorized ballot and submits it to be counted.
In computerese this is registering to access a Web page form, getting an e-mail confirmation of registration with the address of the protected page, logging in by providing a user name and password to access it, accessing it, filling in the form, and submitting it.
Someone with access to the ballots (in a physical locked box or on a Web server) gathers the data, summarizes them, reports them, etc., including seeing that no unauthorized input is included. Or, this person gives the raw data to others to do with what is appropriate for indubitable results.
Admittedly, there is a difference between the online solution built for the Faculty Senate's study and that in real life in that a user name is associated with a ballot. In turn, that user name is associated with a person's e-mail address. If the e-mail address is "one eligible to vote," then the user name is accepted in its place as eligible. And if one wanted to see who voted which way or that, or wanted to rig the results somehow, that is possible, as it is using other voting procedures and media (e.g., paper ballots).
Who sees the file or files where user names are associated with e-mail addresses? The person with the permission to read that file on the Web server. This can be someone in Computing Services, or the election administrator, or the committee in charge of the election. Set it up one way or another and that will be who can read the different files.
The server makes three files in online voting:
1. A registrations file holding e-mail address, chosen or given user name, password, and date;
2. A user names file with encrypted passwords; and
3. A results file holding IP address, date, time, vote(s), and user name.
Whoever is authorized to examine these files for illegitimate votes (whether by ineligible voters or multiple voting) looks first at the registrations file to see if the e-mail addresses represent eligible voters. Next, s/he, or another person looks at the user names file to determine if only eligible user names have logged in to vote. Finally, the authorized person or election oversight body examines the results file to see that there is only one eligible user name per vote.
Those in charge of an election can set different levels of information access. In other words, the person charged with examining the registrations file only sees that and reports irregularities. The person or person charged with examining the user names file sees only that and reports these are the users (fictitious names, really) who logged in to vote. And the person or persons charged with examining the results file uses the irregularities reported above to weed out ineligible voters and deletes multiple votes by the same user name.
Checks and balances? You build them around what the technologies are capable of and provide you.
In lieu of a better mousetrap, this is the solution that has been built. Rapidly developing Web world tools and greater resources devoted to a more satisfactory solution bode well for WNCC's participation on the frontier of electronic democracy. For now, this is something to use, or not.
Secured Transactions, Medium-Tech Solution
A medium- to low-tech solution has been prepared to serve both online voting and logging evaluations. It is the result of developing a "voting/evaluation protocol" and then employing various Web technologies to actualize it. This is the protocol.
1. An administrator (in consultation with Web Support and a teacher or group interested in asking for a vote/poll) creates a transaction form;
2. The administrator announces the participation window and transaction procedures;
3. The administrator lists or receives a list of eligible users;
4. The user registers with his or her e-mail user name and any password;
5. The system (computing resource) distributes registration confirmation and the address (URL) of the transaction;
6. The user enters his or her e-mail user name and password;
7. The user accesses the transaction page, enters data, and submits them;
8. The system deters the user's return to the transaction page;
9. The administrator checks for duplicate transactions;
10. The administrator checks for unregistered users; and
11. The administrator collects and posts results.
See also the documentation and demonstration pages at:
http://www.wncc.nevada.edu/intranet/webdevelop
_____
* Prepared for discussion and consideration by the faculty of WNCC, about 2001 (e.g., for online voting, teacher/course evaluations).
Web-supported learning?
Proposed Scheme for Web-supported Learning*
1. Teachers and others set up and maintain content area sites based on Web site formatting standards, stylesheet, or templates. The content area sites are a part of CMC's intellectual property.
2. Content area sites have generic user accounts with a current faculty/staff person as lead.
3. A faculty/staff person can have a homepage linked from a content area site, for example for a CV or resume. (CMC needs to decide if faculty/staff member homepages are a part of the main site or not!)
3. Lead persons work with webmaster to set up/use Internet features (e.g., mysql).
_____
* Prepared for short presentation/persuasion for CMC Graduate School of Business, Celakovice, Czech Republic, 2003.
June 26, 2007
Epistemology excursion
The premise is that we have two general ways to discover and contribute to what we know and understand, the qualitative and the quantitative, the former usually associated with what-understanding and the latter with how-explanation. The individual results or sum is (information leading to) knowledge. The pursuit-method is different kinds of science. These approaches have their own breadths and depths and variations and mixtures, but reality is still one of the two ways, or both.
Qualitative and quantitative break apart along an inside-outside divide, and in number. The qualitative is concerned with the individual and individuals in a group. It is always somehow personal, having to do with the insides that we see and experience. A thing singular and things plural are held and seen outside of us, in the exterior world; and we count and try to describe these things. This includes the ideas (things plural) we have about that world. In short, this is the quantitative world.
If we take singular and plural and interior and exterior of what is, or we suspect to be, then we get a foursome, or quadrants: qualitative inquiry in the areas of person and people and quantitative inquiry in thing and things.
Both terms now, qualitative and quantitative, do not seem adequate to encompass our world, if they ever were, in its and our own richness and variety. But the terms are still useful in this simplified scheme.
The different perspectives or disciplines now take their place as elaborations on the new multiple in the pursuit of science as knowledge building.
What-is-the-experience-of becomes first person knowing (e.g., phenomenology and related interior human sciences). What do we understand, believe, value, etc., becomes first person plural (e.g., interpretive studies such as history, cultural anthropology). Examining it and explaining what and how becomes singular thing research, the object(s) of inquiry for "harder" (more exterior) science (e.g., biology, physics, etc.). Not least (because all four quadrants are contributors to knowing and understanding) is things plural and how they relate between and among (e.g., systems sciences, political science, etc.).
What does all this mean? That there is an expanding universe of how we know what we know. That might be conceptualized not in terms of qualitative versus/or quantitative but in terms of the object(s) of inquiry and whether we are looking at individuals or multiples from the inside or outside. Those objects (both singular and multiple) require different ways of knowing and understanding, that is different kinds of ways of knowing--science. Each has its truth value and contribution to make. And together, they make for a diverse but integrated view of what is. And this is perhaps the most important point.
If an integrated or integral view of what is comprises what we claim to know, then arguments about which view presides is superseded by all as at least part of the whole.
Application discussion next.
28.02.2005
Revised 23.09.2023
Foolproof formula?
I am going to be a bit brash and give a quick and dirty formula to use to bypass all the courses and advice people get about teaching.
This formula appears foolproof, but it is not easy to do what's best for students when using it or any other tool in ever-growing bag of teaching tricks. So in this sense, the formula is not exactly foolproof. The formula is practical, however, and at the same time powerful. It will help disclose learning such that students can acquire, practice, and demonstrate their knowledge, skills, and abilities.
Here goes, and I am addressing those who wish to build better and better ways of teaching, and especially learning. A visual aid for this discussion is the attached model for teaching where the focus at the center is student learning and success in accomplishment.
First, before we get into the details, know these rules of thumb.
1. Stating what you want a learner to learn and demonstrate is the key. If you are not clear about this, s/he might end up learning somewhere else. S/he will work on and try to give you evidence of something other than what is the reasoned aim.
2. A learning activity is one that best helps the learner acquire, practice, and demonstrate a worthwhile aim or objective. The challenge and creativity that is good teaching, or tutoring, is to find or design that best, most effective activity. Why should teachers or students bother spending time with anything else?
It is clear from these rules that the business of learning can be wild and exciting, a journey with a desired end and reward when concluded. Teachers and students can have a good and interesting time together on the path to discovery and competence.
What these rules of thumb also clearly show is that the primary learning activity that the student need not always face is a teacher talking.
Where does this developmental or discovery process begin for teachers and students? I will talk about the teacher perspective on these matters first.
Subjects to learn have aims, large and small, and their reasons for being. In chemistry you need to know and be able to use the periodic chart of elements because without this, nothing can come together in nature or the lab. Plus incompetent use of what is available can blow up in your face. Kind of gross generalizations, but you get the idea.
Large aims are goals. Smaller aims are objectives--statements about specifically what is to be learned or demonstrated and how. Here is a goal--to appreciate and be sensitive to the differences among us. This might be a goal for a Cultural Studies course. An objective: to be able to paraphrase what another person has said to that person's satisfaction. Note both the behavior and the measure in the objective. Another slightly higher level objective might be to be able to use Maslow's hierarchy of needs to explain the presence or absence of art in publicly financed homeless shelters. Each of these objectives, the lower and slightly higher, are not particularly difficult, but they depend, of course, on other objectives. For example, knowledge objectives having to do with paraphrasing and Maslow's hierarchy.
Should the second objective be met? A bit strange or unique, perhaps. This is to say that the teacher has to be careful and strategic in setting objectives. And in turn teaching demands that learning activities and their objectives need to have reasons, good ones both in terms of the subject or field of study and in terms of what students can and should be able to do.
Given pretty good learning objectives, two questions then face the teacher.
1. Can students meet the objectives already?
2. How will you know?
The terms in the formula or model are assessment and evaluation. Assessment is where is the student now in a possible series of learning steps to meeting an objective. Evaluation is a judgment about sufficient evidence indicating that the objective has been met. Sometimes teachers prepare measures, like tests, to help see where a student is and whether or not s/he is finished. These are sometimes called pre- and post-tests. Pre-tests are informative and guide learning. Post-tests are, at least they are supposed to be, decisive. The student knows or can do this.
A teacher helping students learn, practice, and demonstrate needs to, well, help. One way of helping is to give information about progress. As students work with a subject, say in acquiring information or evaluating knowledge, teachers need to give feedback indicating yes or no, you are progressing or not. Feedback is ideally non-evaluative, however, in the sense that this is information to guide learning, not to say whether or not or how much s/he has.
A teacher's job, up to this point with specific reference to the formula, is not much about what we usually think of as teaching behavior. There are aims or goals, objectives, rationales, assessments and evaluation, and feedback. Pretty methodical or formulaic stuff.
It is not true that if a teacher does all these things students will learn. It is also not true that if the teacher selects or designs student learning activities and the resources to support that learning that students will learn.
But it is the enterprise of education and schools and teachers (and training) to facilitate, that is to make easy the acquisition of knowledge and skills. At least it is that, sometimes more than that. The basic idea is that learning will more likely occur if the teacher does these things with students. And education, schools, and teachers have a legitimate role to play if their expectations for learning and how to learn are more clear than not.
Well, now for the fun part. What can the student do that will most likely and effectively and efficiently help him or her achieve worthwhile educational objectives? Here is the real challenge and the source of creative joy in teaching. Given a learning objective, assessments, etc., the teacher, and sometimes students themselves, select or design whatever it takes as learning activities to enable or demonstrate proficiency. It's best if these activities are challenging, fun, engaging, age appropriate, suitable for particular learning styles. There are probably other criteria for great and appropriate learning activities, but here again you (should) get the idea.
This is the core of what we usually think of as teaching. But realize one thing. Teaching here is not teacher behavior or teacher activities but what the learner can experience to develop his or her own competence, often cognitive in formal educational settings, but not exclusively so. (Skills training, for example, can have their origins in psychomotor or kinesthetic domains.) This then, plus all the above parts of the model, shows the teacher as manager or coordinator or facilitator of learning. Pretty simple, huh?
Well no, not really. But this formula or model abstracts the key aspects of what needs to be in place for leaning to happen beyond the likelihood of chance.
Does chance or serendipity or an unanticipated learning outcome happen in schools and classrooms or in self study? Yes, and they should. We cannot specify in advance all the good and appropriate learning that can take place while we are in relationship with students. Nor should we. If education is to bring out the genius that we all have already inside us, going back to the root of the word educate, then institutionalized education, that which is planned and documented, is only part of what it means where and when you can learn. There is always more and something else that we learn in, say, school--in addition to what the course descriptions and other official documents about learning say.
For example, one of the best traditional students I have had recently said, "I can't wait till school starts again. I miss all the people and the things we do together." Seems like this student hasn't read the university catalog or the course requirements. He is here for apparently different reasons than many teachers and educational programs wish to promote.
Which brings up the part I haven't addressed yet, the all-important student's perspective. Students, realize that whether your teacher makes it clear or not, you are being processed in the education factory along the lines of the model presented here. If and when things are not going according to this outline, raise your hand and question and start to discuss what is going on. You are at the center of the enterprise. If you are not, you need to take charge of your learning such that you get as much as you can out of this great and good thing called school. It's your education.
Realize at the same time that even though the model looks like a formula and should work most of the time, the actors are human, and in this, like planned an unplanned learning experiences, anything can happen. And that is the best education you can have, the planned along with the unplanned.
In summary, whether you are a student or teacher or a student of teaching, when you are asked to supply or experience a learning activity, ask. Does this experience have a high likelihood that it will lead to acquiring, practicing, or demonstrating a worthwhile learning aim? and will it be fun, interesting, and/or challenging such that learning will last beyond any tests or exams? If the signs are Go, such learning and an education is not foolish and will prove useful, rich with better and better stuff--to learn.
Approx. 1500 words
Originally posted on June 22, 2006. This revised version is dated 23 June, 2009.
This formula appears foolproof, but it is not easy to do what's best for students when using it or any other tool in ever-growing bag of teaching tricks. So in this sense, the formula is not exactly foolproof. The formula is practical, however, and at the same time powerful. It will help disclose learning such that students can acquire, practice, and demonstrate their knowledge, skills, and abilities.
Here goes, and I am addressing those who wish to build better and better ways of teaching, and especially learning. A visual aid for this discussion is the attached model for teaching where the focus at the center is student learning and success in accomplishment.
First, before we get into the details, know these rules of thumb.
1. Stating what you want a learner to learn and demonstrate is the key. If you are not clear about this, s/he might end up learning somewhere else. S/he will work on and try to give you evidence of something other than what is the reasoned aim.
2. A learning activity is one that best helps the learner acquire, practice, and demonstrate a worthwhile aim or objective. The challenge and creativity that is good teaching, or tutoring, is to find or design that best, most effective activity. Why should teachers or students bother spending time with anything else?
It is clear from these rules that the business of learning can be wild and exciting, a journey with a desired end and reward when concluded. Teachers and students can have a good and interesting time together on the path to discovery and competence.
What these rules of thumb also clearly show is that the primary learning activity that the student need not always face is a teacher talking.
Where does this developmental or discovery process begin for teachers and students? I will talk about the teacher perspective on these matters first.
Subjects to learn have aims, large and small, and their reasons for being. In chemistry you need to know and be able to use the periodic chart of elements because without this, nothing can come together in nature or the lab. Plus incompetent use of what is available can blow up in your face. Kind of gross generalizations, but you get the idea.
Large aims are goals. Smaller aims are objectives--statements about specifically what is to be learned or demonstrated and how. Here is a goal--to appreciate and be sensitive to the differences among us. This might be a goal for a Cultural Studies course. An objective: to be able to paraphrase what another person has said to that person's satisfaction. Note both the behavior and the measure in the objective. Another slightly higher level objective might be to be able to use Maslow's hierarchy of needs to explain the presence or absence of art in publicly financed homeless shelters. Each of these objectives, the lower and slightly higher, are not particularly difficult, but they depend, of course, on other objectives. For example, knowledge objectives having to do with paraphrasing and Maslow's hierarchy.
Should the second objective be met? A bit strange or unique, perhaps. This is to say that the teacher has to be careful and strategic in setting objectives. And in turn teaching demands that learning activities and their objectives need to have reasons, good ones both in terms of the subject or field of study and in terms of what students can and should be able to do.
Given pretty good learning objectives, two questions then face the teacher.
1. Can students meet the objectives already?
2. How will you know?
The terms in the formula or model are assessment and evaluation. Assessment is where is the student now in a possible series of learning steps to meeting an objective. Evaluation is a judgment about sufficient evidence indicating that the objective has been met. Sometimes teachers prepare measures, like tests, to help see where a student is and whether or not s/he is finished. These are sometimes called pre- and post-tests. Pre-tests are informative and guide learning. Post-tests are, at least they are supposed to be, decisive. The student knows or can do this.
A teacher helping students learn, practice, and demonstrate needs to, well, help. One way of helping is to give information about progress. As students work with a subject, say in acquiring information or evaluating knowledge, teachers need to give feedback indicating yes or no, you are progressing or not. Feedback is ideally non-evaluative, however, in the sense that this is information to guide learning, not to say whether or not or how much s/he has.
A teacher's job, up to this point with specific reference to the formula, is not much about what we usually think of as teaching behavior. There are aims or goals, objectives, rationales, assessments and evaluation, and feedback. Pretty methodical or formulaic stuff.
It is not true that if a teacher does all these things students will learn. It is also not true that if the teacher selects or designs student learning activities and the resources to support that learning that students will learn.
But it is the enterprise of education and schools and teachers (and training) to facilitate, that is to make easy the acquisition of knowledge and skills. At least it is that, sometimes more than that. The basic idea is that learning will more likely occur if the teacher does these things with students. And education, schools, and teachers have a legitimate role to play if their expectations for learning and how to learn are more clear than not.
Well, now for the fun part. What can the student do that will most likely and effectively and efficiently help him or her achieve worthwhile educational objectives? Here is the real challenge and the source of creative joy in teaching. Given a learning objective, assessments, etc., the teacher, and sometimes students themselves, select or design whatever it takes as learning activities to enable or demonstrate proficiency. It's best if these activities are challenging, fun, engaging, age appropriate, suitable for particular learning styles. There are probably other criteria for great and appropriate learning activities, but here again you (should) get the idea.
This is the core of what we usually think of as teaching. But realize one thing. Teaching here is not teacher behavior or teacher activities but what the learner can experience to develop his or her own competence, often cognitive in formal educational settings, but not exclusively so. (Skills training, for example, can have their origins in psychomotor or kinesthetic domains.) This then, plus all the above parts of the model, shows the teacher as manager or coordinator or facilitator of learning. Pretty simple, huh?
Well no, not really. But this formula or model abstracts the key aspects of what needs to be in place for leaning to happen beyond the likelihood of chance.
Does chance or serendipity or an unanticipated learning outcome happen in schools and classrooms or in self study? Yes, and they should. We cannot specify in advance all the good and appropriate learning that can take place while we are in relationship with students. Nor should we. If education is to bring out the genius that we all have already inside us, going back to the root of the word educate, then institutionalized education, that which is planned and documented, is only part of what it means where and when you can learn. There is always more and something else that we learn in, say, school--in addition to what the course descriptions and other official documents about learning say.
For example, one of the best traditional students I have had recently said, "I can't wait till school starts again. I miss all the people and the things we do together." Seems like this student hasn't read the university catalog or the course requirements. He is here for apparently different reasons than many teachers and educational programs wish to promote.
Which brings up the part I haven't addressed yet, the all-important student's perspective. Students, realize that whether your teacher makes it clear or not, you are being processed in the education factory along the lines of the model presented here. If and when things are not going according to this outline, raise your hand and question and start to discuss what is going on. You are at the center of the enterprise. If you are not, you need to take charge of your learning such that you get as much as you can out of this great and good thing called school. It's your education.
Realize at the same time that even though the model looks like a formula and should work most of the time, the actors are human, and in this, like planned an unplanned learning experiences, anything can happen. And that is the best education you can have, the planned along with the unplanned.
In summary, whether you are a student or teacher or a student of teaching, when you are asked to supply or experience a learning activity, ask. Does this experience have a high likelihood that it will lead to acquiring, practicing, or demonstrating a worthwhile learning aim? and will it be fun, interesting, and/or challenging such that learning will last beyond any tests or exams? If the signs are Go, such learning and an education is not foolish and will prove useful, rich with better and better stuff--to learn.
Approx. 1500 words
Originally posted on June 22, 2006. This revised version is dated 23 June, 2009.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)