Teaching Strategies

Today’s class focused on the practical, down and dirty, aspects of classroom management. Since I knew this was a topic of interest for several people, and that we had already covered IGI and Conversation Theory a bit in another session, I decided to focus our attention on the classroom aspects of teaching. If anyone’s particularly interested in that, though, I’m happy to chat.

A reminder: Roz and I are meeting next week to discuss this project and next steps. If anyone has feedback, questions, ideas for future teaching initiatives, please let one of us know!!

I also mentioned Central Michigan’s FaCIT Take 5 For Teaching website. It’s a great resource for practical tips if you have a spare five minutes and an area you’re interested in learning more about.

Okay! The things we discussed:

First Day

• Student Tours
• Discussion of how students currently use the library (perhaps followed with student led tour)
• Students fill out card about what they want to get from the class (to be used in refining the syllabus)
• Showing the library website and how to do useful things (place a hold, reserve a study room, etc)
• Clickers to get demographic information and introduce the tool
• Learning style inventory

Getting Students To Talk

• Room and layout makes a difference. Giz volunteered to help rearrange for a few hours this summer to see if there are any good solutions. I’m in. Anyone else?
• Worksheets and in class assignments in lieu of discussion
• Pair work

Group Word

• No one currently lets students choose if they want to work alone or in a group
• Students might resist group work, but it’s good for them (they’ll have to do it for the rest of their life)
• Service learning as a way to do group work with one large class group

Getting Comfortable with Speaking

• Practice with an audience
• The shift between the reference librarian’s role as a helper/expert to a teacher’s role as the one in charge is a hard one
• Praise in public, chastise in private
• Set ground rules

Multitasking Students

• Ignore it
• Ask how what they’re doing is applicable (if blatant)
• Teach from in front of the multitasking student, wherever they’re sitting

Attendance and Tardiness

• Quiz grades: that they count towards attendance, that they start when the class starts so their grades reflect tardiness
• Tick off each comment as class participation
• In class graded exercises
• Shut door when class starts
• Stop and comment when people come in late

Learning Names

• Name table tent by each student
• Assigned seats

Establishing Class Rules

• As a class
• List that is modified each semester based on previous experiences

So, those are the comments I managed to record during our discussion. If I missed something or you think of something else, please add it! If you have any other Q&A, please leave them here!!

So I didn’t do too much in class on Friday. This was because I felt that if we were taking a day to do active learning, it should be as active as possible, with as little from me as possible. I tried to slip entirely into a facilitator role.

Some noted that physical things are easy to make active, because people can do them. That’s true. But you can take different approaches to how to make them active, and you can still get ideas from how people teach things that are physical. For example, the knit-and-pass exercise could work just as well for translating in a group, teaching synonyms for search, or any brainstorming activity. The yoga-poses teaching demonstrated how to teach something kinesthetically that could have been taught with flashcards. You could have people pose as a painting is drawn, or act out scenes of literature to learn them.

My plan, for this class, was also to show how once you’re thinking from an active learning perspective you incorporate several types of techniques easily, iwthout necessarily thinking “theory X would recommend teaching method Y.”

Today we talked about several types of learning theories, really quickly. We’ll go into several of them in greater depth in the next few classes.

Because I used a very “meta” approach, I’m rolling the two posts into one here.

We started with a Q&A exercise that Kevin, Craig, and I have used in Lib100. Everyone (who wanted to) wrote questions they have in the course, and after it was over everyone (who wanted to) added tick marks to the ones they also shared. This will help Roz and me make sure to cover what you want by the end of the course.

We started with Active Learning, and used a case study as an example. The case study could be approached with an active learning strategy, but that wasn’t necessary. The point of the exercise was to experience an active learning activity.

Next up we addressed Problem Based Learning. In this case each pair had a problem they chose (how to teach a specific skill) and had a minute to find a way to solve the problem. The pairs shared out with the larger group, reflected and discussed some more, and had the opportunity to share their solutions again.

The third method we explored was Inquiry Based Learning which is perhaps the most student-driven solution. Pairs (again!) explored some aspect of IGI (how it’s related to the other subjects we’ve covered, if it is effective, how to incorporate it into instruction, etc) and shared out to the class.

Service Learning was our fourth topic, were everyone reflected individually on a project that they were very involved in. After reflecting we shared with the group.

The final category was conversation theory, in which the group would make connections as a whole. However, I had a meeting scheduled right up to that moment in class, so I had to leave at this point. If someone wants so share how that went… feel free to comment!

So, the big meta of the day:

• It was fast! It was designed to be fast to get through a lot of content for those who wanted a taste of a bunch of things. The speed also allowed us to demonstrate that there will be a lot of content about the specific topics we’ve singled out for future classes so that participants would know it’s more than just what is covered on the surface at conferences, in mainstream education literature, etc. Finally, if someone’s really busy and having a hard time making it to the classes, there was enough content to know if it’s something you want to know more about in the future. Of course, we hope you’ll come, though!
• I tried to fit in pair work leading to discussion, pair work that informs discussion that informs pair work, and personal reflection. Each of these approaches has strengths and weaknesses and a combined approach allows you to give more people a chance to do something that resonates with their own learning style.

If you have questions, please leave them here!

Pair Work

• Today made use of pair work, though it evolved into groups of four or five.
• Pair work is a good way to create an environment where students feel comfortable talking.
• Introduce a topic, ask students to discuss an issue in pairs, then ask each group to share something they discussed.
• This lets shy people participate without speaking to the group, or to feel good about what they’re going to say before announcing it, gets students comfortable talking, and lets them share varying opinions (as opposed to a large group, where people tend to find one perspective and focus on it).
• Today we used this in order to break up the lecture (after 10 minutes of lecture, we had a short break to share ideas). This helps with attention span, where research indicates people can focus for about 20 minutes without a break.
• We also used the pair work to move into group discussion. The first few breaks we used pair work to start sharing, and then once everyone was engaged, we moved to using the breaks for short class discussions.

PowerPoint Design

• Benefits of a text based presentation
  • Students don’t need to worry as much about taking notes
  • You can clearly state the points you want students to learn
  • Students can catch up if they weren’t there (don’t need the instructor)
  • Helps linear learners
• Benefits of image based presentation
  • Helps meet multiple learning styles (visual)
  • Makes use of Dual-Coding Theory (both visual and verbal to introduce a point at the same time)
  • Creates a puzzle (why this image?) that requires more attention than just the content
  • Can create a more powerful recall situation the next time they see the image
• Drawbacks of a text based presentation
  • Allows students to miss class or tune out
  • Encourages speaker to focus on what’s on the slide, rather than what the class is most interested in (or what it needs the most)
  • Appeals mostly to language based learners (to the exclusion of the others)
• Drawbacks of an image based presentation
  • Frustrating for non-visual learners
  • Lack of information that requires instructor to make sense of slides
  • Difficult to follow for linear learners

Any that you’d add?

The meta from today:

• I wanted to do one variation on the group work from last time to show how the same type of activities can be changed to keep it interesting enough that students have to follow directions and pay attention to what is going on in the room. You can also modify any exercise in a number of ways, so this was one example. The first one focused on the abstract and the group work was a way to draw similarities across topics. The second group activity focused on each group learning about one model and understanding it enough to teach others. It was much less about trends.
• The reason that there was a focus on how each taxonomy could inform your teaching is because they were all fairly abstract. This was to help the learners who need concrete examples and reasons why.
• I’m not sure that I’ll do this or not since we tend to be in paper saving mode, but with students I might print out the collaborative handout and pass it out at the beginning of the next class as a quick refresher before moving on.
• We’ll do something different in the next class. I don’t want anyone to get too settled in.

Each class, I’ll post something to let you know about the ID process on my end. This is the first of these posts. Since this was the first day, my main objective was to set the stage for the class and get to know the dynamics of the group:

• Make the goals and intentions of this “course” clear
• Give a broad overview of the topic
• Get a sense of what you hope to get from the “class”
• Note group dynamics
• Preliminarily redrafting the rest of the “course”

This information will inform how we adapt the “course” even at this early stage in the game.