Group items tagged

PRECISION: Could you give more details? Could you be more specific? A statement can be both clear and accurate, but not precise, as in "Jack is overweight." (We don’t know how overweight Jack is, one pound or 500 pounds.)

RELEVANCE: How is that connected to the question? How does that bear on the issue? A statement can be clear, accurate, and precise, but not relevant to the question at issue.

DEPTH: How does your answer address the complexities in the question? How are you taking into account the problems in the question? Is that dealing with the most significant factors? A statement can be clear, accurate, precise, and relevant, but superficial (that is, lack depth).

BREADTH: Do we need to consider another point of view? Is there another way to look at this question? What would this look like from a conservative standpoint? What would this look like from the point of view of . . .?  A line of reasoning may be clear accurate, precise, relevant, and deep, but lack breadth (as in an argument from either the conservative or liberal standpoint which gets deeply into an issue, but only recognizes the insights of one side of the question.)

LOGIC: Does this really make sense? Does that follow from what you said? How does that follow? But before you implied this, and now you are saying that; how can both be true? When we think, we bring a variety of thoughts together into some order. When the combination of thoughts are mutually supporting and make sense in combination, the thinking is "logical." When the combination is not mutually supporting, is contradictory in some sense or does not "make sense," the combination is not logical.

FAIRNESS:  Do I have a vested interest in this issue?  Am I sympathetically representing the viewpoints of others?  Human think is often biased in the direction of the thinker - in what are the perceived interests of the thinker.  Humans do not naturally consider the rights and needs of others on the same plane with their own rights and needs.  We therefore must actively work to make sure we are applying the intellectual standard of fairness to our thinking.  Since we naturally see ourselves as fair even when we are unfair, this can be very difficult.  A commitment to fairmindedness is a starting place.

Scanning the room my assistants also saw students cruising Facebook, instant messaging, and texting their friends. The students were undoubtedly engaged, just not with me. “My teaching assistants consoled me by noting that students have learned that they can ‘get by’ without paying attention in their classes.”

Last spring I asked my students how many of them did not like school. Over half of them rose their hands. When I asked how many of them did not like learning, no hands were raised. And there’s the rub. We love learning. We hate school. What’s worse is that many of us hate school because we love learning

Some time ago we started taking our walls too seriously – not just the walls of our classrooms, but also the metaphorical walls that we have constructed around our ’subjects,’ ‘disciplines,’ and ‘courses.’ McLuhan’s statement about the bewildered child ….. still holds true in most classrooms today. The walls have become so prominent that they are even reflected in our language, so that today there is something called ‘the real world’ which is foreign and set apart from our schools

The problem solving process begins as soon as the problem solver generates enough information about the problem space to gain an understanding of the problem.

Representation in the problem-solving process refers to how the solver mentally represents the problem. The solver’s representation of the problem is directly related to his or her existing knowledge structure of the content of the problem.

Students have to increase their reflective practice to aid their metacognition and transfer of STEM concepts.

Different individuals have different conceptual knowledge and will make different associations to their knowledge. Exposure to the constraints and affordances of a particular context in which a problem exists will invariably influence the way in which the student represents a problem in a similar context.

Sanders (2009) admitted that it is difficult to prepare a teacher that is competent in all three bodies of knowledge, given the volume of content knowledge necessary to be an effective science, mathematics or technology educator.

This pedagogical approach is not without its challenges, as students may still compartmentalize their knowledge. Also, it is often difficult logistically and in terms of instructional timing for teachers across STEM discipline to collaborate effectively (Crismond, 2011; Kimbell & Stables, 2008).

Good and poor problem solvers differ in their recall of information from previously encountered problems and by extension their ability to transfer concepts to the target problem. This difference exists because poor problem solvers tend to remember surface similarities between problems, while good problem solvers remember underlying conceptual structures that make two problems similar although they have different surface features (Sutton, 2003).

Until student assessment methods are modified to reflect less dependency on standardized tests, engineering and technology educators will garner greater collaboration from math and science teachers when the latter can see that engineering and design-based curriculums does improve students’ ability to solve standardized test problems.

Critical thinking is self-guided, self-disciplined thinking which attempts to reason at the highest level of quality in a fair-minded way.  People who think critically consistently attempt to live rationally, reasonably, empathically.   They are keenly aware of the inherently flawed nature of human thinking when left unchecked.  They strive to diminish the power of their egocentric and sociocentric tendencies.  They use the intellectual tools that critical thinking offers – concepts and principles that enable them to analyze, assess, and improve thinking.  They work diligently to develop the intellectual virtues of intellectual integrity, intellectual humility, intellectual civility, intellectual empathy, intellectual sense of justice and confidence in reason.  They realize that no matter how skilled they are as thinkers, they can always improve their reasoning abilities and they will at times fall prey to mistakes in reasoning, human irrationality, prejudices, biases, distortions, uncritically accepted social rules and taboos, self-interest, and vested interest.  They strive to improve the world in whatever ways they can and contribute to a more rational, civilized society.   At the same time, they recognize the complexities often inherent in doing so.  They avoid thinking simplistically about complicated issues and strive to appropriately consider the rights and needs of relevant others.  They recognize the complexities in developing as thinkers, and commit themselves to life-long practice toward self-improvement.  They embody the Socratic principle:  The unexamined life is not worth living, because they realize that many unexamined lives together result in an uncritical, unjust, dangerous world. ~ Linda Elder, September, 2007

The learning environment must be physically and psychologically comfortable

Adults have something real to lose in a classroom situation. Self-esteem and ego a

Adults have expectations, a

Adults bring a great deal of life experienc

Instructors who have a tendency to hold forth rather than facilitate can hold that tendency in check--or compensate for it--by concentrating on the use of open-ended questions to draw out relevant student knowledge and experience.

New knowledge has to be integrated with previous knowledge; students must actively participate in the learning experience.

The key to the instructor role is control. The instructor must balance the presentation of new material, debate and discussion, sharing of relevant student experiences, and the clock.

The instructor has to protect minority opinion, keep disagreements civil and unheated, make connections between various opinions and ideas, and keep reminding the group of the variety of potential solutions to the problem. The instructor is less advocate than orchestrator.

Integration of new knowledge and skill requires transition time and focused effort on application. Learning and teaching theories function better as resources than as a Rosetta stone. A skill-training task can draw much from the behavioral approach, for example, while personal growth-centered subjects seem to draw gainfully from humanistic concepts. An eclectic, rather than a single theory-based approach to developing strategies and procedures, is recommended for matching instruction to learning tasks.

Second, students need to be able to use the technology

Third, technology must be relevant and interactive to the coursework

Fourth, technology must be used for a practical purpose—that is, taking the fundamentals and technology learned over a semester and applying it to a final project, where creativity and uniqueness is required and rewarded

Distance education and online courses don't work well with Net Geners—the social component of learning is required.

How the Net Gen Learns

taught himself

wide range of interests

not locked into one thing

when challenged, they excel in creative and innovative ways

doing hands-on work and working in groups,

Using technology only enhances the hands-on experience; it does not—and cannot—replace human interaction.

After reading that statement, I felt as though many things clicked for me. The course design and teaching practices are closely linked. The social, cognitive, and teaching presence are related and depend on each other. What does this mean for my course? For me it translates to making sure my course design contains a careful balance to establish the community of inquiry, and that my teaching practices are supported by my course design.

First that instructors must give control over the learning to the students, and second that instructors must be skilled at guiding discussions in order to help students learn what is necessary through interactions with others. I especially liked an analogy that Luke used in one of his discussion posts, “Yoda (the teacher) guided Luke (the student) in the ways of the Force, he pointed him where he needed to go but had Luke do the work.” I think this is very relatable for those of us who are star wars fans. Yoda is this incredibly wise mentor, who says very little. The statements he makes are brief but have a lot of meaning. I do see how this relates to effective teaching online. I had to help facilitate a discussion in a past online class, and always felt hesitant to jump in. My sense was that you only want to add something when the thinking stops. You only want to ask enough questions, or statements to get the thinking going again.

I really appreciated that the course was able to allow me to reach these conclusions in my own way, rather than just telling me “the line between direct instruction and facilitation of discourse can be blurred”. 

I have been able to make the big connections, and form ideas in a way that previously has been difficult for me. 

I feel as though the reflection assignments have provided the context for my brain to think in a different way.  This not only gives me confidence for the future, but it also helps me to discover the connections I have made unconsciously!  It seems kind of strange to say that, but it is true!  I am hoping to continue to use blogging as a tool to document my insights and learning after the course ends.

I definitely was struggling with motivation when I felt the connection to my classmates and the instructor fading.

Through ETAP640, I have really learned how important reflection is for deep learning. It is through my blog posts that I have been able to tie all the ideas together in my head and makes sense out of the information. The course manual suggests that you ask your students why they are taking the course within the ice breaker.

Maree (4)

so maybe I’ll work on developing my very own perplexity fairy. 

In this course not only will I remember my instructor’s name – I will also remember my classmates’ names. That’s pretty remarkable!

I think I will learn a lot about the students’ thought processes and understand which concepts they are grasping (or not).

“I think that we take for granted the huge amount of information that we pass on to our students in a F2F classroom just by our presence and interaction with them (bathroom passes, appropriate conduct with each other, respect for the work and management of time) the aspects of education that never finds its way into our lesson plans. In many ways in learning to teach online we are having to learn how to teach again, to focus on the minutiae that is generally accepted we do, to take nothing for granted, assume nothing and to take the entire content of our and every moment of that course (every moment of 8+ weeks) and place it in text form in a virtual environmen

them.

I understand how and why I did it, and I could do it again. 

One cool thing about this course is the ‘meta’ quality. 

what is best for the students.  How can we serve our students?  Are we doing the best we can to teach them? Are we teaching appropriate and relevant courses? Are we being interactive, engaging, are we even able to keep up with our students technology-wise?  Do we adapt and change our methods to keep up with their demands, or try to force our students to adapt to our methods?