As we begin to wrap-up our discussion of the Common Reading, the Center for Teaching and Learning is proud to publish the reflections of freshman student Lindsay Watts:
When I begin writing anything I simply do what I love and what I think I do best: I tell a story. I do it less for the reader and more for myself. You see, I like to be able to close my eyes and have a piece of literature read to me. I like to watch what is being said come to life beneath my eyelids and feel whatever is being felt in the piece [as though] it was happening to me personally. I have always thought that reading should be [an] experience that way, very vivid and almost tangible. So, in prewriting, I usually go through a few hand-written drafts of different images or points I try to make. Usually, I will write these down sitting having a coffee, doing homework, [or] in the middle of class when an idea suddenly hits me. Then I will take these hand-written drafts and paste and kind of glue them together into a paper and from there it will only take some tweaks and polishing steps to have a completed final draft.
[W]hen I wrote this particular paper I noticed that I had two stories to tell about two completely different parts of my life but they were drawn together by one simple element. My point in this paper was my passions and how they gave me the peace of mind to do what I needed to in high-pressure situations. My teacher, Amy Rybak, suggested, after looking at my rough draft, [that] I needed a relating topic between my horseback riding and speech and debate experiences–two clearly different things. When she mentioned that I learned something about myself. I learned that my experiences with my horse in childhood prepared me for the “spotlight” of sorts [which] I assumed later in my high school years. My structure was almost completely reworked, as it needed to be, with the helpful suggestion by Mrs. Rybak. She helped me realize something about myself and, in turn, helped better structure the direction of my paper.
[A]fter I…paste together a draft, it usually needs some adjustments and polishing. In this case, even though I loved my vivid introduction paragraph, mostly because I enjoyed writing it, I had to go back and rewrite the entire paragraph to sway the reader into seeing things from the right perspective. That it say, get them to understand my thesis better.
In the end I think it gave me confidence that: a) I can do this college stuff (haha) and b) that there are people who will to help and guide you into doing well. You don’t know how good it feels…to not feel like I’m doing this alone. Plus I’m always excited to go class because Mrs. Rybak is always in a good mood and has a very open mind to anything you want to talk about, discuss, write about, etc.
I’m enjoying this class so far as, honestly, my favorite class at Bowling Green.
***
Given Lindsay’s process, those who teach using the Common Reading might consider the following question: how visible or tangible are our beliefs? What can be done to help students see, touch and clearly identify their beliefs (in a manner similar to what Lindsay did with her pre-writing collage)?
There are several adjustments that first-year BGSU students must make. Many new students will learn how to manage new responsibilities, make new friends, meet new expectations, and negotiate a number of other new experiences. One of the ways that BGSU works with new students and the adjustments to college life is through the Common Reading Experience. Since 2001, BGSU has been one of many universities around the country that use a Common Reading Experience as a way to build community for incoming first-year students.
Essentially, the Common Reading Experience brings together the BGSU community by providing a common discussion source. Prior to the beginning of classes, faculty, staff, and incoming first-year students read the same book. A committee chooses the book each year with input from different groups on campus, including the college deans. When classes begin in the fall, students across different disciplines and backgrounds will share in the “BGSU community” discussion. Some instructors and departments also integrate the Common Reading into their curriculum. While maintaining an academic tone, the Common Reading allows first-year BGSU students to become part of a communal, discussion environment.
During the fall semester the CTL’s Interact at the Center blog will have weekly posts dedicated to this year’s Common Reading, This I Believe. Faculty, administrators and students will be “guest bloggers.” They will present their reactions to the book, along with sharing their own “This I Believe” statements. Our blog will also have postings titled “Classroom Highlights” and “On Campus,” which will offer insight into how different classes and departments incorporate This I Believe. Each week we will provide audio samples of essays from the book, as well as resources to help you integrate the Common Reading into your course discussions.
For more information concerning BGSU’s Common Reading Experience, including books selected in the past and other background questions, please visit: http://www.bgsu.edu/colleges/library/infosrv/cre/. You are also invited to visit NPR’s “This I Believe” website http://www.thisibelieve.org, which includes podcasts and curriculum guides.
Below is an excerpt from the article about a college student’s inquiry into Wikipedia and journalism in the digital age. What he found out might surprise some of you or even cause a reconsideration of using Wikipedia in the classroom. Read the full article here.
Here are some highlights (quoted here, not “lifted”)
Irish student hoaxes world’s media with fake quote
DUBLIN -
When Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote onWikipedia, he said he was testing how our globalized, increasingly Internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news.
His report card: Wikipedia passed. Journalism flunked.
The sociology major’s made-up quote — which he added to the Wikipedia page of Maurice Jarre hoursafter the French composer’s death March 28 — flew straight on to dozens of U.S. blogs and newspaper Web sites in Britain, Australia and India.
A full month went by and nobody noticed the editorial fraud. So Fitzgerald told several media outlets in an e-mail and the corrections began.
“The moral of this story is not that journalists should avoid Wikipedia, but that they shouldn’t use information they find there if it can’t be traced back to a reliable primary source,” said the readers’ editor at the Guardian, Siobhain Butterworth, in the May 4 column that revealed Fitzgerald as the quote author.
Walsh said this was the first time to his knowledge that an academic researcher had placed false information on a Wikipedia listing specifically to test how the media would handle it.
How do you handle the use of Wikipedia in your courses and/or your own research?
A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education discusses the importance of using recall to learn new concepts and ideas. According to the article, two psychology journals just published papers showing that the strategy of recall works.
According to the author David Glenn, recall is when students put down the text or notes that they are studying and recall everything they can. Students can either write down everything they remember or day it out loud. This active recall, such as using flashcards and other self-quizzing, is the most effective may to add something to your long-term memory.
These recall techniques, according to Dr. McDaniel, a researcher in the field of biology and teaching techniques, “If you ask people to free-recall, you can generate a better mental model of a subject area, and in turn that can lead to better problem-solving.”
This idea of free-recall has also generated some critiques from educators. Some professors have voiced concerns that recall is simply teaching students how to memorize instead of increases levels of higher learning and thinking. Dr. McDaniel argues that although these techniques may aid students in the often- required tasks of memorization, the free-recall tasks actually help to give students the skills needed apply their knowledge.
Instructors can have a less than easy time trying to implement teaching strategies that are outside of certain methods, like lecturing. There are other effective alternatives to lecturing, however. One of these alternatives is group learning, which has its merits. Team-Based Learning is also one of these alternatives that is growing in momentum and offers significant opportunities for student learning. Recenetly, the Center hosted a workshop facilitated by Dr. Karen Sirum (Biological Sciences) to introduce TBL to BGSU faculty.
Team-Based Learning is a systematic method for helping students work in groups and learn together. Its supporters believe that the benefits attached to TBL are well worth the time it takes to learn how to implement the method. Moreover, TBL’s proponents are saying that it is an excellent way of supplementing their other methods for teaching that have been helpful for their students’ learning.
According to its supporters, TBL has been structured to help student learning in group settings and, almost as importantly, has accountability built into it. Before trying this method with students plans need to be made, which include partitioning the course content into macro-units, identifying the instructional goals and objectives, and designing a grading system. Later, in class, there are more methodical instructions on correctly implementing TBL. Please see Introduction to Team-Based Learning and Getting Started with Team-Based Learning to read why and how you can try TBL for yourself.
There is an entire website dedicated to TBL that we invite you to visit. The site has video examples, professional testimonies from people who have tried it and a number of other resources. Please take a look at the site to learn about the “buzz” surrounding Team-Based Learning.
The use of Wikipedia for class assignments or as a citation source has been an ongoing debate. Some professors accept the website’s use, usually after encouraging their students to caution what they take from the website. Other professors absolutely abhor the use of the website by their students. Robert E. Cummings says that he has found a new way to incorporate the use of Wikipedia into his classrooms and makes a strong case for using it in higher education, particularly as a writing tool.
According to Cummings, detractors of Wikipedia’s use in higher education assignments have reasons to be concerned. Wikipedia, indeed, is an open source where essentially anyone can edit or create information concerning almost any subject. With this in mind, people who use the website do expose themselves to getting inaccurate information or are subject to relying on information that is unfounded.
On the other hand, Cummings believes that Wikipedia offers several advantages for students. He believes the major advantage to helping student essay writing with the use of Wikipedia is that students have audiences that are real and can provide plenty of immediate feedback to their writing. In his classes Cummings literally has his students post their work to the website for people all over the Internet to provide them with comments concerning their work. More importantly for the students, Cummings believes that students are writing and having more exposure to having having to write formally. According to Cummings,
“Composition assignments in Wikipedia frame writing as a collaborative practice hosted within a network. This arrangement seems much more predictive of the environment our students will find themselves writing in after they leave the composition classroom, both in later college courses (as they collaborate across networks with fellow students in coursework) or in the workplace (as they collaborate with co-workers to prepare reports, proposals, or Web pages).”
We invite you to read Cummings’ article and see if what he has to say can be beneficial in any of your classes.
This presentation, “Disruptive Technologies or New Pedagogical Possibilities” by Grainne Conole was delivered at the Eduserv Foundation Symposium 2008, in London, England. In this video, Conole discusses how Web 2.0 has changing our learning and teaching paradigms. She discusses how we need to develop new models to understand the relationship between pedagogy and technology.
In order to understand the pedagogical implications of Web 2.0 tools, she explores three case studies: Learning Design, Openlearn and SocialLearn.
To read a related article by Grainne Conole please click here.
After watching this video, do you think we must develop new pedagogies that involve Web 2.0 tools?
The idea that a 60 minute lecture can be condensed into 60 seconds may sound absurd and even impossible, but there are some instructors in higher education who seem to think otherwise. The “Microlecture” is gathering followers across different disciplines in college teaching. Supporters of the one-minute lecture think that condensing a lesson strictly to key terms and ideas with less verbiage into a 60 second to three minute lecture has been beneficial for their students.
Naturally, the “microlecture” technique has its detractors. Critics of the practice think some topics, like literature or graphic design, are impossible to reduce down to three minutes. They also believe “microlectures” can at best provide “impressionistic overview.”
Although the microlecture is intended for online courses it could be applied in a traditional classroom setting. Instructions for how to make a microlecture in an online are listed below.
Here are the instructions provided for how to make a microlecture:
Professors spend a lot of time crafting hour-long lectures. The prospect of boiling them down to 60 seconds — or even five minutes — may seem daunting. David Penrose, a course designer for SunGard Higher Education who developed San Juan College’s microlectures, suggests that it can be done in five steps:
1. List the key concepts you are trying to convey in the 60-minute lecture. That series of phrases will form the core of your microlecture.
2. Write a 15 to 30-second introduction and conclusion. They will provide context for your key concepts.
3. Record these three elements using a microphone and Web camera. (The college information-technology department can provide advice and facilities.) If you want to produce an audio-only lecture, no Webcam is necessary. The finished product should be 60 seconds to three minutes long.
4. Design an assignment to follow the lecture that will direct students to readings or activities that allow them to explore the key concepts. Combined with a written assignment, that should allow students to learn the material.
5. Upload the video and assignment to your course-management software.
To instructors, who have received an extensive formal education, knowing exactly what a test is asking may come easy. For some students, though, the ability to know exactly what they should do when words like “analyze” or “discuss” on exam can be vague and even foreign. Teachingprofessor.com, one of our favorite websites, recently published a list that all instructors could use a reference to help their students. Here is a list of what they call “test” verbs that you may want to share with students in your syllabus or exam preparation documents:
Analyze—break something down into parts, such as a theory into its components or a process into its stages or an event into its causes.
Assess/Criticize/Evaluate—determine or judge the degree to which something meets or fails to meet certain criteria.
Compare/Contrast—identify important similarities and/or differences between two or more elements in order to reveal something significant about them.
Define/Identify—give the key characteristics by which a concept, thing, or event can be understood.
Describe—give the characteristics by which an object, action, process, person or concept can be recognized and visualized.
Discuss—debate, argue, and evaluate the various sides of an issue
Explain/Justify—give the basic principles or reasons for something; make it intelligible.
Interpret/Explain—say what the author of a quotation or statement means.
Illustrate—Use a concrete example to explain or clarify the essential attributes of a problem or concept.
Reference: Nilson, L. B. Teaching at Its Best: A Research-Based Resource for College Instructors. 2nd ed. Bolton, Mass. Anker, 2003. [now available from Jossey-Bass]
It’s no secret that people learn in different ways. The key to success in teaching is realizing that people learn differently and finding ways to incorporate different learning styles into our classes. Recently, we held a workshop titled Pragmatic Practices for Teaching Assistants, Learning Styles that addressed how to assess learning styles and how to make our students aware of and responsible for their own learning styles.
In a paper titled Student Learning Styles and Their Implications for Teaching, authors Susan Montgomery and Linda Groat discuss the importance of recognizing learning styles and offered several different ways to assess these styles. Among the learning style models that they covered are the Myers-Briggs Model and the Kolb/McCarthy Learning Cycle. The authors also provide useful tips to engage students with different types of learning styles in your classes. These tips include using both group and independent work, requiring in-class presentations and providing less direction to students.
To read the rest of the article please click here.
How do you engage students in your classes that have different learning styles?
Promote an institution-wide dialogue among faculty, staff and graduate students with an interest in teaching and learning - with or without technology.
Welcome to
INTERACT AT THE CENTER!
The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) @ BGSU looks forward to your engaging comments on issues related to teaching and learning.
If you would like to be a part of the "Interact Community," simply click on the ADD COMMENT link at the bottom of a posting and share your thoughts, experiences, or both.
If you have any suggestions for future discussions, please email ctl@bgsu.edu
It’s no secret that people learn in different ways. The key to success in teaching is realizing that people learn differently and finding ways to incorporate different learning styles into our classes. Recently, we held a workshop titled Pragmatic Practices for Teaching Assistants, Learning Styles that addressed how to assess learning styles and how to make our students aware of and responsible for their own learning styles.
