Ken Bain, Vice Provost, Professor of History, and Director of the Research Academy for University Learning at Montclair State University, visited campus on November 5th to present “Little Things Make a Big Difference” at the College of Arts & Sciences Forum. Author of “What the Best College Teachers Do,” Dr. Bain also facilitated two workshops based on his book and the years of research he has conducted.
Over the next couple weeks, we will highlight some of the insights offered during these sessions. Here is the first installment. . .
In the morning session, Bain asked participants to, “Think about the best teacher you’ve ever had; one that had a profound influence on what you feel and think. What were some traits of this teacher?“
Some of the responses. . .
- firm, yet caring
- in love with subject
- moved students into leadership positions
- high expectations, especially for college (even in elementary)
- generosity
- demanding of self & others
- passionate
- well prepared
- good listeners; learned from the students too
- authenticity
- humility
- help students feel comfortable
- belief in the student
- hands-on learning activities
- identify strengths in individuals
- personal (yet, professional) relationship with students
- role model for them; even outside of the classroom
- inspirational
- joy of learning exuded to students
- techniques and process behind learning/how to learn & preparations for learning
- sense of care about topic and self as scholar
- understood why did what done and explained why to the students
- charisma – makes subject come alive; passionate about helping students learn
- encouraging; pushed to do more
What traits, if any, are missing from this list?. . . Click on the COMMENTS link below to get started!
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged: On Campus Learning Events, Reflections on Teaching, Teaching Tips November 19, 2007
Question 1
I’ve been seeing a lot of references to Web 2.0. What is it?
AL’s answer
http://movies.atomiclearning.com/k12/almovie?key=32612
Now that we know what Web 2.0 is, here is a Tip on Google Docs…
Question 2
How do you check spelling in a document when using Google Docs & Spreadsheets?
AL’s answer
http://movies.atomiclearning.com/k12/almovie?key=32471
Do you currently use any Web 2.0 technologies in the classroom? If so, how? Do you have experience or any other questions relating to Google Docs?…Click on the COMMENTS link below to get started!
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged: Uncategorized November 15, 2007
The following is an article from our Fall #2 “Communicating for Learners” newsletter. We encourage your comments, thoughts, experiences, and questions as they relate to this concept of a “new world” learning paradigm. Click on the COMMENTS link below to get started!
The change of seasons can be a small reminder of the myriad of changes going on all around us—at BGSU, in Ohio, nationally, and globally. These large-scale, institutional, and even global changes necessitate a journey of discovery with new directions and paradigms.
The research-based concept of a “new” paradigm for learning in higher education was originally proposed over a decade ago. In 1995, when the term “paradigm shift” was all the rage, Barr and Tagg described a shift from an instructional paradigm to a learning paradigm. Then in 1997, Smith and Waller set forth over a dozen examples of changing paradigms for learning. More recently, Fink (2003) echoed the need for moving from a content-centered to a learner-centered paradigm, while Bain (2004) uncovered the effectiveness of challenging students’ existing models or paradigms, helping them transform existing understandings into better, more accurate models of truth.
Semantics aside, the change involves a clear shift from one-dimensional, unidirectional teaching to multi-dimensional, multidirectional learning. So why now? Primarily because we live in a changing, connected world, with increasingly complex problems to solve.
What is the Learning Paradigm?
The student-centered learning paradigm is not a new concept, but the implementation of these revised pedagogical strategies has yet to become mainstream in higher education. At the core of the learning paradigm is a foundation of reciprocity between students and faculty. Essentially, it requires active, problem-based, collaborative strategies for both student and faculty learners. The learning paradigm is based on a community of continuous learners—both students and faculty. This change from higher education to continual learning has “learning how to learn” as its valuable product.
Just as early explorers set out to discover new places of potential riches, educators too can set out on their own journey of discovery in learning. Christopher Columbus, who was looking for a new world, certainly found something that resembled a “new” place—unfamiliar people, plants, foods, and treasures. But what he really did was bridge two unconnected land masses already sharing the same water and sky. Similarly, faculty “explorers” of the new learning paradigm can help students connect seemingly distant concepts, creating bridges to deeper, synthesized, and meaningful learning.
Beginning and Continuing the Journey
When working toward changing a paradigm, especially one that may have worked well for us as students, it is important to consider the future—what will our students’ emerging careers be, what skills and knowledge are essential for them to be engaged in their professional worlds, and what paradigms might they face? Our teaching behaviors, our expectations we set for our students, and our students’ learning behaviors must evolve to fit our students’ futures.
Tagg (2003) reminds us that to change our paradigm from teaching to learning is to view education through a new lens—“seeing” our work in a different light and having diverse experiences as we and our students interact to learn. As we peer through the telescope to chart our course toward a new horizon of a learning paradigm, what do we see? Where will BGSU students and faculty travel in their journey toward a learning paradigm? Click on the COMMENTS link below to get started!
An additional BGSU resource is “Premier Learning: A Scenario for BGSU in 2020.” Convened by President Ribeau in May 2007, the Strategic Positioning Group prepared this report that conveys a vision for our University. You can read the report at the Office of the Provost & Vice President for Academic Affairs website. A video relating to this document is also available.
References
- Bain, K. (2004). What the best college teachers do. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Barr, R. B., & Tagg, J. (1995). From teaching to learning—A new paradigm for undergraduate education. Change (27) 6, 12-25.
- Fink, L. D. (2003). Creating significant learning experiences: An integrated approach to designing college courses. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
- Smith, K. A., & Waller, A. A. (1997). New paradigms for college teaching. In Campbell, W. E., & Smith, K. A. (Eds.), Paradigms for college teaching (pp.269-281). Edina, MN: Interaction.
- Tagg, J. (2003). The learning college paradigm. Bolton, MA: Anker.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged: Active Learning, Discussion-Join In, Learning Outcomes, Newsletter, Reflections on Teaching, Teaching Tips November 13, 2007
This is a useful article on how our students are using Facebook and things that we should consider as college educators. Listed below are rules 1 and 2 in a list of 10. For more information, please click here: http://chimprawk.blogspot.com/2006/01/how-university-administrators-should.html
1. The Facebook isn’t going away. While Facebook.com may not last forever, a service like the Facebook will always be present and useful on a college campus. The logic to this is quite simple: students are forced to renegotiate their social networks every semester. The Facebook supports and answers the student’s information needs. Put simply, our students are curious; they want to know anything and everything about the students around them. If you had the Facebook when you were an undergrad, wouldn’t you have wanted the same?
2. Almost all of your institution’s undergraduates are on the Facebook. I found that 94 percent of UNC’s Freshman class was on the Facebook. Techcrunch reported in November that 85% of all college students were on the Facebook, and surely that number has increased. You can’t fight numbers like this. More importantly, you can’t ignore them.
Both of these services can provide useful tools that can be utilized from home, office, or dorm room.
Do you have a Facebook account? How can Facebook be used to stay in contact with our students?…Click on the COMMENTS link below to get started!
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged: Tech Tips, Web 2.0 Tools November 9, 2007
Many faculty scoff at the phrase above, often exclaiming, “Isn’t all teaching ‘student-centered’ or ‘learner-centered’?” Well, not exactly. Here are some descriptors to help clarify the true intent of the term, learner-centered (or learning-centered) teaching:
- providing choices for students in relation to where, how, and when they study,
- fostering (focusing on) learning rather than teaching (incorporating active rather than passive learning),
- encouraging student responsibility (and accountability) and activity rather than teacher control and content delivery,
- developing mutuality and interdependence in the teacher-learner relationship, and
- emphasizing context-specific learning in which students build their own new understandings and skills through engagement with authentic problems based on ‘real world’ experiences (emphasizing deep learning and understanding as opposed to simple “coverage”).
Maryellen Weimer describes seven “Do” principles for teachers/faculty to begin their planning for learner-centered teaching:
- Teachers do learning tasks less (let the students do more)
- Teachers do less telling; students do more discovering
- Teachers do more (instructional) design work
- Faculty do more modeling (of the learning process — for student benefit)
- Faculty do more to get students learning from and with each other (collaborative)
- Faculty work to create climates for learning (conditions conducive to learning)
- Faculty do more with feedback (formative ‘along-the-way’ and summative assessments; grades and comments)
For more information on learner-centered teaching:
Learner-Centered Teaching: Five Key Changes to Practice
by Maryellen Weimer (2002). Jossey-Bass. (A summary by Bill Peirce; available for check-out from the Center’s Library)
Chickering and Gamson’s Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education
From The American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, March 1987
Mapping the Learning Space: Overview of the Territory
5 Learner-Centered Principles and Practices in Higher Ed: Design Implications, Learning Activities, Deeper Learning, Teaching Practices, and Technology Uses
International Institute on Student-centered Learning and Engagement
May 20-23, 2008 at Portland State University
Student-Centered Learning: What Does it Mean for Students and Lecturers?
O’Neill & McMahon, 2005
Briefly describe one of your “learner-centered teaching” activities or strategies . . . Click on the COMMENTS link below to get started!
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged: Discussion-Join In, Learning Outcomes, Student Success, Teaching Tips October 29, 2007
Sarah Robbins (aka – Intellagirl), prompted the BGSU Tech Trends Series audience, “The world is changing… are you ready? Are your students ready?“
After presenting a multitude of recent statistics on the technology use habits of 18-22 year olds, Robbins explained how the numbers simply represent symptoms of a larger issue – young people want to express themselves and communicate with others, which all too often ends at the classroom door.
Her remedy for bridging this chasm is to determine what faculty need to know and be able to do in this new, changing world. She suggests that an instructor’s technological expertise should be “somewhere between (knowing) everything and nothing” – enough so faculty can help build a bridge from the place where students are interested and engaged to where they need to go, educationally.
Her overall message centered on three approaches to reach current (and especially future) students:
- Second Life – a MUVE, or multi-user virtual environment (not an online game, since there are no game mechanics and no goals assigned; instead, each individual must figure out what to do and has free reign within certain boundaries.
- Social Networks – (e.g., Facebook, Ning) where communities are built around common interests, including trends, culture, ideas, events, ideas, and creations.
- Contributed/remixed content sites – (e.g., YouTube, Flickr, blogs, wikis) where students can collaborate, create, contribute, and critique – with text, audio, and/or images.
Benefits of these three approaches include:
- Collaboration
- Creativity
- Authenticity
- Community — around the content; they try much harder – “recreate it for the web”
- Engagement – students are engaged in participatory explorations
- Social
- Local/Global – local issue becomes global and vice versa
- Immediate – instant experiences; questions researched and answered quickly
- Participatory — not just a consumer; students become knowledge creators/synthesizers
Robbins is known to some for her often-publicized, academic exercise where students were asked to portray Kool-Aid people and mill around various Second Life spaces to experience diversity, crowd mentality, exclusion, and discrimination. She explained that because most of her Ball State University (Indiana) students never felt excluded or discriminated against, the “Kool-Aid man experience” was the best way to get them to quickly and easily understand a previously foreign concept.
So how did the students react to this new (and strangely unique) exercise? Robbins said many of them expressed they felt safe because they were in a group who were like themselves; had they been alone, “it would have been worse.” In other words, within five minutes, students learned complex, experiential concepts that were only marginally successful during a 50-minute, face-to-face class.
Robbins shared several other educational uses and applications of Second Life:
- Chat text from each student can be exported, saved, analyzed
- Group IM (instant messaging) – allows a lifeline when out interviewing others in SL (like an expert or advisor in an earpiece)
- Translating metaphorical ideas
- Role Playing
- Building, testing, synthesizing theoretical models (e.g., customer traffic flow, chemical molecules)
- Recreate works from literature to build understanding (e.g., Dante’s levels of hell, science fiction/fantasy recreations or interpretations)
- Critique and parody
- Sharing and presenting works to hundreds, rather than only the instructor or single class
- Student-generated schizophrenia simulator
- Her students were treated as co-researchers
Robbins closed by emphasizing the need to find and use technologies that meet the needs and goals of the course and your comfort level – not all tools are for everyone or every purpose, just because they are popular or novel. And with that, we’ll close with a few questions about your thoughts… What do YOU think?
How have you used Second Life or other “connecting” tools to engage students? What are your thoughts on teaching/learning in Second Life? (concerns, questions, success stories, ideas, etc.) …Click on the COMMENTS link below to get started!
For more information:
Intellagirl Website
Sarah Robbins’ Ubernoggin Blog
Second Life
(Search for Article) Professor Avatar: In the digital universe of Second Life, classroom instruction also takes on a new personality (from The Chronicle of Higher Ed – September 21, 2007)
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged: Blogs, Discussion-Join In, On Campus Learning Events, Second Life, Web 2.0 Tools October 25, 2007
Follow the link below for 23 Learning 2.0 Things. The site gives you tasks designed to make you more comfortable with Web 2.0 technologies. Tips and advice are provided along your journey. Learn more about blogging, RSS, photo sharing, tagging, wikis, and other online tools.
http://plcmcl2-things.blogspot.com/
What tasks have you tried? What ideas or tools you would add to this tutorial? What is your favorite Web 2.0 tool? …Click on the COMMENTS link below to get started!
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged: Tech Tips, Web 2.0 Tools October 18, 2007
What is your opinion of the video? Do your students have similar concerns? How can you or the University help to change and encourage better student interaction? …Click on the COMMENTS link below to get started!
For another great video from this group check out The Machine is Us/ing Us a short video about the Web 2.0 revolution.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged: Discussion-Join In, Student Success, Tech Tips, Web 2.0 Tools October 15, 2007
Here is a sampling of things overheard during the “Challenges Regarding Copyright and Use” Discussion held in the Pallister Conference room of Jerome Library on October 2:
- Copyright is a balancing test between protecting rights of creators and the promotion of knowledge
- Copyright law is based on varying interpretations depending on jurisdiction, legal precidents, and intent
- Common Misuses
– scanning an article into a PDF format (obtain permission and/or check copyright permissions first)
– putting a full PDF copy of an article on your Blackboard site (post a link instead, if from our libraries research database)
- Questions discussed included:
– use of digital videos
– transferring from video to DVD (or other format conversions)
– creating a digital archive or copy of ancient works from another country
– use of PDFs
- Keys to remember:
– link to an article when possible, rather than providing it
– article in e-reserves – use only once per semester; after that, permission should be obtained
– course packs – you or printer must obtain permission
– exercise your citizen rights by contacting legislators regarding proposed/needed changes for educational purposes
– you must make a reasonable attempt to seek permission
– make sure YOUR works are available for future use (refer to Author’s Rights Addendum from SPARC)
- Additional Links:
– Checklist for Fair Use – A general overview of what can be considered Fair Use; developed by Kenneth Crews, Indiana University
– Office of General Counsel on Copyright at Catholic University of America (News, checklists, and Q&A with a lawyer)
The next University Libraries Discussion session will be Publishing in Transition on Monday, November 5, from 11:30-1:00.
What other questions or comments do you have regarding copyright?…Click on the COMMENTS link below to get started!
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged: Books/Library, Copyright/Creative Commons, On Campus Learning Events, Scholarly Communication, Teaching Tips, Workshop Extension October 4, 2007
Here are a couple of useful resources that we would like to share:
The Library of Congress offers an Ask-a-Librarian service, where they provide the ability to choose a research area and then ask a librarian via either online chat or email.
http://www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/
Another option is to use BGSU‘s own Ask-a-Librarian service, The library offers help via online chat, email, phone, and one-on-one consultations.
http://www.bgsu.edu/colleges/library/infosrv/ref/ask.html
Both of these services can provide useful tools that can be utilized from home, office, or dorm room.
What luck have you had with either service? Have you shared these resources with your students? Are there any other similar services that you use?…Click on the COMMENTS link below to get started!
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged: Books/Library, Teaching Tips, Tech Tips, Web 2.0 Tools October 3, 2007
Next Posts
Previous Posts
Over the next couple weeks, we will highlight some of the insights offered during these sessions. Here is the first installment. . .
