Davis must adhere to the philosophy of “repetition is the key to retention.” While reading Tools for Teaching I’m constantly thinking, ‘didn’t I just read that?’ My feelings of annoyance were validated when Lang noted that written arguments do not need to be repeated (Lang p.74). With that said, my OCD loves Davis’s structured style of writing. Bullet points are my friends. Specifically, I thought he provided excellent bullet points/steps to “structure your lectures to emphasize the most important points” and “structure you lecture to make your points unforgettable” (Davis p. 142 and 143). Even the best list can’t provide the impact of actually seeing and learning from the best, so I appreciated that Davis provided UC Berkley’s video link to their distinguished teachers.
Some of the most helpful reminders throughout the readings were to: provide a simple outline before you begin each class to help students track the progression of the material and keep yourself from going off on a tangent (Davis p.151 & 157); use pauses to draw attention to what you are about to say (Davis p.154); use strong summaries, and overall, tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them (Davis p.143 & 154) (Lang p. 74); and finally, verbally alert students to important points of your lecture (Davis p.159).
Cool ideas throughout the readings included: Inviting a different set of students in a large-enrollment class to sit in the front row each week, then get to know those students informally before class (Davis p. 164); Recognizing outside events or accomplishments. In My Freshman Year by Nathan, the author found that most of the “college experience” happens outside the classroom (Nathan p. 102). By recognizing outside events, as Davis noted on p. 164, students will connect with you and will let them know that you understand their student culture (Davis p. 164); Asking students to become experts on one key point/term/event and have them serve as the expert when that key point comes up in class (Davis p. 172).
On a side note, not necessary to include, but interesting enough. On p. 152 Davis provided the following tip: “If direct eye contact upsets your concentration, look between two students or look at foreheads.” Don’t you think if you have this big of an issue with eye contact, teaching might not be in your or your students’ best interest? And did anyone get a chuckle out of Davis’s section on “Signal that the lecture is beginning” (Davis p.149)? Do we get a gavel if we pass this class?
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Reading Notes 2- Thava
ReplyDeleteI knew discussion adds to variety to classroom teaching. I have incorporated lots of discussion on topics to make it lively. However, I did not know how discussion made teaching more interesting, other than some free time for me to reflect student questions, answers and different points of views. According to Pavio (Lang, p87) reading, listening, writing and so forth engages learner at different levels. I could not agree more than as a scientist as this is what we do all the time to generate lots of new ideas. We read journals articles/reviews, listen to fellow scientists (conferences- peer instructions) and teach (talking loud-peer instruction) to graduate/undergraduate students. This definitely taken me from one level to next, and also refined my thinking of my science issues/insights. If we look at from these aspects, discussions could be pedagogically more valuable than just adding the variety to learner boredom.
We were discussing the credibility issues in the second class. I think credibility comes from deep knowledge of material. Lang, p89 also mentions about having deep knowledge to succeed in leading discussion. People with deep knowledge of subject matter are confident, credible and could discussion more effectively. In a way this goes to two questions about the strengths: playing to your own strengths. Most successful professors I have seen are the ones who stood up with confidence due to their deep knowledge in the area. For me their delivery style had less impact; content was more powerful delivery. Again junior faculty and graduate students will have less influence in the choice of their teaching courses; we are stuck again in a hole with fairness to students and teachers who has lesser strengths in the courses they are supposed to teach.
One of the techniques Lang suggests is to move from fact gathering to interpretation (p, 94). I teach 400 and graduate level classes; they already know lot of facts or process to find more information. This also forces us educators to move in to higher levels of Bloom’s cognitive learning area such as synthesis and evaluation. Based on today’s class discussion on two issues of strength (John) and agreeing to teach (Soccer Coach-sorry, I cannot remember your name). Synthesis of these two leads to four scenarios (at least for my logic’s purpose); from teaching a course to the strength and to agreeing to teach a course of with no knowledge. We also may be able to evaluate leaning-teaching effectiveness under these scenarios. If students could interpret the significance of outcome we not only make them better learners, but also better decision makers. Is not it the purpose of higher education? I think Lang suggestion made me to think what I was vaguely felt about discussions.
On use of online discussion, Davis, p112, I think lots of science questions could be discussed using online discussion opportunities. Online science discussion will have minimum “sensitive” issues as this discipline tries to see things in a more “objective” fashion. However, I like to keep this open only for students registered for the course to test its effectiveness and before opening it to other sources.