Thava's Reading Notes #2

I 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.