This week’s readings provide some strategies for the instructor to re-energize the classroom when the semester is winding down. In the learner-centered teaching article, the author talked about sharing the power with students to engage them into the classroom study. I somehow feel that the instructors are like the servers in the restaurant while students are like the guests. Sometimes, we have to try to please our students to keep rolling our lessons.
Lang suggested of trying something new and different during the later part of the semester to surprise the students. He asked us to do some experiments, such as, poster, field trips, case studies, and so on. Among which, I am quite interested in the suggestion of field trips. Not only students will get pumped of being outside, so are the instructors; however, it’s hard to implement a field trip for classes such as public speaking. Besides, Fargo’s harsh winter weather is approaching so the coldness may kill everyone’s passion. I would like to hear our classmates sharing stories of class filed trip. It must be interesting!
Giving up the fieldtrip idea, an applicable experiment for me is probably the inkshedding, which refers to generate ideas in a discussion class where one or two students will dominate the discussion (Lang, 2008, p. 239). Lang said a revised version of inkshedding is to let students have “freewriting”: students can write down whatever comes to mind and then exchange their writings after five minutes; they will lastly present their writings. It seems like the freewriting requires no topic and no rules. Is it better to give the students a topic area to write? I am afraid students will have nothing to write because they are so used to being guided by rules.
On chapter 12, Lang raised some common seen problems and provided adequate replies. One of the questions described the problem of cellular and laptop using among the students. I know that we have discussed this topic many times at class. I also see my students doing this “misbehaviors” at class; however, I never have the guts to speak this up. Bugeja provided two options for students whose cellular interrupted the class: to sing a song or to lead a discussion. It seems to be a humorous way of reminding students to stop misusing cellular and laptop in class. I may bring his options into my remarks to the students.
In the learner centered teaching article, the author talked about the benefits of power sharing. He said if a student is engaged and connected with a course, he will work harder on the course. He then listed several ways of distributing the powers to the students. I find the assignments and activities decisions strategy useful. Students can select the desired assignments to accomplish and they can also set the deadlines for major assignments. I feel that this strategy is suitable for juniors and seniors, who are more organized and better at time management. I wonder how my classmates think.
Besides letting students decide homework, the author also suggested of giving the students the power of making class policies. Just like the author, I will only take the policies that are parallel with mine and rejecting the unreasonable ones. One class policy I definitely want to ask my students is whether to include the class participation into the points. I personally think to include will better facilitate the students to participate. My question is how do I grade on their participation? Do I grade by my own observation or do I grade based on a rubric?
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