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I am a tutor at a busy center in a Michigan community college. I recently
collaborated with a Biology instructor to assist the students' mastery of
several difficult concepts. I developed activities, based on Bloom's
taxonomy, that required group work--create and present their efforts in one
hour. It seems to work very well--peer teaching and combined effort and
knowledge lift the entire group to a higher level of performance. Every
student has talents that are brought forward in a group.Also, group work and
active assignments aren't often used outside of labs in the Sciences. The
results were: creative, complete and inclusive-- every student is a
presenter. We expect to continue this--the evaluations from the students
are good.
ted panitz wrote:
> Hi Listers,
>
> I have a double message for you today. Consider this a two for
> the price of one sale in the e-world of education discussions. The first
> item is free.
>
> ITEM-1-- I have been gathering information about writing across the
> curriculum approaches for many years. I use a variety of writing
> assignments in my math classes in order to encourage students to move
> away from the rote approach to doing algebra, where they repeat a
> procedure 50 times without really thinking about what they are doing, to
> one where they think critically about math concepts, rules and
> procedures. Writing in most forms accomplishes this.
>
> To complete a short story I have compiled several lists of short
> descriptions of writing assignments, which may be adapted to all
> courses. I have included the original web site and authorship so you can
> access the site. I was accumulating this information to include in a WAC
> book I have written but no one seems interested in publishing such a
> tome so I am going to make it available to you rather than having this
> material sit in a file on my PC. The compilation can be found at my web
> site at:
>
> http://www.capecod.net/~tpanitz/tedspage/ewacbook/wacapproaches.htm
>
> (note: htm is correct, there is no l as in html, for reasons that escape
> me, but that is what my computer gave me when I saved the material as a
> web page. Usually it uses the html designation, go figure???)
>
> Item 2-- is a question I would like to pose to you. One of my
> students asked me why and how I started using cooperative learning in my
> math classes. That started me reflecting about what I do and why. The
> question also sparked the thought that it would be fascinating to hear
> why and how other people started using student centered approaches to
> learning/teaching. My reflections follow below.
>
> So that is my question to you:
>
> “Why did you start using student centered learning in your courses?
>
> Please note that I shifted from the word cooperative learning, which
> may be too limiting in definition (and considered a fad by some people)
> to student centered which includes many approaches, such as
> collaborative, cooperative, pbl etc., or any approach which focuses on
> the students more than the teacher (as information giver) and has
> students working together, in and out of class, to meet the goals of the
> course.
>
> Please consider sharing your “story” with the list or e-mail me.
>
> I will compile the responses and make them available on my web site.
>
> Thanks in advance for your participation in this discussion.
>
> Regards,
> Ted
>
> [log in to unmask]
>
> (please note this is a new e-mail address for me)
>
> http://www.capecod.net/~tpanitz/tedspage
> http://www.companyofexperts.com
>
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> Why I switched from lecturing to student centered learning.
>
> I used to be a very good lecturer. Being an engineering and
> mathematics teacher I was well organized and without knowing it followed
> the Advanced Organizer model of teaching. I established the day’s class
> goals, provided an overview of the concept(s) under study and then lead
> the class through a series of problems and questions which demonstrated
> the concept or mathematical procedure under study. I was actually
> humorous in my lecturing, even in math and engineering classes, which
> helped lighten things up a bit. I developed concepts by starting with
> simpler questions and then proceeding to more complex structures. It
> made a lot of sense to everyone, during the lecture. I also used a
> lecture discussion format to try to engage students and asked students
> to work individually on problems and then present their solution on the
> board for additional class discussion. I tended to be very enthusiastic
> about my subject matter and teaching and I am sure this was somewhat
> contagious for my students. My approach garnered me a good reputation
> among students. My student evaluations were high, my courses filled up
> quickly and feedback I received from students was very positive.
>
> This approach seemed to work well until we got to the tests and
> students would not perform as well as I or they had expected. When we
> talked about this phenomenon, as a whole class discussion, students
> expressed the frustration that they felt they understood the material in
> class but when they went home and tried to work the homework problems on
> their own, the material looked like Greek. Looking back, based upon the
> research I have since read I am not surprised. I was doing all the
> critical thinking by writing and explaining the concepts, strengthening
> my own brain synapses, not the students.
>
> I used the lecture discussion method for about 8 years, at which
> time (1982) I started a doctoral program in education at Boston
> University in the Community College and Adult Education Department (no
> longer so named). The basis for this program was Humanistic Psychology.
> The professors generally practiced what they preached and demonstrated
> student centered techniques ranging from cooperative to collaborative
> approaches. As an example of collaborative learning, in one class on the
> philosophy of education the professor simply walked in, told us this was
> our class and that he would be the coach/facilitator and everything else
> was up to us. That was quite a shock for us graduate students who
> expected to be told all about the philosophy of education. After some
> consternation and attempts to dissuade the instructor from such an
> approach we got down to business and developed an excellent course.
> Among other benefits we discovered was that we had quite an ethnically
> diverse class. We decided it would be fascinating to try each other’s
> food and decided to hold classes in each of our homes where we would
> discuss the culture and educational approaches of our peers countries
> and also try some new cuisine. The responsibility for class materials
> and presentation was left up to us. We worked in teams to develop the
> course curriculum. I probably worked harder in that course than any
> other before it and learned more about the history and philosophies of
> American educational systems, since that was my team’s responsibility.
>
> Interestingly, I had completed a minor in business, as part of my
> Masters degree in Chemical Engineering at the Illinois Institute of
> technology, where we used group techniques in case studies and in group
> processing, trust building and group work, but because the focus was
> exclusively on building working groups in companies in never occurred to
> me to adapt these techniques to teaching. It wasn’t until I lived
> through the approaches and practiced them that I understood the
> implications for teaching. That helped convince me that hands on
> interactive learning is very important for the individual learner.
>
> This was quite an eye opener for me and started my turnaround in
> teaching philosophy from a teacher centered lecture approach to student
> centered cooperative approach. There is a lot of flexibility which I
> have learned to use rather than adopt one approach for every course. For
> example, I provide a lot of direction and materials for my math classes,
> such as work sheets and jig saws, in part because I teach developmental
> math courses where students are still learning how to study and learn
> math and how to learn together in groups. In my advanced engineering
> courses I used more of as collaborative approach because the students
> had been trained by me in earlier courses and were inclined to accept
> the responsibility for their learning. They designed a power plant
> virtually on their own.
>
> When I first started incorporating student centered techniques in my
> classes I started out slowly. I started using in class group work by
> having students work in pairs followed by whole class discussion. As I
> attended conferences I would seek out cooperative learning sessions and
> picked up new ideas each time. I also started introducing writing
> assignments into my classes. These can be found at my web site so I
> won’t describe them here:
>
> http://www.capecod.net/~tpanitz/tedspage/ewacbook/waccontents.html
>
> I would emphasize here that I added only one or two new coop
> activities each semester in response to my students performance on
> assessments or their expressed needs and interests, rather than launch
> into it totally. If students demonstrated that they were having
> particular difficulty with a concept I would devise an interactive group
> activity combined with writing to help them focus on the concept. I now
> have a substantial collection of materials to chose from and continue to
> build my coop files. I use cooperative learning virtually 100% of the
> time in all my classes. Again a complete description of my class
> procedures is on my web site. I do give whole class explanations (some
> may call these mini lectures but they are not). They are highly focused
> and generally very short, maximum five minutes, after which time
> students seem to lose interest.
>
> Does it work? You bet! We give pre and post tests in our math
> courses, using a computer placement system, and my students consistently
> show substantial improvement on the post test. The few who do not
> improve are not surprised by their results and neither am I. The
> cooperative learning approach enables me to identify problems students
> are having throughout the entire semester. Not every student responds to
> the help and encouragement they receive, but they never blame me because
> their responsibility in the process is clear. Many of these students
> take my class again, if they do not complete it the first time, which I
> consider to be quite a nice qualitative endorsement of cooperative
> learning.
>
> Finally, There are many positive intangibles for me personally,
> associated with student centered learning approaches. The classes thrill
> me every day. I enjoy every minute of teaching. Sound a little
> Polyanish? I guess it is, but that is what I feel. There are little
> victories by students who have breakthroughs in concept understanding or
> who successfully complete an assessment of their performance and are
> celebrated by their peers or who show their enjoyment of working with
> their peers, who often become their close friends. Watching students
> help each other by giving explanations, discussing each other’s
> approaches and even arguing about different approaches makes my day! My
> interactions with the students in class give me a feeling of real
> accomplishment and satisfaction as I observe their improvement, and make
> new friends myself every semester. I see the students more as peers than
> I do “my students” and my respect for them becomes mutual. I did not
> have these kinds of interactions with students and personal emotional
> responses to teaching when I lectured primarily.
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