Learning

I’m an English teacher, so I’m used to MLA and use the OWL at Purdue to introduce it to my students.

My dissertation included first-person research, so I am familiar with APA.  

But the article I am working on, due soon, is in Chicago. And that I don’t know.

Diane Hacker has a description and a sample bibliography. University of Georgia has a good one page list of both bibliography and footnote references for all the major types of work in a literary paper.

I think I have also applied to write a work in another style, but that one hasn’t been accepted yet.

Significant learning is when the students “get” what I am teaching in such a way that they are able to use and apply it.

An example from grammar is critical to what I am doing in my classes. If a student understands the grammar rule and can do every exercise correctly, then they have made progress. But if the student still cannot apply that rule to their own writing, then the level of learning for that student is still too low.

It is all well and good to be able to memorize or figure out the answer in an exercise. The most important part of my class, though, is applying what you have learned to your writing. That would be “significant learning.”

This is from the adjunct certification course.

This is a conversation from my adjunct certification online course. That was the tiltle of the discussion thread. I titled my comment “teaching innovations.” (A title was required.)

My comment:
I like teaching new things in new ways. Tweaking small changes is easy because it won’t necessarily make a lot of difference if it doesn’t work. Teaching a new course is fun because it is novel. But it can be hard to change at the intermediate level, to throw out a whole unit in order to try a new one that might not work.

Joe, who was on all the time, replied:
It is interesting. I agree with you totally about teaching something new, but at this stage of my career, the new happens in my own work of writing and painting outside the classroom. I share this with my students by giving them my websites and it is an aspect of what the material is that happens in class (as an added element to the core material) but still, it is outside, not part of the curriculum (at least, not directly). OK, given that: talking about working with or creating “something new” in the classroom (or my studio), I have always believed: “First you shoot the arrows and then paint the targets (told to me by a friend in graduate school and has become a mantra that I use when approaching the “unknown”). Also there is a Chinese saying, “A journey of a thousand miles start with the first step.” Lastly, another of my rules in my own painting is: “If I don’t know where I am going, any road will get me there.” It makes a work of art like opening a present at Christmas. Just some thoughts!

And then Joe replied to himself:
It is always curious to respond to yourself as well as someone else’s thoughts (yours, Suanna). So after working out at the Y, on the bike and the machines (I do some of my best thinking while my body is someplace else in exercise), I thought about my saying that I do not do many “new” things in my Art Appreciation course (my passion to teach because if I can turn the students on, it works for all the other professors that they will have after me). First, it is not true. I tweak little things all the time. Second, I should take a hard look at the section of the course where my passion is not as high: teaching linear art history from cave art to Surrealism (30,000 BCE to Picasso and Miro). I find that as “something that must be done and that the student definitely needs” therefore I do not bring the same enthusiasm to those four weeks. Oh, they get the material and thank me at the end for presenting it but it is not a section that I love to teach. I would not change the beginning or end of the course, just this middle. There has to be a way to inject what I believe about art history (it is not “back then” but “right now”) into how I teach it. That might be my project for this Adjunct Certification session that we are taking. It is, at least, a challenge. Thank you for nudging me out of my own routine. I have made small changes but not a major change here for several years.

My response to Joe’s comments:
You said

There has to be a way to inject what I believe about art history (it is not “back then” but “right now”) into how I teach it.

What if you teach art history and show how we are still doing it?
Cave paintings = graffiti or large wall murals

… I don’t know enough to keep going, but I am fairly sure that you could do an approach like that, thus giving them a linear view of art history while still having the work apply to what we are doing now.

Stuart got in on the conversation:
I have a question. Do you fnd that your teaching is drastically different from one class to another even when it is the same subject or course you are teaching?

I find many times, even by accident, that I tlad one class a anecdote or story that I did not tell my other classes.

I answered Stuart:
I do find that I tell different stories in classes. I think I respond to different questions with stories. So some students will hear one story while another class will hear a different one.

I worry about that sometimes. I wonder if one class is hearing the same story three times and one story not at all.

I also find that sometimes my explanations become streamlined as I see what helped the students and what didn’t. So the first class is an hour long, the second is 55 minutes, and the third gets out ten minutes early.

Most of the time, though, if I am teaching the same course the same semester I try very hard to do the same things with each class. (Unless something clearly didn’t work.)

Suzy has the same thing happen:
I’e had the same thing happen to me, Suanna! I sometimes call my second class a “Cliffs Notes” version of the first. It was worse when I taught four 1301 classes back to back. I lost track of what I said to which class. Luckily, I’ve changed my schedule, so it happens less frequently now.

Mike said:
I’ve read the string of messages initiated by your comments, but I return to your original message to reply. I often think back of my first classes taught at Kingwood (Fall 2006) and feel sorry for the Joe came up with one of his perfect quotes:
Several years ago, I found a quote from the Dalai Lama which has helped me in many ways (in the classroom and outside in my own creative work): “If you do not think that small things make a difference, spend a night in a room with a mosquito.”

Suzette had the last word:
Okay, I can’t help but laugh. I have spent a night or two fighting for hours with an elusive mosquito. But seriously, small things do make a difference. You may not see the results immediately, but eventually you do see it. Thanks for the quote. I’ve added it to my journal. : )

Are you a listener or a reader?

What an interesting question.  Peter Drucker’s Managing Yourself offers some interesting questions.

He said you need to know whether you listen or read.  He said Dwight D. Eisenhower was a reader and as a general he was well-loved by the media, but when he became president they despised him and scoffed at his inability to answer their questions.  Turns out that as a general all his questions were given to him half an hour before the conference started and so he was able to read the question and respond to them thoughtfully.  But as president, he was only asked the questions.  He came off as uneducated and poorly informed because his brain didn’t process oral information as well as it did written information.

This is me.  I do that.  If you talk to me, I can follow you.  But if you ask me something complicated, I have to write it down and read it to get it.  And I am slow to answer orally, but I can answer quickly and well in written communication.  I think there is something about oral communication that makes me feel put on the spot and I feel pressure and don’t do as well.

Lyndon Johnson had been, Drucker said, a superb congressman, but was a poor president.  As a parlimentarian he had to listen well and speak well.  When he became president, though, he inherited the habits of JFK’s staff and they wrote for him.  He didn’t read well and half the time he didn’t get what they were telling him in writing.  

This is an interesting idea with repercussions not just for us but for our students.  I have an older student who acts like she has no clue that I said to do things.  I’ve started trying to write down her assignments, since she doesn’t go read the syllabus.  We’ll see if that really makes a difference.

How do you learn?

He goes on to talk about people who learned by writing (Winston Churchill) and who learn by speaking (himself).

I learn better when I have to teach someone.  If I teach someone, I know things.  This is the best way for me to learn.  It is part of why I enjoy teaching.  I learn so much when I teach.

A Business Week article says that the National Assessment Governing Board is looking at the idea of testing K-12 students on technical information literacy.

“Our world is changing, the way we do business is changing, our reliance on each other is changing,” says Paige Kuni, worldwide manager of K-12 education for Intel’s Education Initiative and a member of the panel. “Kids have to be able to master those types of skills to be ready for a U.S. economy when they come out of the school system.”

Companies like Intel need people who not only know how to use a computer, but also have a sophisticated understanding of concepts like security, privacy, and intellectual property that will evolve with technology in coming years, Kuni says. Her hope is that a national tech test will spur more schools to teach these skills since many educators just assume that kids are naturally tech-savvy and can pick this up on their own. “Adults in our society and in other countries assume that because kids are digital natives, they automatically know how to use technology in meaningful work,” Kuni says. “Just because a kid can use text messages doesn’t mean they know how to [do things like] analyze data deeply.”

This is part of what I was trying to point out in my TYCA presentation. Many of our students are NOT digital natives. They’re immigrants just like we are and if we assume they are fluent in Techie, then they are going to flounder.

This last year I was introduced to entity and incremental theories of intelligence. In one, the student says, “I am good at this.” (Or bad at it.) In the other the student says, “I worked hard at this and I got it.” (Or didn’t work hard enough and didn’t get it.)

While it is true that some things a student may never get (I, for one, have never gotten geometry.), most things the student can get if they will keep trying.

According to research incremental theorists are more likely to succeed across diverse fields. Someone who is “good at math” may not use the same skills that make them good at math in English because they don’t realize those skills transfer.

The researcher I read said that process-oriented feedback from the teacher can help our students realize that they have incremental intelligence. “Good job! You are becoming a better writer. Keep up the good work.” Or “Study a little harder for the next test. Ask any questions you need to during our review.”

This difference made sense to me. I’ve decided to try it out. This is the first semester I have tried doing incremental encouragement, so I do not know how well it will work. But I think it would have helped me as a student.

My notes
Entity: I am good at this
Incremental: I can do this if I try
How to encourage students: process-oriented feedback
“Good job! You are really becoming a _____. Keep up the good work.”

“Study a little harder for the next one and you’ll do well. Ask any questions you need to.”

One thing that would be good, especially in a required course, is if the students saw why they needed to be in your class. I try to tell them that the class will help them write throughout their college career. I give them a true story of a man who lost over a million dollars ($1,000,000,000) because he didn’t write well so he did not receive a promotion. But I have been given another great idea that I am going to use next time I start class.

This is from Lyubov, a coworker from Russia:

I did this for the first time in my physics class. I told them to get out a note card and write on the top of it their dream.

I give them 4 minutes for this. After they got puzzled I told them that whatever it is, they will have it as long as they will keep the note card in front of their eyes and tell everybody about it. It have to be something what they really really want.

Then the next step is that instead of thinking which way they will have to go to get that dream, they have to think that they already have it. If it is dream to became a doctor, then the student has to imagine that he is a doctor. I explained to students that it will be really helpful for them and why.

Next step: I asked them if physics is a required step on the way to reach their dream and for most of them it was. I told them that it does not matter then if they like physics or not; they have to start getting into it because it is something they have to do to go their way.

My students often come to physics class with the idea that it will be the most boring and hardest class of all.

Next I told them that we do in our life different things that we do not like to do but have to do anyway.

Instead of trying to do stuff that you don’t like, you have to find something about it that you will like. You will do it with pleasure then.

I told them that i do not like to wash the floor and clean the house. I found something that I like about it and every time I do it with the pleasure. I am thinking how everybody will be happy in a clean and spotless house.

I think this was really helpful for my students this fall. Usually it is near 60-70% of the students who do not like physics. This time I started with 1 person out of 25 who actually said that he liked it. Now I have 18 people who are working really hard.

I was looking up information on learning styles because it was relevant to the class I am taking. I found this fascinating information.

Auditory Learners:
Learn through hearing
Talk to themselves while working
Move their lips and pronounce the words as they read
Enjoy reading aloud and listening
Can repeat back and mimic tone pitch and timbre
Find writing difficult, but are better at telling
Speak in rhythmic patterns
Prefer lecture or seminar to reading a book
Like talking more than writing
Repeat information over and over to memorize it
Make up little rhymes to remember thing
Are talkative, love discussion and go into great lengthy discussions

Verbal Cues:
“Spell it out for me.”
“I don’t hear what you are saying.”
“Listen to me.”

Visual Learners:
Learn through seeing
Are neat and orderly
Are good spellers and can actually see words in their mind
Memorize by visual association
Make up little rhymes to remember things
Prefer a map to listening to directions
Underline and annotate reading material
Concerned with form and format
Love the use of the overhead and PowerPoint

Verbal Cues:
“Let’s take a look at it.”
“I don’t see what you are saying.”

Kinesthetic Learners:
Learn through touching
Prefer a map to listening to directions
Underline and annotation reading material
Concerned with form and format
Use finger as a pointer when reading
Gesture a lot
Can’t sit for long periods of time

Love the use of the overhead and PowerPoint
Enjoy role-playing
Look for physical rewards
Memorize by associating events with ideas

Verbal Cues:
“Let’s move on.”
“I don’t get it.”

Other points
Auditory: Distracted by noise, like music more than art, move lips while reading.

Visual: Not distracted by noise, fast reader.

Kinesthetic: Pointing, expressive facial appearance and posture, move about.

Auditory: Like music more than art, prefer talking instead of reading.

Visual: Prefer books to lectures, like to doodle while talking on phone.

Kinesthetic: Prefer groups to lectures, like to take a walk to sort out ideas.

On writing, if a student is Auditory:

• likes group interaction to generate ideas
• appreciates verbal responses (conversation) to their work-in-progress
• likes “talking through”
• a paper idea/plan (explaining it) before writing
• tends to include quotations and dialog in writing
• verbally rehearse their writing (interior monolog), may even mumble to themselves when writing

On writing, if the student is visual:

• Likes to view models of papers assigned
• Appreciates written responses to their work-in-progress
• Prefers creating a graphic picture of the writing—a paper plan or outline—and graphically oriented invention strategies—flow chart, clustering, balance sheet, schematics, pro-con, etc.
• Cares about handwriting
• Tends to write carefully, correctly, much proofing during invention and drafting stages, but this penchant for appearance results in meager production

On writing, if a student is kinesthetic:

• prefers and profits from active reading (underlining, annotating a text) instead of reading straight through
• prefers writing in short bursts
• prefers active invention strategies that both reduce the writing task into discrete steps and manipulate material
• tends to write quickly, spontaneously, and abundantly, but without much regard for correctness or appearance (however, an extremely productive behavior)
• handwriting often unintelligible to a reader

from a LENS Workshop

But when I was reviewing my blog/using my outboard brain, I found that I read and referenced a cognitive scientist’s discussion of learning modalities. He says that learning styles don’t make that much difference in learning.

I believe that in one way (and it makes teaching easier) and in another way I think it must have some impact.

I think perhaps the information in this post says how it has impact.

Description found here. It’s where you all talk about the issue, and move around the room based on how you feel after each person talks. Of course, that assumes that you don’t have a strong commitment to the topic which stays the same regardless… I guess “big” issues like abortion wouldn’t work with this.

And this wouldn’t be good for work where the students have done previous research. But it looks like it might be fun. And there are some questions that would work for a college freshman class provided in the paper.