Trying New Strategies

Learning about the various teaching methodologies has been interesting for me.  I've never thought of it before but I would say that my default teaching methodology is as an Interactive Lecturer - I think I fall into quite a common group with that.

The 2 strategies I decided to try were Collaborative and Direct Instruction.  I introduced collaborative by asking students to work together on a wiki to produce a specimen answer to past exam papers of an exam they are sitting in January.  Each student had to write an attempted answer on one question and then edit and improve the work of their colleagues.  What I found interesting was that although nearly all students did "their" question, nobody did the editing until I chased them up about it.  They almost seemed quite surprised when I checked up on it but once they realised I was serious, they participated.

This led me to decide to use Direct Instruction in one element of the course- specifically on coaching students how to use the various aspects of moodle.  I realised after talking to students that for many, using an LMS was a very new experience for them.  One student told me she did not want to "make a fool of herself".  I found this very enlightening and decided to use DI to talk people through the process of using Moodle for contributing to a discussion. 

I think that what I have realise from this is that very often, my "natural" style is just my comfort zone.  I need to consider the best approach to effectively deliver the material for students to learn.  It has actually made my planning more complex, but in an enjoyable and stimulating kind of way.

Teaching Strategies - Individual Reflection

What I found most interesting in working on this project was that for the first time I realised the importance of the connection between the methodology of how you teach something and how you assess it.  Its pretty obvious really but I have never thought about it before in a coherent way.  At its core it is a pretty simple sequence:

• What do you want the students to be able to do?
• How are you going to teach it?
• How are you going to assess it?

In a grown up world, all of those things would be planned at the outset, but we all know that the world doesn’t work that way.  I now realise that the course delivery is an integral part of that process but I haven’t thought of it before.

As regards the different methodologies I now realise that I have used all of them to greater or lesser effect at various stages, but what I have never done is to coherently plan to do so, based on what the Learning Outcomes were.  I will definitely try to do this in future.

For example, although it is controversial, I feel Direct Instruction definitely has a place in certain aspects.  Where you need observable outcomes and a definite body of knowledge, or dealing with students who are having difficulty mastering basic concepts, DI has a role.  As an example it strikes me that completion of the bubble  sheets on the facesheet of the CEPA exam would be an ideal thing to teach by DI. The growing popularity of “cultural literacy” as promoted by ED Hirsch is also promoted by proponents of DI.   

I find myself feeling conflicted about Interactive Teaching.  I think it is the teaching style that I probably feel most at home with (I guess I am not alone in that).  However  on reading the work of the other group I could not help but come to the conclusion that the methodology was really just Direct Instruction that had been jazzed up a bit to make it more interesting for the students.  It is claimed that this methodology increases retention rates.  Retention of what?  There is still a body of knowledge that we want the students to know and we want them to be able to do the thing in the way we want them to do it.  I may be wrong but I was left with the feeling that this methodology was really for the 2^nd type of teacher in the videos we watched at the beginning of the module.

Collaborative learning seems to be not about the content but about the process.  We need to be aware of the distinction between cooperation and collaboration.  I think most of the group projects I have been involved in as a teacher were really cooperative projects.  I also find it interesting that at the time of writing, the one methodology that has so far not been presented is the group work on collaboration! J However, most institutions have Graduate Outcomes as well as Course Learning Outcomes and in order to truly achieve these, there needs to be an effort to integrate collaborative methodology into the curriculum

I found Problem Based Learning to be an interesting methodology.  It seems to be great for development of soft skills.  It can also be used to teach and develop other skills.  I needed to use them to see the work of the group as they had put it in Softchalk, which required me to download and run some additional software which my computer did not have.  I had a problem doing this which I still haven’t solved and ended up reading their work in html format.  I solved the problem to the level I needed to, but probably not to what would have given me a good grade if I was being assessed on it.

I would also suspect that PBL is very useful to teach and develop the higher levels of the taxonomy such as synthesize and evaluate.  I think it can be particularly effective where there is no “right answer” that the teacher is looking for.  However, using it inappropriately runs great risks.  If the course being delivered is really about a body of content knowledge then tying PBL into a coherent assessment strategy is extremely difficult.  How do you grade a student based on the work of another student?

I have written about the methodologies in the order that they seem to fit within Bloom’s Taxonomy.

1. Direct Instruction
2. Interactive Teaching
3. Collaborative Learning
4. Problem Based Learning

However, there is a danger in doing that.  The danger is that the perception could be that lower level courses should be taught by DI with the other methodologies being used as things get more complex.  But the truth is far more complex – as the “Hole in the Wall” example shows.  Students with very little knowledge of a subject can be taught aspects of it using various methods.  And students also need to be exposed to how to learn using different methodologies - otherwise how will they be able to function effectively later on?

So, in summary completion of this module has made me realise that there are a variety of teaching methodologies that can each play a role.  And I think that each of these methodologies could have been effectively utilised within parts of any course which I have ever taught.

My job as a teacher is to identify when, where and how to use them for the benefit of my students.