Letter to a new teacher

Dear new teacher,

Congratulations on becoming a teacher.  You have entered a profession that needs to be fuelled by a passion for learning and a need to innovate.  This does not happen overnight, you need patience and perseverance to succeed. It is not an easy task to live up to the expectations of a noble profession, but it is achievable.  One course at a time is my mantra. 

Allow me to share a few thoughts with you.  These could very well be for me too.  With all my experience, there are times I feel like a newbie.  Such is the nature of this profession.

"Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow." Anthony J. D'Angelo, American author 

You need to develop a passion for learning - about your students, about new ways to teach and new developments in your field. This way you will be a leader inside a class and amongst your peers.

"Educationists should build the capacities of the spirit of inquiry, creativity, entrepreneurial and moral leadership among students and become their role model." Abdul Kalam, Scientist and former President of India

Demand creativity from your students - your popularity will take a beating sometime, but students will benefit.  Instilling a spirit of enquiry is also important, do not reward presentation of facts but encourage students to analyse,  evaluate and debate.  Be a positive role model - students usually aim to please teachers they look up to.  Encourage students and provide them with opportunities to be leaders in learning.

"The pupil who is never required to do what he cannot do, never does what he can do" - John Stuart Mill, British Philosopher

Keep raising the bar for your students as you would do with yourself.  Left to their own means, students will perform to the lowest level of expectation.  A teacher who sets challenging tasks gets more out students than a teacher that sets minimum requirements.   A fact that I have witnessed very often.

"Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently". Henry Ford, American industrialist

Try new teaching strategies - not all of them work right the first time.  Do not be discouraged when this happens.  I have found that speaking of my experiences with other colleagues helps me unpick faults in a technique.  Speaking to students helps.  They are the best to tell you why a lesson went wrong.  This will give you the necessary input to improve your strategy.

Be transparent and fair to your students, set a level playing field.

Be fair when you create assessments and rubrics. Provide students with adequate learning opportunities in class before giving them graded assignments. Work with your peers to reduce the demand on their time by setting integrated assessments. This goes a long way in making student learning realistic and reducing their stress.

Finally, enjoy what you do and share a laugh with your students.   Memory of a good lesson is what lingers, inspiring you to be the best.

Here is wishing you plenty of success in your journey as a teacher.

Sharmila, forever a newbie

P.S. All quotations are courtesy of my favorite site: http://www.brainyquote.com

Adopting new teaching strategies - trials and tribulations

Collaborative Learning and Think-Pair-Share

This is a narration of the teaching strategies that I used this semester and my assessment of their efficacy.  Think-Pair-Share was a technique that I used in more than one course.  The activities were formative assessments designed to improve student learning and engagement.   Usually the TPS activity followed a lecture with direct instructions on the concepts covered.  Students then broke out into pairs to discuss concepts learnt, derive questions based on concepts learnt and prepare answers to their questions.  The intent was to develop their skills in understanding and synthesizing concepts. 

In both the courses that I used this technique, I found that students were eager to have an activity to break the monotony of a lecture.  In one course - perhaps because they were a senior group, students came up with challenging questions.  I would like to reflect on the implementation of this technique in the second course where I had mixed results

What worked?

The course was ITEC N225 which is all about writing SQL code for business requirements, I used Think-Pair-Share to enhance learning.  The first activity required students to work in pairs to produce answers to questions provided by me.  Students had about 45 minutes to complete the activity and share their answers with the class.  They were quite successful in doing this and the activity was a good way to wrap up lecture/demo session.  

This class was a good sample of interactive/participative learning.  In this case, taxonomy of the questions in the assessment matched the level of the assessment - both were at Apply. 

What did not work?

The second activity students required students to define the business requirements and derive their own questions based on what they learnt. This was obviously more complex than the first.   Students found it very difficult to devise a good explanation of the business requirement and then to write a proper question.

In hindsight, my instructions to students should have included sample answer such as the one shown above.  My verbal explanations did not have the necessary effect.  I can also appreciate that I was asking students to analyse  synthesize and create which did not match the taxonomy of the learning outcome.  I was assessing at a higher level!  I'm still pondering if I was being overambitious or if the learning outcome was below par!  The net effect of incorporating this strategy was that students began to get better at writing SQL code and writing scenarios where these commands could be applied.  There was gradual improvement in their performance in class and in their assessments.  Their work on their project which required them to analyze, evaluate and design queries was very satisfactory.

On a last note, writing this reflective blog has been a milestone in my journey to becoming a 21^st century teacher!

Aligning goals with my course

In this blog,  I would like to share my plan for a course that will begin soon.  The course is Systems Analysis and Design and is famous for being a "boring" course - one filled with plenty of lectures and theoretical concepts - enough to bore students to sleep.  Add to this is a prescriptive assessment strategy including a comprehensive final exam which has been a great hurdle for students!  A plan was required to make this a course that students are engaged in their learning and motivated to prepare for their final assessment. 

Plan:

With this in mind, I have for the first time developed a plan incorporating key teaching strategies, feedback points and assessments.  Normally, I would create a course guide detailing only the schedule and the assessment strategy.  The assessments were planned well in advance, hence they aligned quite well to the learning outcomes and the appropriate levels of taxonomy.  However, teaching strategies were incorporated more on a weekly basis, due to which, it was more of a reactive strategy.   When there is no plan, there is a temptation to resort to what has worked best in the past. 

This process of designing teaching strategies for each learning outcome/course goal at the onset of a course has been an eye opener.  This way I am more prepared to implement a strategy incorporating current techniques to improve student engagement.   Planning ahead also ensures that there is a better alignment of teaching strategies, the course outcomes and assessment strategies.  The only threat being the final comprehensive assessment which could be an external exam.  As a course teacher I have no control over the questions picked and on the quality of questions used.  Often there are cases where the questions picked do not match the taxonomy of the course learning outcomes.  A quality issue!

I am looking forward to using Wikis and Concept Maps that I have not used before.  From my readings and research on how these have been implemented by other educators, I think these will enable constructive alignment in this course.

Assessments - Part 2

Assessments in my opinion are meant to measure the learning of concepts/skills delivered/taught in a course.  They are required to measure the breadth and the depth of learning.  They must also be fair and valid to ensure a proper measurement of learning.  Not an easy task!  It takes a concentrated effort to ensure consistency in the development of good assessments.

Some assessments that I have administered that have had a good feedback from students are:

Portfolios

Portfolios are effective means of assessing coursework as they span a longer period of time, allow for students to create and select artifacts as their learning progresses through the course and provides them with the opportunity to reflect on what they have learnt.  I have often used portfolios in my courses.  For example in course like Database Design, a student portfolio would consist of a sample of transaction record that they have normalized, a narrative description of a business process and a set of business rules, an ER diagram etc. The last artefact would be a reflection.    This assessment ensures that students compile their portfolio artefact from their classwork assignments and their independent study and helps them to look back on their work with a sense of accomplishment.  When I do this again, I would have students write a short reflection on each artefact  requiring them to be critical as well as reflective.  Perhaps adding an element of peer review to a portfolio would make help students to improve the quality of what they produce.

Oral Exams or Interviews

Oral exams or interviews are conducted at the end of a group assignment such as a capstone project or the analysis of a business requirement.  Students have had the benefit of working on a project applying concepts that they have learnt to a real life scenario.  Often during such projects, students tend to focus entirely on the problem and its solution and not enough on the skills/concepts/tools and techniques that must be used to analyse, evaluate and design solution.  The latter being the goal of the course.  An oral exam can be designed to evaluate both.  Typically, students are allowed a few minutes to summarize their project in a presentation.  Then each student is asked a specific number of questions.  These questions come from a database of questions relating to the concepts learnt in the course and their application in the project.  This ensures a fair and valid testing of course goals and works well as a final assessment in a course.  They are also less stressful for students that are somewhat weak in writing and prefer to speak about a topic.

The challenges are to design a good rubric and questions relevant to oral examinations.  If this can be defined, Oral exams work well.

Concept Maps

I have never tried using concept maps as an assessment tool - only used it to brainstorm.  But I can see that can be adapted to demonstrate learning of concepts in courses like Systems Analysis.  They can be produced by students as a preparatory task before a quiz or to demonstrate the understanding of a concept.  These could be good memory joggers or review material before the dreaded final comprehensive exam!  

My Students: All about them

I've been buried neck deep in grading and this seems to be a perfect opportunity to reflect on my students and their learning.

My learners range from freshmen to seniors and all in between.  In the past few years, I have taught course that involve learning of basic IT/database skills and some managerial courses such as Entrepreneurship, Quality Management and Project Management.  Hence I've had the opportunity to work with students at various levels and seeking to learn a variety of skills and knowledge. 

In this blog, I will focus on my freshmen students to whom I teach basic IT concepts and skills. They are young and are not always equipped with the best of study skills.  Being just out of high school, some come into college expecting to take it a little easy.  That notion is soon dispelled with the first assessment!  They generally struggle with time management and the ability to work on more than one project at a time.  They like the idea of independent learning but protest when asked to be accountable for their learning.  This requires some assertive handling from me - their teacher.  Most of them are motivated by grades while some appreciate the fact that they are learning new skills and work at improving them.  While most of them are comfortable with technology and smart phones, computer literacy overwhelms them.  So it takes a while to get them to learn and master some skills.  I believe that more they do the better they get and aim to provide a variety of learning opportunities in this course.

These students like to learn by doing.  What works best for me and them is working in a student-centered learning environment. To that end, each lesson has a task/ tasks to be completed.  Some of these tasks are tutorials.  Others are a task that combines some research and application of a skill that they have learnt.  Students work independently on their tasks while I monitor their progress by walking around. I tend to spend more time with students that have difficulties in learning a new skill/concept.  

At the beginning of a semester, when they haven't formed into groups, students tend to work on their own sometimes this is quite productive.  As the semester progresses students begin to work in their groups and while most of them work well, some groups regress in their learning as socializing takes over.  At this point, I intervene - sometimes even reorganizing groups. 

At the end of a task, students ask me to evaluate their electronic document - a word document/ a presentation or a spreadsheet.  I usually provide a verbal feedback.  I've learnt that this feedback is for naught -feedback is usually valid when accompanied by a grade!  Something to consider for future editions of this course!  A simple oral examination is a technique that I use to ensure that students have learnt. 

Assessments are usually practical - blogs based on topic that they have researched, development of solutions to simple business requirements using Word/Powerpoint/Excel. A problem that students face in such assessment is the ability to complete a task to the level of detail that is required of them.  This can make learning in this course frustrating for some students.  Students also find it a challenge to read instructions - they would rather do the task and have you tell them what is wrong with it.  It takes a lot of perseverance and patience to get them to go back to their instructions and follow them!  Worth the effort as they begin to cultivate a habit.

At the end of the course, it is quite satisfying to see some good work produced by these young men.  

Reflections

This reflection has incubated for long enough.  No excuses however.  I have packaged my reflection as a poster and would love to hear from you.  You can review this poster and a sample of what my students did on this link : http://dmcsharmila.edu.glogster.com/reflection-on-poster-assignments/

Do use the scroll bar on each graphic element that has text displayed.  You can then read more or all of the text

I have enjoyed using Glogster and would highly recommend it as an online tool for students.

Until the next glog..blog..

Adapt to changes not to gadgets…

"The school system is in need of overhaul, but as mentioned above, the overhaul is needed because society has changed, not because learners have iPods" or iPhones or iPads… 

I agree with Siemen's critique.  Students that are users of technology are not necessarily the best of learners.  A digital native who is content to use technology for communication and entertainment is not necessarily keen on using it demonstrate learning!  While they would be happy to use their smart phones to record fun moments, using it record an interview would be a challenge!  Again, not all 18 year olds are digital natives and hence learning of the technology overpowers the actual lesson being learnt.  This makes the whole experience stressful.

What then is the best way to deal with digital natives?  A question that I ask myself is what is the objective of this learning opportunity for students?  Is it to demonstrate the mastery of technology or present a solution to a real world problem?  Does the learning opportunity have the right mix?  Is it skewed either way?  If it is then it needs to be fixed.  A critical examination of the lesson plan/assessment and the rubric with a peer helps to refine the objectives of the task and the evaluation. 

A good understanding of abilities of students is important - are they all at the same level?  How can the "expert" students be used?  I have also learnt that setting students a series of tasks that simulate solution to a real world problem or a having a shadow case study helps to a great extent. I have also found that it is important to scaffold skills and allow students to learn incrementally.  This makes students more confident in their skills before they attempt a "real project" .

Does a teacher have to be a digital native?  Not necessary, I would say.  A good teacher attempting to create an authentic learning experience reflecting the practices of the real world need not have mastery of the technology being used.  Personally, I have never been involved in a virtual learning experience or in creating a wiki, but that should not stop me from having my students use them.  I would focus on creating a framework for my students to research, learn, create, communicate and reflect using the latest tools that they have.  A teacher's role is to guide them through the process of learning.  In most cases student enjoy demonstrating what they have learnt without being taught!  Students enjoy "showing off" their knowledge to peers and to their teacher.  This develops a passion for learning which is critical in adapting to changes and becoming life long learners.