College Teaching

The two most recent chapters of Driscoll & Wood delved into the transition from applying Outcomes-Based Assessment strategies to individual classes/courses and ingraining them as department or university culture. Moreover, I felt these chapters represented a distinct epistemological shift that is centered around holding teachers, departments, and universities as a whole accountable for the transformation into being learner-centered. Instead of using the teacher/student paradigm where the vast majority of responsibility falls on the student regardless of the teacher, a more standard service-oriented structure is used. If we consider students the client and teachers/universities the service provider then student assessment would be the final reflection on the service provider rather than the client.

This closely resonates with me when I reflect on my experiences teaching martial arts. Working with such a wide range of skill can be frustrating at times and it’s easy to blame the student for a lack of achievement, but ultimately I have to remind myself that their achievement is a reflection of the work I’ve done with them. During a graduation ceremony if I see a group of students who are performing poorly I treat it as a negative outcome on myself as much as the students. I think this accountability on a faculty-wide level is crucial. I cannot describe the frustration I feel when I’m told of classes and teachers who boast their high failure rates and necessity for students to repeat their class in order to pass.

There are many ways to implement the concepts in chapters 9 and 10 into my own practice. The most direct way these chapters have influenced my teaching is providing a framework for formalizing my thoughts and concepts to present to the rest of the department. Throughout the course of this text I’ve continually been able to relate concepts discussed with ways I already teach the class or more commonly ways I wish I could alter my class because of my limitations working within the confines of a department-mandated course structure. Outlining how to leverage student assessments as a catalyst for inter-faculty discussion and collaboration is a technique I will be sure to implement.

Chapter 9 also discussed the ways faculty discussion should parallel all of the same goals and attitudes described in the book. This completes an iterative structure that involves more than just a single class. This will avoid disconnects from class to class and helps congeal a program of study into an entire program rather than a collection of classes that loosely form a knowledge base. Reflecting on my past educational experiences I wish there was more continuity from class to class. I did not see any synergy between my classes until my capstone class and that is a travesty. Comparable to the diversity sought when formulating Faculty Learning Communities, much of the deeper learning is accomplished in interdisciplinary study.

Finally Chapter 10 helped provide insight to the possible reactions I would receive if/when I approach my administration concerning changes I would propose to make. Being so inexperienced with the inner-workings of academic administration and also being so young one of my biggest worries is that I will not be taken seriously despite the validity of my ideas. However, with better anticipation of the reactions I might garner, I can tailor my approach to preemptively address their concerns.

My article this week is “Do Hands-On Activities Increase Student Understanding?:  A Case Study” and is found at http://www.amstat.org/publications/jse/v17n3/pfaff.html.  This article concerns the effectiveness of using more hands-on activities for improving student understanding of statistical concepts.

A key concern with hands-on activities was the wide use of computer simulations.  Although they provide an easy way to simulate statistical aspects, students sometimes have difficulty in relating the simulations to real life.  Doing calculations quickly help in getting to an answer, but can lose the effectiveness of having students reflect upon what each calculation is doing along the way.  Many students may even still be skeptical about the results.  But through the use of other hands-on activities, students can think more deeply about what is going on, and be able to more readily relate the experience to the real world.

The authors developed four different hands-on activities to assist with four different concepts: the central tendency theorem, hypothesis testing and p-values, confidence intervals, and the role of variability.  The authors conducted evaluations at the beginning and end of the course, along with three other assessments throughout the grading period.  The authors found that many of the students thought the models were the most interesting think done in the class.  Unfortunately, they could not find any significant increase in student understanding of the concepts than other methods.

Although I found the idea of testing ways to use more hands-on type of activities, I had several concerns with this particular study.  Not so much from the curriculum, as with the way the teaching was being approached.  It appeared that the activities were designed with more focus on demonstrating a concept rather than first thinking through what type would help the students understand this material better.  The study does not really go into depth about student preparation beforehand or the level of discussion afterwards.  It also was not clear why these particular concepts were the ones chosen for hands-on activities, and perhaps they were not the most conducive concepts for this type of approach.  It does help reinforce the idea though that hands-on experiences, case studies, lecture, computer simulations, etc., are only tools we use.  How well those tools are used, and whether the right tools are being used for the task, is probably the more critical point.