Using the senses in Dental Hygiene is paramount and required. When scaling there is sight, touch, and hearing to create an efficient clinician.
I feel that hands on in the clinical setting is the the best way for my students to engage their senses. They get to look, feel, smell, and taste all materials that they will be using in a dental office as dental assistants.
I have been thinking about using the senses in teaching about the Anion Gap. Watching the disassociation of salts, bicarbonate of soda, vinegar and lemon juice. With respiratory therapist they easily understand the respiratory side of arterial blood gas analysis, it is very intuitive for them, but often we have a hard time understanding the metabolic side. How do I bridge the "anion gap" and make it intuitive for them also?
Some examples of using senses in learning, are giving the students a hands on lab. With nursing, we use a Sim lab. This gives the students hands on and immediate feedback, because their sessions a taped, and reviewed right after. Using their sense of sight, most of the students pick up their mistakes by just watching the tape of their performance.
I find that my classes are filled with different types of learners, so I make sure to include visuals, audio, scents (when possible and applicable) and have hands on activities to help all students learn.
Hi Nancy:
Another consideration about this topic - if we can have the student's use their senses as much as possible, we are more likely to address as many learning styles as possible.
Regards, Barry
Hi Carla:
Excellent example of how to do this. I think the main idea is to use as many instructional techniques as possible to address as many learning styles as we can.
Regards, Barry
Hi Tammy:
Keep in mind that depending on the amount of information an instructor must navigate through, we are allowed to be creative in how we present that.
For example, have a lecture on the most important items. Then, switch to an activity on the lesser important items. Then, have a third activity that reviews the most important items from the lecture at the beginning.
Try this out!
Regards, Barry
Two of some strategies for helping students to use their senses in learning I can think of that is appropriate for my classroom are hands-on and group work. After presenting how to apply the math concept in solving a particular math problem, I assign a few problems on the board and ask the students to do them on their own while I walk around to answer any question they have. Similarly, I ask the students to gather in the group of two or three and work on problems assigned. For individual hands-on, the students engage their visual and tactile senses after seeing and hearing what I have presented. In group work, the student engage their audio, visual, and tactile senses while discussing how to solve the problems.
Being a culinary and hospitality instructor the main strategy we use to help students use their senses in learning is demonstration. The student must use all of their senses to appreciate a specific dish. The must use their visual and auditory skills, as well as , others to recreate the learning objective ( which is the re-creation of the dish).
I just never realized this concept and have been doing this without putting emphasis on ---
it is so true when they utilzie the senses,
they do recall
I Have found that power point and great examples of past employment experiences during the explanation of PP slides help students to understand why the information can be relevant to their learning...when the student can see why they should learn or understand why they should learn it, it becomes easy.
I am a Criminal Justice instructor and this profession alone requires use of all your senses. Being an ex-police officer, I like bringing in tools that I used on the job so the students can feel and see what it is they might be exposed to. I also use powerpoint, video and hands on excercises that test and challenge their observation skills. I also teach the students listening skills by conducting small class debates.
When learning the muscles in an Anatomy and Physiology class for Massage Therapy, I use many different learning methods to engage the senses. First, we use an organized grid to write down the muscles along with their origin, action, insertion and nerve innervation. Then we demonstrate (visually and hands-on) where the muscle is and what it does on the skeleton. We also use washable markers to draw the muscles on each other and learn how to palpate them durring treatment. When students can actually see and feel how the muscles work and where they are, they are much more excited about learning the information. There are also more "aha" moments in regards to the application of therapy given sample client complaints.
I try to use a couple of different strategies in the biology class that I teach. We do not have an associated wet lab but the students would love one. So I try to bring in things on occasion to appeal to their tactile senses....we work together to do mini-demos on some of the concepts. Last week we all used food coloring in water to discover diffusion. I also use animations off the internet quite a bit.
For one, when using power point presentations, you could use embedded audio and video to catch their attentions. Also, when passing out documents and assignments, the use of different color paper can help promote visual learning as well.
We sometimes feel "bombarded" in our day to day lives with sensory info; loud noises, strong smells, the press of a crowd or an overly bright foyer. If we think about how quickly we react to the play on our senses, we can use the same idea in teaching. A very simple example would be in a cooking class where you can visualize the chef creating the entree, you can smell the effects of the ingredients together, you can touch the ingredients to get a better understanding of quality or texture. You can hear the results of his techniques...and ultimately taste the finished result. If we, as instructors, can duplicate this environment in our own classes we would have the apt attention of every single student sitting before us. If we can utilize the majority of the senses, our students would have a greater opportunity for absorption and retention...and then using the skills they just learned.
In Dental assisting they need to know how to feel the instruments as they pass and receive them. They also need to know how to respond to the various smells they will encounter.
By incorporating activities for the white board allows students to engage hands-on with the learning process. Simulation billing and coding sitation are also useful.
It has taken me time, but I would like to utilize the senses in such a way that normal class flow will rarely have monotony! I'm not there yet, but each time this subject is addressed in workshops and in educational forums, it rattles my cage a little more helping me to move out of my comfort zone and do things a little different putting the students' learning in the forefront.
