Hi Donna,
I concur! I love using role playing, scenarios, and case studies to help get students to think out of the box.
Patricia Scales
Critical Thinking is a way to get students to think outside the box. They can use knowledge from different areas to create answers to the solutions they are looking for.
Hi Mary,
This is truly learning that will prepare students for the real world. We need to give our students as much real world exposure as possible.
Patricia Scales
Hi Robert,
Yes, students love hands-on activities. You can quickly determine if a student is grasping through the use of hands-on activities. Students would rather be doing as oppose to listening to lecture.
Patricia Scales
For the microbiology class I tech the students are given various culture plates to read. Depending on the source and organisms that are identified, they must determine if the patient has an infection or colonization. Feed back from former students has shown this is helpful as the students rotates thru an externship and future employment.
We have built in to our program a lot of hands on tasks for the student to practice their skils.
Hi Robert,
Students need as many practical exercises as possible to help prepare them for the real world.
Patricia Scales
Hi Eliazar,
Great exercise to promote critical thinking. This is the type of learning that will help prepare the student for the real world.
Patricia Scales
As I teach electrical theory and diagnosis I like to give out problems for the students that have come from my practical experience. The Best ones are ones that the solution is not a electrical problem but a mechanical one it gets the students to think about what makes the electrical control work or what the electrical component moves mechanically.
We use critical thinking when we look over ABG's for a patient that is on a mechanical ventilator. I have students go to a ventilator with specific settings. I relay to them specific blood gasses, and based on the blood gas results, they need to know how to manipulate the ventilator in order to correct the blood gas. For example: If a patient has an arterial Carbon dioxide higher than normal, this is an indicator that the patient is not ventilating enough. So the student must ensure that the patient is adequately ventilating by increasing the patients ventilation. In order to do so, they must increase their respiratory rate, or the amount of volume each breath takes.
Hi Lauren,
Great way to promote critical thinking. I like to give my students case studies, scenarios, and role playing to promote critical thinking. Some students can really think out of the box.
Patricia Scales
I teach clinical dental hygiene. I feel it is vital to teach critical thinking in this field. I usually have small group sessions for the students to discuss how they would handle a certain type of patient. It is interesting to see what will develop. Sometimes the students come up with the same ideas and then other times every group has a different idea.
Hi William,
I love it! This is certainly something everyone can benefit from. I am sure your students get excited about this field trip. It is definitely an eye opener, and it is something they can use the rest of their life. Great exericse to help students learn how to think critically.
Patricia Scales
In Food History we watch a short clip of a family of four that eats fast food all the time because they claim they are too poor to eat healthy. In the clip they spend $12 to eat soda and burgers. I then tell my students that we will be going to the farmers market and they will each get $12 to spend on food. They must create a healthy meal for a family of four with their $12. After the trip we cook the meals and share with each other what we learned and discuss healthy alternatives to fast food.
Hi Vicki,
Great way to get students to have real-life situation in the classroom. Students need to learn these type of things in the classroom so that they will know how to deal with them once they get on the job.
Patricia Scales
In my baking class, I like to give the students samples of "flawed" cookies and have them try to determine what caused the flaws--too much flour, too much sugar, too much fat, over mixing, etc. The students enjoy trying to determine the cause by sampling each of the flawed cookies.
Hi Nathan,
How motivating to let students know about the art of troubleshooting that can be learned. Students like knowing that what they are learning is going to be utilized in the real world.
Patricia Scales
In my computer classes we sometimes have a visitor named Bubba who likes to come in during the night and make changes to the hardware/software the students are learning on. It makes for an interesting morning when the students all realize that they have a problem and I'm not going to be much help solving it. All they know is something is wrong, and they have to work through the troubleshooting steps to try and find the solution.
I do allow them to talk about it amongst themselves and use the internet to look things up. After all, they won't have me around when they leave school, but they will have their co-workers.
And students will talk for years about that time in class when they got Bubba'd.
These skills are important in more than just automotive. I teach computer networking and we go through the same process steps to diagnose a computer problem that you do in automotive. I tell them that troubleshooting is an art, but and art that can be learned. (And I admit it's fun breaking things and watching students fix them.)
Hi Rodriegus,
Scenario learning is great for preparing students for the real world. Students need to know what they will be exposed to in the real world.
Patricia Scales
