Hi Joseph,
What a challenge to teach until 1:00 am. I thought it was tough teaching from 4 until 10 pm. Great strategies for keeping your students engaged.
Gary
Hi James,
Great job of offering instruction that is customized to the needs of your students. By using real world examples and showing relevancy you are helping them to transfer their newly acquired knowledge to their own lives.
Gary
Hi Kenneth,
Good point on how the steps of decoding and recoding operate in a student's brain. With so much going on it is a wonder that they are able to learn all that they do. I am amazed at the human brain and all that we ask of it, yet they tell us that we are not using more than about 10% of our potential. Some days when I am trying to do all of the things that you mention in your forum comments I know I have to be using over 100 percent of my brain power but alas it is only 10%. Maybe some day I can get it up to at least 15%. Wish me luck.
Gary
I also agree that Mastery of your field is tantamount to positive learning. I teach P.M. class untill 1:00 a.m. and my 35 years of knowledge, good rapport with my students as well as understanding brain overload from their day makes me very effective in the lab.
It is good that your school is taking chemical use by students seriously. My concern is that most parents and schools are not taking the issue seriously and this is aggravating the problem.
Understanding learning, especially in adult learners, benefits me in my pedagogy. I've come to understand that the lecture approach, traditional in the historical setting, doesn't mean that I'm limited to speaking and the students learning. Some students respond to the Socratic method and thrive on it. Others will need to see how the lecture applies to their own personal life.
I have adopted a method of teaching that brings into play the specific experiential learning the adult student has encountered. I've engaged the student in dialogue as to what they have learned and how it may apply to the lecture. For example I once asked a drug dealer how he might use Finite Math to enhance his ability to correctly calculate his profit from various sales. He finally understood how to solve word problems.
This has been fascinating as I (capital "I") try to learn this type of material in a way not entirely dissimilar to (at least in interest and effort) the way my students are. I can see (and feel) the decoding and recoding going on. I find myself trying hard to maintain the discipline to create the structures (scaffolds)that I need to process the material, find meaning and find a place for it all in my working memory. THEN, the creative process starts by making compounds of this with the realities of my course subject, the environment in which I teach and the changing faces of the students. WOW. "Process" is right!
Hi Janet,
I agree with you about the expansion of chemical use in classrooms and the workplace. We are seeing more incidents of students having used chemicals coming into the class and causing problems as a result of their altered behavior. We have a very clear method of dealing with these situations of which the students are informed. Our policy on this is clearly understood to the point that we have not had any situations arise for the past 18 months. For this we are thankful and feel we have a firm grasp on how to work with such situations.
Gary
It helps tremendously when I plan my classes.I am more aware of how important it is to inform my students of which facts are critical to them and for them to focus on and remember.
I am a pastry Chef Instructor, some classes have a lot of information and theory for the students to recall.What I usually do is give out handouts of all the facts then go over everything with them and get my students to highlight the really vital facts,that way they focus and remember all the critical information.
Dr. Meers,
This is my 16th year of teaching. The students in my classes have ranged in ages from 16 to 65. Blended classrooms are challenging but rewarding. In addition to my experience teaching, my Master's Thesis examined different learning styles of traditional aged students and adult learning and their communication apprehension.
I believe one thing needs to be addressed in the learning process and that is the role that alcohol and drugs (both legal and illegal)play in the learning process. Over the years, I have detected greater use of chemical substances, which are interfering with the learning process and are detrimental to performance and success of many students. As educators, we can not ignore this obstacle in the learning process.
In the past, I have participated in workshops and enrolled in classes, which explored the basics of learning. As a Communication teacher, I am faced with the challenge of motivating students to take my class seriously and to do their very best in it. Unfortunately, most of my students seem to be very deficient in effective communication skills, and they do not seem to realize it or care. They believe they only need high-tech skills to be successful in life. My class is primarily performance based and from the first day of class, I strive to show the correlation between theory and practical experiences in their lives. I am hoping this class will not only refresh my knowledge of the learning process, but also give me fresh ideas on how to "bring theory to life" for my students and awaken their desire to become effective communicators.
Hi James,
Great to hear. I know this will make a difference for your night students and enhance their learning effectiveness.
Gary
One of the most useful pieces of information I learned from this unit were the scientific reasons why night students sometimes seem less interested than day students. This is something I've observed and just attributed it to the students' fatigue (since most work during the day).
Now that I understand there is something else going on besides fatigue I can try to address this issue with teaching techniques which include more hands on activities.
Hi Mark,
The key to long term retention of content is connection. There needs to be a connection between the learner and the content. The use of an episode is a good way of creating that connection. By the students having to work through a situation and use their problem solving skills their memories are going to retain the key information for a much longer period of time. Good strategy.
Gary
One way to increase the likelyhood of retention of information is to create an episode. use a dramatic(non threatening) action or phrase to drive home the concrete points.
I would more frequently mix the audio, visual and tactile methods to communicate.
I found this very benifical. I will be able to better understand how each student reacts to information given out during class.
Hi Alicia,
This can be done the first class meeting through the introductions. You don't need an in-depth knowledge of their educational experiences or how they perceived the experiences, just a snap shot.
This way you know how to approach the class when introducing new content. Maybe they need some help with note taking or how to take tests. Knowledge of this kind really helps with planning.
Gary
It is mentioned a few times that an important aspect in teaching adults at a career college is knowing the student's educational experience background. Have they had positive or negative formal education experiences, etc.
I teach at a school where our classes are occasionally filled with 42 students and I teach up to 4 different groups with 20 - 42 students each in any given week. How do you suggest getting to know the students' backgrounds when there are that many students I am working with at once?
This was very interesting to me. I believe what I will have the students do is define a term, and use that term several different ways. Hopefully, they will see the different use as an abstract rather than concrete.
