Get Your Students Hired
For classes that involve lab training each student is assessed with selected response and constructive response written exams, oral exams, observed behavior, and self assessment. I feel that this encourages the students to review and prepare the material needed in a variety of ways which encourages different learning styles.
I allow my students more hands on verses lecture, some students seem to caught on to the practical verses the lecture
Steven,
Students checking other student work reinforces the learning.
Dr. Ron Hansen
I break my students up into teams, give them a print, and have them make the part for collaborative learning. This is alsoactive learning: Each student has to set up the machine for his or her part, While yhe rest of the team is checking their work.
I usually try to make handouts for them on my own, but it is time consuming and I often don't have time to do it. I am hoping to get some time to write a book for the class, which deals directly with the tools that an ID needs to be proficient with. No such book exists, that i have been able to find. The Adobe tutorials are not much help in that they don't relate to what we have to do as Interior Designers. Most of them are geared to the needs of a graphic designer.
The school where I teach is on ten week terms, and in order to keep everyone on track, I can't really allow them to work at their own pace. I am somewhat lenient on them turning things in, but if I see that they are getting too far behind to finish on time, I usually try to schedule a workshop with me or the learning center.
alexander,
Thank you for your post. Teaming up the students by strengths is probably aligning them by learning styles as well. You most likely get different results from the groups.
Dr. Ron Hansen
I lecture briefly on the topic, showing the steps involved with the exercise that they will be asked to perform, I then show an example of one possible solution, making it clear that there are multiply ways of achieving a successful answer.
Once I become familiar with the students I also try to team up students with others that have different strengths (such as some are more analytical and straight forward thinkers and others more creative) so that they can see how to approach a question from multiply view points and the thus experience the value of collaboration problem solving.
Andrea,
Hhhmm, Not having a set curriculum or materials is a challenge. Have you considered incorporating any Adobe tutorials and developing guideline sheets to have on hand? You can catch students that miss time up pretty quickly. When you are trying to accommodate learning styles you also have to consider how to allow people to work at their own pace but still achieve the desired outcome by the end of the class or term.
Dr. Ron Hansen
I teach Photoshop in a lab environment. I show the students what we are going to do, then I show them again, step by step, while they follow along on their computers and then I have them repeat on their own projects, while I circulate to help them one to one. This seems to work out well, as the outcomes from the class are usually quite good.
The issue that I have is that when so much ground is covered, if a student misses class, it is very hard for them to catch up without slowing the whole class down. We do not have a textbook that has all of the lessons, and I have been working on putting handouts together, but that id quite time consuming work for an adjunct.
At the start of each class, I usually try to briefly review what we did at the previous class. I figure that it helps to reinforce the tools and techniques for those who did hot miss class, aw well as give some instruction to those that did miss. Fortunately, it is a class that students seldom miss, as they really want to learn this software.
Brenda,
The mingling of lecture and demo probably works very well. I have recommended several of my own instructors to "break up" lectures or readings with hands on activities.
Dr. Ron Hansen
I try to use different strategies: demo, PowerPoint, writting on the white board, reading from the book, looking at pictures, etc. However, since I teach culinary arts most students are visual lerners and do not get the material discussed in the lecture until they actually watch the demo, so I have been incorporating the material from the lecture into the demo itself very sucessfully.
Jessica,
Thank you for your post. Do you vary your delivery method during the 20 minutes of lecture? It does sound like you account for different learning styles throughout the course of a class period with lecture, demos, and lab activities.
Dr. Ron Hansen
I break my lecture and demonstrations into small parts. I will lecture for 20 min and then we go in the lab and demonstrate it. Most of my students are very visual. It helps them to apply the concepts in lab immediatly after lecture.
Yes. The students fill out a mock-invoice, explaining their diagnosis and repair along with other readings taken on the equipment in our HVAC lab.
They are set up really well I have found. It helps that i demo the projects before hand. The students grassp the information better with the demo just before the project.
Ian,
DO the students have a choice in how they document the experience? Journals? PowerPoints?
Dr. Ron Hansen
David,
How varied are the performance projects? Do you find they often reflect the student's learning style?
Dr. Ron Hansen
I First explain what is to be done in the lab to my students and what the purpose of the exercise is. Next I show them by perfoming the task myself.Finally the students perfom the task and document thier expirience.
To accommodate my diffrent students learning styles I have been able to lecture for 10 min. then demo it. After this they get to do it and ask questions as well I walk around the class room watching them to see whom needs extra help. To complete it all the next day they do a performance project witch covers what we have gone over from the day before.