Adapting Your Instructional Strategy
How will understanding the basics of learning benefit you as an instructor? Would you give an example of how you might adapt your instructional strategy or teaching methods as a result of understanding how the brain functions and how learning occurs?
Marshall,
Great work on integrating the senses in learning about the different herbs and spices. You "read" the class and saw that they needed additional instructional input and you developed that input by providing the herbs and spices so they could see, smell, touch and taste them. With the slide presentation and the physical items you did a good job of blending semantic and episodic memory.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
My benefits will come in the form of excitement and freshness as I gain knowledge to help me to become a better teacher and seeing epiphanies lighting up the room. The greater benefit will be to my students who will have an exceptional learning experience from an instructor who can bridge the gaps between the the information and the filters through use of the "sirens and flashing lights" I can create to enhance their working memory.
Recently I developed a 56 slide powerpoint for herb and spice recall specifically for the Knowledge Bowl Team and later used it in class. The students were beginners and it overwhelmed them even though the material was available in their text books. This proved to me the neccessity of my role in the classroom. Later I displayed the ingredients which allowed the students to see, touch, smell, and in some cases taste the herbs and spices while relating to them the slide show to bridge the gap between semantic and episodic memory.
Matthew,
Once you have found and used these concrete examples I know you are going to like the results. It will be easier for your students to make the connections between concrete and abstract and this will increase their content retention as well as skill development.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Reading this first section of ED108 caused me to realize that one of the subjects I teach (electronics) is communicated through almost 100% abstract thinking. I need to find some concrete examples and processes to improve learning and retention.
Melissa,
Like any task the more tools you have to perform it the better the results will be. This is what teaching is all about so the more we know about cognitive processing and content retention the more effective we will be in our instructional planning.
Gary
Dr. Gary Meers
Understanding the basics will help me as an instructor because it is the foundation of how knowledge is learned and built upon.
Using neumonics, and multiple strategies for each learning session will help me reach more students, engage them in the learning process, and help them create a foundation with to draw upon for future learnings.
Presenting information in both concrete and abstract terms will help reach a greater number of students. It will aid older ("experienced") students in connecting information with previous life experience. It will help younger students to understand how information can be applied.
Hi Robert,
Well said. If students leaving your program can following the sequence then they are going to have successful careers if they put forth the effort.
Gary
It allows me to communicate more effectively with students.
Concrete and abstract thinking is useful in culinary arts education. The students that have a concrete grasp on many cooking ingredients are able to create abstract ideas for new dishes.
Hi Herschel,
Right you are about knowing more about brain processing, intelligences and learning preferences. This information helps you to form a plan that targets their needs and provides support at key points in their learning.
Gary
Hi David,
Good point about knowing more about your students and what brought them to enrolling in school as well as your course. Also, having a sense of what they are coping with outside of the classroom can be very helpful in deciding on what course of action to follow in instructional planning.
Gary
How will understanding the basics of learning benefit you as an instructor?
I will be able to determine each student's method of learning and develop lesson plans that support that method of learning. Will introducing varied teaching methids within a lesson plan benefit a student?
Would you give an example of how you might adapt your instructional strategy or teaching methods as a result of understanding how the brain functions and how learning occurs?
If a student presented with the ability to learn using a specific instructional strategy but other students required a different strategy, I could utilize several stratagies within a lesson plan to reach all students.
If you can identify the best way each student learns and retains information in your class, you can then adapt the class structure to meet each students needs. One example would be to use Powerpoints to effectively target Visual learners. A second example would be to use whenever possible Hands on application in class so that students can retain 70% of instruction.
We have a varied mix of student ages and maturity. If we teach at a level designed to reach mature students we may loose the younger students.
I think I was aware of much of this information but did not know the psycho-babble names for most of it. I have been teaching a long time and have experience with a wide spectrum of learners. It is interesting to read but I am successful now and will most likely not make changes to what I am doing.
Understanding the basics of learning is essential to any contemporary instructor(or any instructor for that matter). We are teaching in an age where diversity is everywhere especially when teaching adults. There is diversity in culture, age, experience, economic backround, etc... Understanding and adapting to the group and individual needs of the students will determine whether we are successful in delivering our message or not. With a combination of semantic and abstract styles we can usually be effective. I find that I am most successful when I present the material, demonstrate the material, and then show how the material relates to them. This incorporates several learning styles and seems to be successful.
Honestly, this just seems to reinforce what ive already learned about accelerated learning. by using different methods of presenting new information I'm also drawing on the different forms with which people learn and retain information.
I think it is very important to understand how the brain works, by understanding this you can use different types of learning styles to teach the students so they retain the material we teach them. Repeating things over and over also by letting them mess up and then they will always remember when they screwed up.
Knowing where my students are in relation to the development of their brain allows me to have some understanding of their ability to learn new information, as well as retain that information.
It would be a good idea to ask the students about some of their different influences, such as culture, educational background, where they grew up, etc.
This way I might get an idea of their motivation for learning and what value they put on their education.
By learning some of the past experiences of my students I can try to adapt the lesson to those experiences so that the student can tuck that information into their memory for later use.
