I was asked recently by a friend to summarize some of my approaches to teaching. Like most situations when I am asked a question I really like - I probably wrote too much. Here is my response.
Technology as Competency - This is really part of the core mission of Informatics as a cross-disciplinary field. To meet that mission, we need to find ways to teach technology to draw people in and have them enjoy technology as part of a career in some non-CS field. The goal is to teach people a lot of material but do it in a non-painful way. This is done by carefully selecting interesting and relevant scope and truly understanding learning objectives, and then focusing pedagogy on insuring that students master all the material instead of pushing students well beyond the learning objectives to the breaking point in order to sort the students into the "worthy" and "unworthy" as a filter class at the beginning of a CS major. The goal is to inspire the students to find ways to master and use technology regardless of their primary career choice.
Self-Directed Learning in Large Classes - Provide sufficient materials (audio, video, books, handouts, slides, etc) that provide students multiple paths to the learning objectives based on their incoming competency levels and learning styles. The goal is not to find the "one true" path - but instead to present as many paths as possible to the students. Make sure that assignments are directly related to the course learning objectives and consist of genuine and relevant activities. Make sure that students who need additional one-on-one help have it available.
Group Learning in Large Class Situations - Make it possible for those students who find group learning helpful to approach the course with a self-selected and self-organized group. Adjust class policies and structure to allow for but not require or force group learning. Again the focus is on student outcomes and the course learning objectives - not simply assign groups and group work for group work sake. Group Learning is also part of the self-directed approach. Student's form groups as they see value in those groups. As the instructor - I do not hold individual offices hours for the purpose of answering student questions - all individual learning is done in a group context where many students can listen at the same time. This has lead to cross-class hacker-jams where students just come in and hang out for a few hours with the instructional staff and we talk about everything and anything and everyone hears all conversations. This approach models group interactions and how we learn as groups - it also makes efficient use of the instructional staff time.
Collaborative Learning of Software Development - All my courses have some aspect of software development. Most of the students coming into my courses have little or no prior programming experience. Many of the students in my courses have had bad experiences in prior programming classes that have made them have a general dislike for technical things. To solve these and many other hurdles faced by beginning programmers, self-directed learning of programming is taken to an extreme. Initial programming experiences are compressed into 4-5 weeks of immersive learning - again with very clear learning objectives - and with as little distracting materials as possible. The 4-5 week experience ends with an in-lab practical exam where students must demonstrate competency on their own in a time constrained exercise. This "practical exam" allows for very flexible approach to learning the programming skills during the 4-5 week exercise - students can take their own path through the material and learn the material with as much or as little scaffolding and assistance from others as is needed for their learning style. Each student knows that they are responsible for learning the material and will be tested at the end of the experience. This clear and tangible end goal and clear learning objective allows students to choose their own path through the material - all the time knowing full well that if they abuse the the built-in flexibility of the 4-5- week exercise and avoid learning - that there will be negative consequences in the form of the practical exam. The practical exam provides students a very clear focus in an otherwise self-directed and fluid environment. The exercises and practical exam are structured to build student confidence and knowledge. While many students feel the notion of the practical exam is quite stressful - once they achieve on the exam and demonstrate their mastery - it is a great confidence builder.
Innovative use of technology - Finding sustainable ways to use technology to enhance learning. My experiments with technology are always based on a a cost/benefit analysis. I try to find ways to enhance teaching and learning without requiring additional staff or significant technology and always considering the convenience of the teacher and student. My best techniques so far are an MP3 recorder with USB on a lanyard to make podcasts of every lecture, screen captures on detailed technical techniques, and recorded lectures with scribble annotation when I am traveling or otherwise unable to come to class. I use technology as a way to add as many alternate learning paths as possible so that students can achieve learning objectives.
Teaching in The Open - I target much of my course materials towards the general public and nearly all of the materials from the course up and available to the public as a side effect of teaching. Each of my classes has a public web site (www.si502.com, www.si539.com, www.appenginelearn.com, and others). I take steps to try to make my learning materials clear and truly useful - even to people not taking the course. These sites do not yet generate a lot of participation outside of the registered students - but the exercise of teaching in public where all can see is greatly helpful in designing, developing, and contextualizing the course materials to be easily understood and easily approachable.
Building a Teaching and Learning Community - When using CTools, instead of simply using a course site, for each course I have a project site and course site. About 85% of the teaching and learning and interaction is done on the project site. The course site is focused on graded activities and GSI interactions. The project site has open membership beyond just the students enrolled in the course. The project site is used to create a long-term learning community around the course material. Students can stay in the project site and be part of the learning activity in semesters after they have taken the course. This also allows teachers from multiple semesters to all monitor and participate in the learning activity. This also allows experts to be brought into the course and have them remain part of the learning community. Everyone is encouraged to participate in the learning community - students are encouraged to answer each other's questions in the public mailing list.
Ctools/Sakai - Since I am one of the committers in the worldwide Sakai project, I make sure that Sakai has features that allow anyone to replicate how I use Sakai in an innovative way. A hallmark of Sakai when compared to most commercial learning management systems is its flexibility which allows teachers to make more of the choices about how we teach our class. There is not one single way that teachers should teach. As I continue to teach, whenever I find a place in Sakai that I as a teacher need some additional flexibility to accommodate new ideas and needs, I am in a unique position to simply add that feature to Sakai and as a result improve the product over time for all of the teachers at UM as well as over 100 schools and over a million students around the world who use Sakai.
Summary - Of course this is an ongoing and always evolving experiment - I am happy with the results so far. It seems that I can get people who thought they hated technology to become interested in technology - not as a profession - but as something they understand and can use. Also, it seems as though these techniques resonate well regardless of gender. My working hypothesis in regards to gender and technology is that the issue is mostly a difference in learning style. Most technology courses for technology majors are designed with one learning style in mind and as a result, unfortunately "filter out" folks who don't match that particular learning style. Since my courses are more tolerant and supportive of different learning styles and are supportive of self-directed learning - naturally more people find themselves thriving, learning, and enjoying the course.
Posted by csev at January 4, 2009 10:17 AM