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Ever had a disruptive student in your class? How did you handle it? Could you have handled it better? This gem of an article, from Chemical Engineering Education, of all places, is a humorous/serious look at the problem and how best to handle it. The full article is linked below (and thanks to Doug Hoffman for the tip!)
“All in a Day’s Work,” by Richard M. Felder and Rebecca Brent
Chem. Engr. Education, 34(1), 66–67 (2000)
Wonder how students feel about technology in education, and what new toys they’re using today? EDUCAUSE has just published the 2009 “ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology,” available on the EDUCAUSE web site. Follow the link below to read the report online::
ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology
As usual, the report looks at “the technology [students] own and how they use it in and out of their academic world. We gather information about how skilled students believe they are with technologies; how they perceive technology is affecting their learning experience; and their preferences for IT in courses.” This year’s report includes a special look at students’ use of handheld, Internet-capable devices such as cell phones and smart phones.
I continue to be impressed with the blog posts on “In the Library with the Lead Pipe,” online here. If you’re not already following this blog, you may want to add it to your feed reader or Twitter feed!
The authors added a new post this week on “Learning to Teach Through Video.” The article has some great suggestions for creating simple, easy-to-follow video/online presentations that address students’ need for both verbal and visual learning cues. For the full blog post, see:
http://inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2009/learning-to-teach-through-video/
Asking questions during class is a common way to gauge student knowledge and elicit feedback. But how much thought do you put into the questions that you ask? This week's MTI teaching tip discusses in-class questions - the good, the bad, and the ugly - and explains why you're probably not waiting long enough for student responses.
What About the Questions You Ask? (MTI Teaching Tip #66)
I stumbled across a blog post on “Bottom-Line Performance” recently – an interesting discussion of whether it’s more important for 21st century students to learn facts or skills. While you can make a case for either, it seems that in library instruction we’re generally teaching students skills (database search techniques, information literacy, evaluation of online resources, etc.) rather than facts. The Bottom-Line Performance blog piece is online here:
That post links back to related posts by Dave Ferguson and Stephen Downes. Ferguson, in particular, writes elegantly on Downes’ idea of “21st Century Skills” as a sort of operating system of the mind. You can link to those posts here:
“21st Century Skills: An OS for the mind”
Downes includes an analogy about learning to drive:
“Take driving, for example. If our knowledge of how to drive depended on a set of facts, then at a certain point it would become impossible, because while we could teach people how to drive on common streets and in common situations, as we drive further and further away from home, in newer and different vehicles, our knowledge becomes less relevant, until eventually we are simply unable to drive. If, instead of focusing on the ‘facts’ of driving, we think of driving as an activity or skill, then we are able to adapt, and develop new abilities, and new knowledge, mastering the ability to drive in strange places as we progress.”
This analogy, along with the phrase “operating system for the mind,” strikes me as particularly relevant for library instruction. Rather than teaching students a set of discrete facts, we’re tasked with providing them with skills and knowledge that can be applied to finding information in library databases and online searching, whether here at CSU or in their professional and personal lives after graduation. Hopefully, the skills that we teach will not only be useful today, but also in the future when the technological landscape will almost certainly be different.