To culminate my learning in Advanced Interpersonal Teaching and Training I decided to write a course proposal. The assignment guidelines indicate that we cannot write a proposal about a class we have taught however, since this was my first semester teaching Comm 101 and I took all of my course materials - syllabus, assignments, tests etc. - from the Comm 101 director, Dr. Reeder allowed me to redo/revamp my course based on the teaching philosophy I developed this semester.
It's been an interesting journey this semester, my first in graduate school and my first teaching in my own classroom. While teaching in itself has been a fantastic learning experience, I have learned so much teaching for the first time while also taking this class. Each week in this class we would learn teaching and training strategies and how to apply them in the classroom. And each week I would plan my classes and wonder how I could implement the strategies we learned in my own classes. It's been fun and challenging. Communication lends itself very well to active learning strategies so in the one sense it's been easy to implement some of these ideas in my classes. On the other hand, working with tools that do not necessarily fit with my philosophy has made it a little more challenging. So planning my next semester with this course proposal should be an interesting way to bypass that challenge.
After I graduate I really want to continue on to teach at the college level. I came in with that goal but teaching this semester and taking this class, and other graduate classes, has really cemented that goal in my mind. I have loved teaching and learning about teaching and can't wait to apply this stuff in my classroom as I continue to teach. Watch this space!
As a final note, I just want to thank Dr. Reeder for being a wonderful, supportive and inspiring instructor, I have learned so much from you, not just in this class, but in all the classes I've taken from you and I hope that can continue in the future. Thanks also to Kristine, Lacey and Jim. You have all been great classmates and your encouragement and feedback has helped me to learn even more :)
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Stories and questions
Stories work. The relevance of stories is compounded by questions.
That is the basic premise for why to use stories and questions in the classroom. We were charged with demonstrating two different interpersonal communication concepts through narrative and questions. I had a hard time coming up with stories to fit my topics at first and I think my classmates' stories were a lot more relevant. The reason I think I struggled though was because the topics for stories were given to me; if I decided to implement a story in my classroom it would be because a specific story stood out for me regarding a concept. I understood the nature of the assignment though so made an effort to come up with some good stories for them :)
I thought Lacey did a fantastic job with her narrative on emotional contagion. She told us the story about her grandfather's funeral and how the emotion of the occasion transfered to everyone around. But, not only did her story tell us about the idea of emotional contagion, it demonstrated it to us as well. As she told us the story, her eyes filled with tears and her voice betrayed the intense sorrow she felt at the event. When she finished her story, not one of us listening had dry eyes, showing us how her emotion became contagious for us.
Then of course, to bring the narrative back to us in the classroom setting and the context, she asked questions to demonstrate and have us connect the story with the concept of emotional contagion.
Looking back at this semester I find that I have used stories and questions without realizing it in my classroom, usually in a more impromptu way as I remember stories that relate to information I'm lecturing about so I can further demonstrate the concepts. As I plan my class for next semester I will look to see where I can incorporate provocative stories to generate discussion and solidify learning concepts.
That is the basic premise for why to use stories and questions in the classroom. We were charged with demonstrating two different interpersonal communication concepts through narrative and questions. I had a hard time coming up with stories to fit my topics at first and I think my classmates' stories were a lot more relevant. The reason I think I struggled though was because the topics for stories were given to me; if I decided to implement a story in my classroom it would be because a specific story stood out for me regarding a concept. I understood the nature of the assignment though so made an effort to come up with some good stories for them :)
I thought Lacey did a fantastic job with her narrative on emotional contagion. She told us the story about her grandfather's funeral and how the emotion of the occasion transfered to everyone around. But, not only did her story tell us about the idea of emotional contagion, it demonstrated it to us as well. As she told us the story, her eyes filled with tears and her voice betrayed the intense sorrow she felt at the event. When she finished her story, not one of us listening had dry eyes, showing us how her emotion became contagious for us.
Then of course, to bring the narrative back to us in the classroom setting and the context, she asked questions to demonstrate and have us connect the story with the concept of emotional contagion.
Looking back at this semester I find that I have used stories and questions without realizing it in my classroom, usually in a more impromptu way as I remember stories that relate to information I'm lecturing about so I can further demonstrate the concepts. As I plan my class for next semester I will look to see where I can incorporate provocative stories to generate discussion and solidify learning concepts.
Wikis and other technologies
To follow from my last post on teaching vs. training I'll take a minute to evaluate the role of technology in the classroom. We used a wiki to create the document on teaching and training, a method with some benefits and some drawbacks.
Since we worked remotely, the four of us used the discussion board part of our wiki to talk about what content we wanted to include. This was somewhat effective in getting our information out there to the others but was not instant and so we sometimes had misunderstandings where people did not see other's replies. It got a little confusing at times!
The way we could edit the document was great since we could edit fonts, colors and backgrounds to make it look exactly how we wanted. However, unlike another format like Google Docs, only one person could save edits at a time and so we accidentally ended up with some miscommunication and some information deleted.
Overall I can see wiki documents being of value to my classroom but I would most likely not use it remotely for groups of more than two students due to the ease of miscommunication. For example, Kristine and I used our Broncomail chat, which is instant, to communicate when we should go in to edit the document a year to alleviate the non-instant nature of the discussion board. If there were just two people it could be easier to bypass these issues.
Another alternative I think could work for larger groups remotely would be google docs. Although it cannot be edited to be as "pretty" as the wiki, it can have multiple editors at any given time and has an instant chat feature to aid effective communication.
Since we worked remotely, the four of us used the discussion board part of our wiki to talk about what content we wanted to include. This was somewhat effective in getting our information out there to the others but was not instant and so we sometimes had misunderstandings where people did not see other's replies. It got a little confusing at times!
The way we could edit the document was great since we could edit fonts, colors and backgrounds to make it look exactly how we wanted. However, unlike another format like Google Docs, only one person could save edits at a time and so we accidentally ended up with some miscommunication and some information deleted.
Overall I can see wiki documents being of value to my classroom but I would most likely not use it remotely for groups of more than two students due to the ease of miscommunication. For example, Kristine and I used our Broncomail chat, which is instant, to communicate when we should go in to edit the document a year to alleviate the non-instant nature of the discussion board. If there were just two people it could be easier to bypass these issues.
Another alternative I think could work for larger groups remotely would be google docs. Although it cannot be edited to be as "pretty" as the wiki, it can have multiple editors at any given time and has an instant chat feature to aid effective communication.
Teaching vs. Training
The title for this class inclues both teaching and training, but I find it easy to interchange those two words, and have done often times in this class. I've also heard the terms used interchangeably in discussions with others. So it was interesting to work on an assignment with my classmates to determine what ways teaching and training are the same and how they differ.
In our assignment we created a document that listed the different concepts, philosophies, etc. of teaching and training and looking at how they overlapped. After our discussion and a few hours working on the document, we came to the conclusion that they are both similar in the sense that they convey information and have a focus on students and but are often different in methods. Our evaluation of this led us to realize that "The drawbacks of each are that they tend to exclude the other. Combining teaching and training makes for the most effective experience."
In my classroom I can see how this plays out. Traditional teaching involves lecture, verbally conveying the information to my students. That alone isn't very good for student retention or understanding, at least in my experience and based on what we have learned in this class. On the other hand, just having my students do exercises without giving them a content basis - training them without a foundation - can also present problems. I find that mini-lectures combined with active learning exercises effectively balances the teaching and training to make sure my students have a good grasp of basic concepts and how they play out in their interactions.
In our assignment we created a document that listed the different concepts, philosophies, etc. of teaching and training and looking at how they overlapped. After our discussion and a few hours working on the document, we came to the conclusion that they are both similar in the sense that they convey information and have a focus on students and but are often different in methods. Our evaluation of this led us to realize that "The drawbacks of each are that they tend to exclude the other. Combining teaching and training makes for the most effective experience."
In my classroom I can see how this plays out. Traditional teaching involves lecture, verbally conveying the information to my students. That alone isn't very good for student retention or understanding, at least in my experience and based on what we have learned in this class. On the other hand, just having my students do exercises without giving them a content basis - training them without a foundation - can also present problems. I find that mini-lectures combined with active learning exercises effectively balances the teaching and training to make sure my students have a good grasp of basic concepts and how they play out in their interactions.
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