NorQuest College students, might use recipe cards as a creative and effective tool to study and memorize important concepts. Recipe cards provide a compact and organized format for summarizing key information, making them ideal for self-assessment and quick review. Here's how our students can use recipe cards for studying, using nursing studies as an example:
In this Frayer model for Pain Assessment, the term "Pain Assessment" is defined and its key characteristics and examples are outlined. The visual representation section can include diagrams, flowcharts, or illustrations related to pain assessment, which aid in visualizing the concept.
Remember, the Frayer model is a versatile tool, and you can adapt its sections and format to best suit the specific nursing concept you are studying.
By employing recipe cards in their study routine, college students can leverage the power of concise summarization, self-assessment, and active recall. These techniques aid in consolidating knowledge, reinforcing important concepts, and promoting effective learning.
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What is it?
Facts/Questions/Response is a literacy strategy used to encourage students to think actively about information that they read by applying the thinking processes I’ve written about before: Readers are more engaged and successful in learning when:
A three-column chart is used to record the Facts, Questions, and Responses. Students determine importance as they retell or summarize textual information in the Facts column using jot notes. They reflect about the textual information by recording questions asked in the Questions column. They make connections, make inferences, and visualize as they record their relating and reflecting responses to the textual information in the Response column. The FQR strategy helps those students who
How to use it:
This past week, in our professional learning community on reflective practice, Jeannine Dolen (nursing instructor) raised an issue that has plagued all of us, “Just how do you get students to do the required readings before class?” Jeannine was concerned that many of her students did not prepare for class, expected the instructor to summarize the salient points, and often never even bothered to buy the required texts. From this starting place (Jeannine provided relevant readings, a muse/scenario and a few questions to guide our discussion) our little group dove into some pretty big questions about instructor and student roles, the nature of the reading process, and how we might incentivize and scaffold student reading. The context With so many of our instructors moving to a flipped classroom approach to teaching (expecting students to familiarize themselves with important learning prior to synchronous lessons so that class time can be spent on synthesis and application), it has become even more important that students take ownership of their learning and come to class ready to work. This means completing all the assigned readings, viewings and activities. It can also put the instructor in a precarious spot. She may have developed a wonderful lesson plan with time allotted for breakouts, collaborative problem solving using shared documents, and class discussion–but if the students come unprepared, the lesson plan goes out the window. The instructor feels obligated to “deliver the goods” and revert to a less active, more lecture-type lesson and the students who actually have done the readings feel like the synchronous lesson is really not the best use of their time. So why aren’t they reading/preparing? We want to help most of our students take ownership of their learning (we’ll never get all!). We’d like to create a classroom environment where our students learn very quickly that they need to be prepared so we can all participate in active lessons that engage and challenge rather than merely repeat or summarize. And yet, for all of our exhortations and encouragements, students still come to class unprepared. If I reflect back on my undergraduate days, I don’t think I was a whole lot different. I often came to class unprepared. In my case it was immaturity, an overcommitment to other activities (sports?), employment responsibilities, and the feeling like I could get away with it–and still pass the course. And I hated shelling out big bucks for texts that were haphazardly referred to, or were the latest edition from a professor who found a way to supplement his academic income. And this may also be the case for many of our students. However, for our students we might also add concerns of child rearing and family obligations, competing interests, stress, and time management. And there may be one other factor to consider. Perhaps they are reading, but not really reading! I remember being a first or second-year student at the U of A, working through psychology texts with my handy highlighter! I’d grab my favourite colour and then sit down, coffee at hand, and attack all that dense text. Soon that overpriced compendium of information and academic wisdom was a sea of colour! Whole pages were yellow, pink or green and there was little that was left unmarked. Everything seemed important! And, if I stepped back to see what emerged as being the most important, it seemed to be the words: and, but, next, however – the words actually linking ideas. These words stood out because they were not highlighted! Eventually I learned to read the text several times first to get the bigger picture, then think about the dominant themes or important concepts to be learned, before returning to the text with my highlighter to sagaciously and sparingly apply colour only to the essential points, perhaps annotating in the margin with a relevant question or a connected thought. There is a difference between superficially reading (quickly skimming through texts) and really reading (making connections and comprehending). Many of the students we work with at NorQuest may have challenges in reading closely and connectedly. They have come to the college with uneven experiences in schooling and may not like to read or even know how to read - for learning. Perhaps they have struggled in junior high or high school, or perhaps they’ve come to Canada with limited English skills. And, as instructors we often forget about that. Sometimes we can misread our students because they seem to have excellent spoken proficiency, which masks their academic shortcomings. We can have delightful conversations with them about the weather, hobbies and their work. However, written work–especially academic texts–calls for a much broader vocabulary and a deeper understanding of language and language patterns. Working through readings, constantly looking up words and terminology and even translating these new terms into your home language, can be exhausting and overwhelming. And if the instructor hardly ever refers to these readings, seldom quizzes you on them, or will simplify them for you, why bother? However, this hard labour of wrestling with academic texts and professional language is precisely what all of our students need. It is in reading the texts, watching the videos, making notes, and asking how it all fits together, that the students truly learn. And we can’t do that for them. But we can help them develop some of the skills and acquire the mindset that might help them persevere. I often think of this situation like the work my daughter does in providing physiotherapy support. If we keep giving our students crutches (recap lectures and summary sheets) and we fail to push our students to get active (application exercises, problem solving activities), we are actually part of the problem. So, what are the reading skills that need to be encouraged and scaffolded? What do good readers do? When I worked as a literacy consultant for secondary teachers at Elk Island Public Schools, I was blessed to work with a team of educators in supporting the development of effective literacy practices across the school district. As a support and frame, the team highlighted eight thinking skills students need when interacting with and learning from with various texts (print, oral and visual). These skills or processes were built upon the work of Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis, and incorporated elements from William Brozo, Kylene Beers, and many other reading gurus. Readers are more engaged and successful in learning when:
As educators, we need to consider how we might challenge our students to develop and use these thinking skills when we assign readings, podcasts and you tube clips. We also need to ask ourselves how we can prepare them for such assignments, scaffold them through the meaning-making process and challenge them to make applications and develop insights. References Beers, G.K. (2002). When kids can’t read, what teachers can do: A guide for teachers 6–12. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Brozo, W.G., & Simpson, M.L. (2006). Content literacy for today’s adolescents: Honoring diversity and building competence (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Harvey, S., & Goudvis, A. (2007). Strategies that work: Teaching comprehension for understanding and engagement. Portland, ME: Stenhouse. Do you ever find yourself getting tired of marking the same old assignments where students almost follow a formula to crank out papers and you mindlessly score them without really engaging in them? Well some of that tedium can be avoided if only we give more choice to out students in how they might present evidence of understanding and application. One way to provide students with a choice and encourage creativity is to use a rather old assignment format called a RAFT. A RAFT (Vanderventer, 1979) allows students to choose how they want to approach an assignment letting them select their Role, intended Audience, preferred Format and particular Topic from a list of options given by you! Giving students the opportunity to write from the perspective of a small business owner, nutritionist, family member, politician, newspaper reporter or Greenpeace activist might bring some creativity into often stale assignments and stretches the students by asking them to take on perspectives and unpack assumptions that they might not usually consider. And, these assignments can also be much more fun to assess. Instead of having to read or watch 40 rather dry reports on a certain topic, instructors can now read love letters, sample travel guides, follow dialogues, react to newspaper columns, view talk show excerpts, download political speeches, and a whole host of other possibilities. For some instructors this kind of choice can be a little unnerving. “How do I mark such a diverse set of assignments?” “Aren’t the students just going to see this as an excuse to avoid serious research?” These questions illustrate the need be clear about your expectations for the assignment. The fact is, no matter which format they choose, the students need to show that they have a sound grasp of the issue they are assigned or the process they need to illustrate. In fact, working from the rather academic language of texts and resources and then converting it into another form forces the students to consolidate the learnings and then use their understanding to make more refined applications. Imagine trying explain dementia from the perspective of a close relative or care worker, rather than as a student (reciting symptoms from a resource or website). What kinds of challenges might this relative seen and experienced? What kinds of emotions have they encountered? What kinds of supports might they be asking for? These questions also show the importance of having a well-developed rubric or scoring guide for evaluating student work. The rubric should be assessing not to see if the student says all of the “right things” but to see whether the student can show understanding in how they process the task, and in how they explain, interpret, apply show perspective, extend empathy, and show self-awareness (Remember the six facets of understanding from Wiggins and McTighe?). The key to any RAFT assignment is how well it might demonstrate understanding and inquiry, so students could choose very “unreal” scenarios to illustrate some very real concerns. For instance, in a unit on “healthy choices” a student might choose to write a complaint letter written by of a choked set of lungs to the pack-a-day smoker who is subjecting them to this daily abuse. RAFTs are quite versatile. They can be simple and short checks for understanding. They can also be full-blown assignments that require careful investigation and thoughtful expression. How do you use a RAFT?
One Example Here are the beginnings of a RAFT assignment on creating a hydro-electric dam in Southern Alberta. The dam will dispossess numerous land owners, flood an historic plain of traditional hunting grounds and burial sites, bring revenue to the province and certain corporations, provide a steady flow of irrigation to farms in Southern Alberta, provide recreational opportunities(boating, sportfishing and camping), and impact countless animal populations by interfering with their habitat. Students are free to mix and match from all of the columns. Of course, the assignment above would require some more fleshing out as you weigh the kinds of tasks and work with an eye to clarity, structure, fairness, and achievement. But it gives you an idea. Assignments like this could be made for virtually any subject area. Nursing students might be asked to take on the perspective of the patient, the care-giver, the health clinic staff, a family member, or even the virus itself: I am now starting to affect Jeff’s nervous system. In the next couple of days, he will no longer be able to go to the dog park with his border collies. Soon he will have difficulty even handling the TV remote so he can change the channel to watch the Bruins games. He will have to ask his wife to hold his Dr. Pepper up to his lips so he can take a sip through one of those paper straws. It will be a slow, painful degeneration. The possibilities are endless; however, this last example is one I don’t want to explore further! Vanderventer, N (1979, Winter). RAFT: A process to structure prewriting. Highway One: A Canadian Journal of Language Experience, p.26. Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (Expanded 2nd). Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. How might we support our students in preparing for exams?This past week we held two faculty talking circles. They were wonderful! Both circles were well-attended and instructors participating offered helpful suggestions on how to support and encourage students as they prepare for important and often stressful end of term assessments. The instructors were given the following prompt: We are getting to that point in the term where the students are under a lot of pressure to perform. End of module exams and end of term exams loom. And while there is a plethora of websites that suggest the best ways for students to prepare for these challenges - suggesting how to stop procrastinating, make quality notes, and move past recall to better understanding - it does not always follow that students read and apply such helpful advice. How do you support and scaffold your students in preparation for big assessments? Do you share links, develop study guides, set up review classes, schedule drop-ins, manage a chat, pair up students (study buddies), or find some other way to help and encourage? Is your Moodle environment configured to aid students in being confident and competent learners? Or, is studying and exam prep something that each student must take individual ownership of – we are not here to spoon feed or enable our learners! Several suggestions kept coming back as instructors shared their expertise and experience:
Here are many of the other suggestions shared by NorQuest faculty:
Some of the links that were shared while we were in the Talking Circle include: Student Wellness Services self-directed workshop on managing test stress: https://rise.articulate.com/share/pwSBgb-MVbc5ijad-q9s3SA5_tVNOb5L#/lessons/W0gOg6HdekbzQb-sjrT35LM2VKC5sdzR Studying 101: Study Smarter Not Harder (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) https://learningcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/studying-101-study-smarter-not-harder/ Studying & Note-Taking Skills for College (Affordable Colleges Online) https://www.affordablecollegesonline.org/college-resource-center/study-skills/ Study Skills (Penn State) https://dus.psu.edu/academicsuccess/studyskills.html Hopefully there is a suggestion or idea that resonates with you! If you would like to go deeper into any of the suggestions above, just contact one of our Faculty Developers! In this musing I would like to share a discussion strategy I learned quite some years ago, it is called a “Focused Conversation”. I picked up this strategy by attending a full day workshop from Jo Nelson, who at the time, was working for the Canadian Institute of Cultural Affairs. The workshop was great, and I ended up leaving with a copy of her book and a new approach to guiding conversations towards actionable decisions. Over the years I have used Focused Conversations in many different contexts:
These aren’t all the times that I have used a Focused Conversation, but they should convey just how versatile the strategy is. What is a Focused Conversation? (ORID) A Focused Conversation is a strategy that uses four rounds of questioning to guide participants through information and help them reach some their own conclusions about the data. Facilitators (teachers, leaders, workshop coordinators) skillfully guide the participants through:
Ground rules for ORID conversation participants (which should be shared at the outset):
What follows is a bare bones summary of the four steps. Whenever I use this model I tailor the accompanying questions to the educational or leadership purpose for the discussion (literary analysis, issue investigation, program review, curriculum mapping, etc.). The example questions are geared towards a focused discussion on a data set (like year-end surveys). You would need to make questions that suit the needs of your discussion. 1. Objective - What do you see? Concerned with data, facts, and the ‘truths’ that everyone can agree on, such as what was seen, heard, touched, etc. It is important to spend a considerable amount of time on this step so that all aspects and angles are explored. Example questions:
2. Reflective – How do you feel about this? Focused on reactions, moods, memories, associations. Examples:
3. Interpretative – What might this all mean? Concerned with meaning, purpose, significance, implications. Examples:
4. Decisional – What should we do? Focus on resolution, agreement, and possible new directions or actions. Examples:
Focused Conversations in Online Teaching I was thinking about the online applications of this strategy, especially in a teaching context. Here’s a possible scenario: One of our instructors in environmental education is guiding her students through an examination of the current controversies regarding pipelines from Alberta (eastward, westward and southward). Instead of assigning a number of readings or video clips to her students, she has asked them to do the research. Over several days of time, the class is assembling their ideas on a Padlet. The students post their own observations, paste in images (of the oil sands, of unemployment lines, of graphs regarding pollutants, etc.), and provide links (to news articles, websites and video clips). This “Pipeline Padlet” becomes the muse, artefact or data set from which to proceed through a focused conversation. After providing enough time for students to explore and peruse the posts on the Pipeline Padlet, the instructor asks her students to share their observations. What do the students see on that Padlet? Which images, words or angles emerge? Can they specifically identify the various kinds of environmental or economic impacts? How might this dats set be grouped or classified according to themes (environmental, economic, political, jurisdictional, or community factors/viewpoints), credibility (reliability of sources/voices), historical development (timelines) or environmental impact and urgency? What do the students notice about the kinds of information, the way it is shared, and how it is shared? This first phase (observation) often takes the longest. It is important not to rush the process. A skillful facilitator will make sure that every item is touched upon and considered. Hopefully, such facilitation will help stem the impulse to just jump on one line of thinking (the first or loudest voice) and help students to see that the issue is a complex one with many stakeholders – including themselves (as residents, as stewards of the earth, as those seeking employment). After giving enough time to do this review (I often spent over an hour in this phase), the instructor moves to the reflection part of the process. How do the students feel about what they are reading, seeing and hearing? Do the pipeline deliberations cause sadness, frustration, anger – or hope and potential? Are these emotions generated by concern over the environment, economy, or a sense of fairness and human rights? How do the students feel about the ways in which information is shared or viewpoints expressed? Which aspects or concerns generate the most emotion? In the second step, the instructor is helping the students move past a simple knowledge of the issues and is pushing them to question their established assumptions and beliefs, develop empathy and perspective taking, and come to a richer understanding of the context, the stakeholders, and the ramifications. This step should not be rushed, and students should have an opportunity to express their own perspectives through discussion (small group or classroom) or forums (written or video). Once the emotions have been shared and named, the group is ready to look at making sense of the issue. What does all of this mean? The instructor challenges the students to make sense of the observations and their feelings. What have we learned about the issue? What seems to be the central issue in all of these pipeline deliberations? How can we make decisions that are truly the best for the environment and for the people, animals and plant life in it? Where might we start? What would give us the most “bang for the buck”? How might we address misinformation, bias and political factors? Often, this is where an instructor wants to start. We have a passion for our subject area and we assume that our students share this passion and have some background knowledge and investment in the topic. However, many of our students have had very different life experiences and are immersed in a very different context than we might have. So, while some of the students can follow and partake in our “class discussions”, many others become disconnected and “check-out”. Our students need the opportunity to become aware of the data, viewpoints, players and stakeholders, before we move to such a discussion. And if we have done this pre-work, the discussions will be richer and more productive. Finally, the instructor moves to the last phase of the ORID process. What should we do in response to this issue? This questioning phase pushes students to ideate directions, decisions and possible solutions both for themselves and perhaps also for society in general. What kinds of initiatives might be started that work towards helping the environment, the people and the economy? What might individual roles and collective responsibilities be in such change processes? How would you sequence actions and decisions in a responsible way? Where would you start? What kinds of timeline or constraints might there be? How would we know that we are making a difference (success indicators?). This last phase in the ORID process may lead to individual assignments, essay writing, or presentations. As is often the case when confronting big questions or a wealth of data, there may not be consensus and, in a teaching situation, there doesn’t need to be. However, if the application is for choosing a direction for a faculty department or solving an emergent issue, you may need to work towards consensus. ORID was developed by the Institute of Cultural Affairs, a nonprofit organization with offices in Washington, DC. It was adapted from Winning through Participation: Meeting the Challenge of Corporate Change with the Technology of Participation by Laura Spencer (Dubuque: Kenndall/Hunt Publishing, 1989). Brian Stanfield further elaborated on the ORID model to show how it might be used in a variety of professional and intercultural contexts. Jo Nelson and the Canadian Institute for Cultural Affairs then built upon ORID model and describe how it might could be applied to teaching and leadership contexts. Stanfield, R. Brian, ed. (2000) The Art of Focused Conversation, New Society Publishing. Nelson, J., & Canadian Institute of Cultural Affairs. (2007). The art of focused conversation for schools: Over 100 ways to guide clear thinking and promote learning. Toronto, Ont: The Canadian Institute for Cultural Affairs. This week I would like to share another of my favorite teaching strategies with you. I have used it for units on independent living, on globalism, on themes in Hamlet, and on teacher professionalism. The Anticipation Guide is a strategy that will work whenever you have course components that call for rich and nuanced understandings. What is it? The Anticipation Guide (Herber, 1978) is a simple strategy that can lead to some very complex and involved thought and discussion. This strategy challenges each student to access prior knowledge, set a purpose for learning, and find evidence to justify or disprove controversial statements. It follows the TPS (think/pair/share) format but gives more structure. You can use this strategy when you start a new unit, when you assign an especially important (and insightful) reading or viewing, or when you want to explore some of the central themes in the course program. With an Anticipation Guide, learners respond to five, six or seven interesting statements. These statements should reflect some of the upcoming themes and issues in a lesson or unit. For instance, imagine asking learners to agree or disagree with the following statements about our current Covid situation and to be prepared to explain their choices:
As you can see, the statements need to be “juicy”. They need to elicit anticipation, discussion and debate. Moreover, if you are using the Anticipation Guide to get at central themes in a unit, the statements might probe at understandings and misconceptions around key learning outcomes. So your first step is to carefully consider what it is you want to highlight and then come up with some statements that are true, false or very debatable. How do you use it? Once you have come up with your five to seven statements, you should put them in an organizer such as the one shown below. The students need a place to capture their thinking so they can re-visit their perceptions at the end of the lesson or unit and see if they have changed in their viewpoints and understanding. This organizer could be a shard document on a Google or Sharepoint drive or it could be something you have uploaded to your LMS (Moodle course).
When you use an Anticipation Guide, you need to give learners enough time to think about each question and respond. It helps if at least a couple of the statements you construct cause learners to reflect and consider alternative viewpoints. Moreover, asking the learners to agree or disagree forces learners not to “fence sit” and to consider the implications of their choice. This part of the process could take from 3-10 minutes depending on the group you are teaching and the quality of statements you construct. Some instructors also ask learners to write down their reasons for their stance in a short justification. The next step is to ask learners to share their responses with a partner and to explain their reasoning. If you teach online, it would require setting up breakout rooms for two or three students. Ideally, you do not want to have learners share their responses with too large a group. Each student needs to feel safe and heard. That often does not happen when you put students in too large of a group. When they are ready for it, you might ask the learners to share some of their discussion with the whole class. This is made a little easier because they have already had time to negotiate ideas and viewpoints in pairs or triples and would only have to volunteer what they felt comfortable sharing. This sharing and discussion can sometimes take a lot of class time, but it is very valuable. The learners will have chewed on some very important ideas, they will have had to consider their own views and background knowledge and they will be ready to hear and explore a variety of perspectives and ideas. The pump will have been primed and the learning engine should be firing on all cylinders! Finally, at the end of the lesson or unit you might have the learners revisit their initial responses. Have they changed their stance? Why? What did they learn from reflecting, responding, discussing, reading or listening and then reflecting once again? Some instructors ask their learners to write out their conclusions or relate page and paragraph numbers that support their re-evaluated stance. Herber, H.L., & Herber, J.N. (1993). Teaching in Content Areas with Reading, Writing and Reasoning, Allyn & Bacon Vocabulary is Important! At NorQuest College, we have a number of courses that require a great deal of vocabulary acquisition and understanding. Knowing certain terms and their nuances is especially important for new Canadians trying to adjust to cultural norms, for budding scientists who need to clarify and identify exactly what they see, and for health care providers who must have a common lexicon for anatomy and physiology. Many of our students have coped with difficult terms by memorizing exact textbook definitions anticipating that exact definitions will be required on unit tests and quizzes. However, while this strategy may help the students to achieve slightly better marks in the short term, it actually harms the student because their knowledge of many key concepts is superficial at best. Students need to be able to do more than just define a term; they need to know why the term is significant, how it connects to other concepts and what makes it different from other terms. When assessments ask students to use terms in the right contexts, to make comparisons and analysis, and to unpack understandings, students with only a rote knowledge of key terms struggle. One of the many vocabulary strategies I like to use, to help students better understand important terminology, is a graphic organizer known as the Frayer Model. What is a Frayer Model? The Frayer Model (Frayer, Frederick, and Klausmeier, 1969) is a vocabulary strategy that actually helps learners deepen their understanding of key concepts by asking them to consider a number of facets to the terms used. This “deep understanding” comes about when students are pushed to consider a word’s essential and non-essential attributes and to refine their understanding by choosing examples and non-examples of the concept. In order to understand completely what a concept is - one must also know what it is not. How to use it: The Frayer model can be used before teaching a unit as a diagnostic tool to assess prior knowledge, during the unit to consolidate understanding as a form of note taking and after the unit as an assessment of learning.
When using such a strategy with their students, teachers need to make sure that they start with only a few key terms or concepts. Instructors also have to resist filling out the organizers for the students and simply giving the completed charts to the students as study guides. This defeat the individualized experience and accountability of working through the terms. Over the years, practicing teachers have come up with many different variations on the Frayer Model. However, the original Frayer Model focused on helping students to narrow down the meaning for each term by seeing what it is and what it is not. I’ve included a couple of modified Frayer Models I have use to help clarify the difference between more traditional and more constructivist models for teaching. Bring Your Whole Self… Last Thursday and Friday, Sarah Apedaile hosted two faculty talking circles on “Learning Environments that Enhance Student Wellbeing”. The intention was to elicit ideas and strategies from NorQuest instructional staff so that we could learn from each other. Both circles were very rich in discussion and specifics and while the first seemed to focus on actions that you might do immediately, the other spent more time on proactively building a course and environment that creates a safe space. One of my favorite quotes came from an instructor on the first day, he said (and this is my paraphrase because I could not remember word for word), “Instructors need to bring their whole, authentic selves to the classroom (online or in person). This may mean sharing your own successes, missteps and failures as you have travelled through your educational journey.” Now I know this instructor, and I know that he isn’t saying that a teacher should dominate the classroom with personal anecdotes and ego-centric lessons. What he was getting at is the importance of being real, being vulnerable, and being approachable. On the weekend, I kept coming back to this thought, and I compared it to when I began teaching. In my first few placements, I came across many seasoned educators who were very willing to share their life lessons in teaching with me. Some of the most frequent messages I heard were:
Their advice was something more like an antiperspirant commercial: “Never let them see you sweat!” I remember feeling quite uncomfortable in “faking it”. I knew I had much to learn about time management, subject area content, lesson design, and relationship building and that I would make more than my share of mistakes. That said I quickly found that frequent apologizing was not the way to go. The teacher still needs to be the teacher. Just how does an educator, often given courses and materials that they have not mastered themselves, come across as “confidently human”? How do they effectively lead their students with passion, assurance and a good dose of humility? It is something that I continue to work on. One thing is for certain, in the past couple of decades the role of the educator has changed. We can longer be “experts”, the explosion of information and access has broken our shaky hold as the sole purveyors of truth! Moreover, while in many different countries the position is highly esteemed and one would never think of challenging their instructor, in North America we have learned to be less directive and more collegial, especially at the college level. We want open discussions in our classroom, where students are comfortable asking the hard questions and where we can be real in our responses and concerns. Nonetheless, as instructors we still have responsibilities that require some distancing. Ultimately, we are gatekeepers, for programs and professions. We also have high expectations, for our students and for ourselves. Moreover, as many of us have learned, there is a big difference between being friendly with our students and being friends with them. Sometimes our students can get a little too comfortable and then feel shocked or offended when we have to deliver news they don’t want to hear. So it can be very challenging for instructors to navigate and negotiate their role with each student group. Complicating all of this is the current and ongoing requirement to do most of our relationship building online. The Covid crisis has presented challenges, created distances, and generated feelings of isolation and anxiety. Our students, and many of us, need the subtle interactions and affirmations that came so easily to our in-person classes. As the instructor I quoted earlier also said, “Sometimes if you see students as students you might be missing the point in terms of supporting them. You have to see students as regular and normal human beings who go through ups and downs like all of us... and therefore, even if they are obligated to study or learn, you have to support them as much as you can to help them deal with their other challenges which are not classroom based.” Just as we bring our whole selves to class, our students should feel comfortable bringing their whole selves too. Covid has pushed this further, many of us now face listening and counseling challenges, we need to be available and “confidently human” as we deal with the new online environment and the continuing strain of pandemic and economic uncertainty. Thankfully, many of the participants in the talking circle had suggestions that might just help us in adapting to this environment, providing the support needed to our students, and finding ways to create a safe learning community. I’ve grouped and listed the thoughts of your colleagues below: Suggestions for daily or one-on-one interactions
Suggestions related to lesson design
Suggestions regarding course design
For many of our students, their studies have given them something to dive into, perhaps even as an escape from the rising Covid numbers, the imminent specter of a lockdown, and the isolation brought on by our “new normal”. Our job is to encourage, engage, support, guide and assess with an eye to the whole student. More information on ways to support students in the online environment can be found here: https://campusmentalhealth.ca/toolkits/faculty/how-to-recognize-when-a-student-may-need-support/in-the-virtual-classroom/ https://tatp.utoronto.ca/teaching-toolkit/teaching-with-technology-teaching-online/supporting-students-online It’s all about ME and six C’s Just after finishing my master’s program in 1994, I started looking at what makes an adolescent learner persevere in their learning. From research and experience, I found that teens have less patience in learning than pre-teens. When charged with teaching teens Trigonometry in Math, Poetic Meter in English, the Past Progressive Tense in French, Mitosis and Meiosis in Biology, or the Causes of the Great War in Social Studies, my students would often fire back three questions:
Now, at first, a teacher might resent such questions. After all, learning for the sake of learning is a noble pursuit, and many of us became teachers - not only because we love teaching - but because we also love learning. Nevertheless, these three student questions are significant and we needed to be ready for them. Moreover, our responses needed to be better than “because it is in the curriculum/syllabus” or “well, some day you might….” So I continued to dig into the research and surprise, surprise, I found out that perseverance in adolescent learners is dependent upon ME! You might take that in a number of different ways: 1) that it all comes down to the teacher or 2) that the single most important factor is the student and their personal (almost selfish?) needs for learning. In fact, both are wrong, what the research told me is that it all comes down to Motivation & Engagement (ME!) and the interplay of these factors in a teaching and learning environment. What is more, as I continued my odyssey in education, teaching at King’s, U of A and NorQuest, I discovered that what applies to adolescent learners aligns with much of what we know about adult learners. Just like teens, adult learners are concerned about practicality, immediacy of application, and personal and professional relevance. In other words, “So what?” and “Just how can I use this?” For our learners at NorQuest, it also comes down to ME - motivation and engagement. However, the idea of motivation is a tricky one. I have heard a number of scholars say that motivation is completely dependent upon the learner and that the teacher has no influence on this. If a student is unmotivated, either intrinsically or extrinsically, there is very little a teacher can do about it. Other educational scholars say that this is poppycock and that such teachers simply do not want to figure out what motivates their students, individually or collectively. Yes, these scholars say, motivation does come from within, but it is also very much influenced by situation, culture, necessity, and rewards (and many other factors). Teachers cannot create motivation, but they can learn and act upon the motives of their students and discover their “motivators”. This makes me think to the work I am doing now with my four-month-old puppies. Daisy’s “motivators” are food and love, Edgar is less interested in food rewards, but thrives on praise and attention, and Rufus is a very smart little dog who likes a challenge (He has already figured out how to open and close the back door.) and is motivated by play. I often catch him doing that Border Collie head cock thing where he looks like he is trying to figure out just how to get into that cupboard, or take away a toy from his siblings. Now, I am not comparing our learners to puppies (well, maybe a little…). Coming to class with a bunch of “puppy snacks” or a clicker would be absurd. However, I am saying that every learner is different and it is up to us to explore ways to use motivators to ignite and fuel their passions. Thankfully, most of our learners at NorQuest come to us of their own free will and chose programs that they see as beneficial to their development a persons, citizens, and professionals. So finding their motivators is a little easier than connecting to teens. Adult “motivators” might be self-improvement, a new career or challenge, a permanent residency card, or simply the love of learning. Junior and senior high school students do not have that same liberty as adult learners – they are conscripts in more comprehensive programming that they may or may not appreciate. Coupled with motivation is engagement. In order to tap into the motivators of our students we need to design learning environments and challenges that allow students to participate in a variety of ways and on a variety of levels. In this way, we might reach and inspire more of our students and support them in their learning journey. That still leaves us with an important question, “Just how can we better engage our students?” Well this is where the six C’s come in. In researching engagement, I found that students engage and persevere in learning, when they:
Keeping these six C’s in mind (choice, confidence, challenge, context, connections and collaboration) when we plan our courses, units and lessons, gives us a better chance in reaching our students and in making courses meaningful and relevant. |
AuthorJeff Kuntz Ph.D. ImagesExcept where indicated, images used in the blog posts are personal photos, images from NorQuest College or images from Pixabay. Pixabay is a vibrant community of creatives, sharing copyright free images, videos and music. https://pixabay.com/ Archives
March 2024
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