New Term, New Instructional Possibilities
Remember when you were an undergraduate enrolled in that English class that your friends told you not to take? You know the class I am speaking of, it could have been Medieval Literature, or Eighteenth-Century Literature, or Victorian Literature. It wasn't necessarily the content that scared your friends, it was the professor.
The professor who has been teaching the same course for the past ten or twenty years using the same lectures that have not changed in ten or twenty years. The yellowed paper is a dead give away. Students pick up on visual clues like that. If you are teaching the same content in the same way in 2012 as you did in 1992, students will tune out. That is a guarantee.
A new term started for most this week (I start today) and it is necessary to have blog post today emphasizing the importance of possibility. I understand that for most adjuncts or sessional instructors who have to teach three or four classes a term just to make rent, revisiting a lecture you wrote maybe two years ago is simply not a possibility. Especially if you have other responsibilities at home or even another part-time job.
However, it is important to try to make the time for that possibility. For with every new term comes new ideas, new research, new educational technologies that can be incorporated to your lessons. If you have tried something for two terms and it is simply not working and you are not seeing the pedagogical benefit in your students, why would you try it for a third?
I look forward to every new term in the same dewy-eyed way that I looked forward to September when I was in primary and secondary school. New school supplies made me giddy. There is a smell to freshly sharpened pencils, the smell of possibility. A new term is a time for reflection, especially to reflect on your teaching practices and exercises. Are there things that need to be changed, to be tweaked? Do not be afraid to change things, for change allows for the possibility to reengage your students.
Regurgitating the same stale lecture year after year can only lead to a linear instructional progression.
On the other hand incorporating different concepts, different methods of relating concepts using media, and different student-student and student-instructor interactions can only lead to a truly collaborative and ethical learning experience.
The outcome is simple.
Do you want your students to leave the classroom space taking away one small nugget of information that they will forget by the following week?
OR
Do you want your students to take that classroom experience with them and continue learning and exploring on their own using the many ideas and concepts that were discussed?
Imagine the possibilities!
The professor who has been teaching the same course for the past ten or twenty years using the same lectures that have not changed in ten or twenty years. The yellowed paper is a dead give away. Students pick up on visual clues like that. If you are teaching the same content in the same way in 2012 as you did in 1992, students will tune out. That is a guarantee.
A new term started for most this week (I start today) and it is necessary to have blog post today emphasizing the importance of possibility. I understand that for most adjuncts or sessional instructors who have to teach three or four classes a term just to make rent, revisiting a lecture you wrote maybe two years ago is simply not a possibility. Especially if you have other responsibilities at home or even another part-time job.
However, it is important to try to make the time for that possibility. For with every new term comes new ideas, new research, new educational technologies that can be incorporated to your lessons. If you have tried something for two terms and it is simply not working and you are not seeing the pedagogical benefit in your students, why would you try it for a third?
I look forward to every new term in the same dewy-eyed way that I looked forward to September when I was in primary and secondary school. New school supplies made me giddy. There is a smell to freshly sharpened pencils, the smell of possibility. A new term is a time for reflection, especially to reflect on your teaching practices and exercises. Are there things that need to be changed, to be tweaked? Do not be afraid to change things, for change allows for the possibility to reengage your students.
Regurgitating the same stale lecture year after year can only lead to a linear instructional progression.
On the other hand incorporating different concepts, different methods of relating concepts using media, and different student-student and student-instructor interactions can only lead to a truly collaborative and ethical learning experience.
The outcome is simple.
Do you want your students to leave the classroom space taking away one small nugget of information that they will forget by the following week?
OR
Do you want your students to take that classroom experience with them and continue learning and exploring on their own using the many ideas and concepts that were discussed?
Imagine the possibilities!
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