Twelve years past receiving my Master of Arts in Sociology, I can still recount how I have integrated specific ideas and philosophies into my professional and personal decision making. All of which were learned from one professor. Not only am I able to relate and use what I learned in my daily life, now that I am teaching social networking, I give great consideration to how I was taught. I had multiple interesting professors I learned from during my academic career but one stands out because of what he taught and how he taught.
All of the teaching I have done up to now has been in non-formal settings. In January I begin academic teaching with an in-person class at Franklin University. My in person teaching philosophy is to encourage the students to share their experiences, concerns and ideas on the topic at hand. I believe students retain and more fully understand content when they are involved in the discussions and can relate the content to their unique situations. Since my experience both as a learner and a teacher has occurred primarily in person (up to now - I am currently taking a Franklin University online class "Instructional Strategies to Facilitate Learning"), I am particularly concerned with finding and developing online teaching strategies that engage my students in a collaborative and authentic manner.
The literature I reviewed provided specific examples of why an engaging learning process benefits the learner and the research supporting such statement. Lemke and Couglin (2009) assert teachers that incorporate participatory learning, authentic learning, and multimodal learning are both increasing the actual understanding that occurs and helping students develop real world skills. I discovered many projects with public websites focused upon helping teachers develop collaborative curriculum and strategies. One particularly useful list of these websites is in the Barnett article (2009).
As do many students today, I appreciate content formatted within a table. The Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (2009) created a table they titled Instructional Facilitation. The table provides examples of low impact, moderate impact and high impact teaching methods for knowledge sources, learner centeredness, learning environment, outcomes supported, and assessment feedback. The table helped me to realize the importance of adapting my teaching style based upon each unique class of students, including multiple types of constructive feedback, from myself and fellow students, and engaging students in activities that promote analysis, reflective thinking, creativity and authentic application.
I expect my teaching philosophy and st
rategies will always be developing. I expect I will learn from other instructors, my students, academic research and trial and error. Just as the world around us does not stay the same, the learner is continually changing. This is due in part to technology. The Internet itself has changed learning in previously unimaginable ways. Today we now recognize that new technologies will continue to change how we search for information, how we teach ourselves and how we participate in learning collaboratives.
References
Barnett, F. [2009]. Grading 2.0: Evaluation in the Digital Age. Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory. Retrieved from: http://www.hastac.org/forums/hastac-scholars-discussions/grading-20-evaluation-digital-age
Instructional Facilitation. The Scholarship of Teaching & Learning. Retrieved from:
https://my.wsu.edu/portal/page?_pageid=177,280651&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL
Lemke, C & Coughlin, E. [2009]. The Change Agents. Educational Leadership September 2009, pp 54-59.
Motschnig-Pitrik, R. & Holzinger, A. (2002). Student-Centered Teaching Meets New Media: Concept and Case Study. Educational Technology & Society, 5(4), pp. 160-172.
Motschnig-Pitrik, R. & Derntl, M. [2002]. Student-Centered eLearning (SCeL): Concept and application in a students’ project on supporting learning. Retrieved from http://www.cs.univie.ac.at/project.php?pid=32
Pittman, B. [2009]. Here it is, again. AEC Instructional Technology. Retrieved from http://techteachlearn.wordpress.com/category/student-centered-learning/
