Motivating students

This unit has been one of my favorite units as I have always been interested in motivation. My degree in business had a concentration in human resource management and this was a topic that interested me in the business setting too - why do employees want to work. It is interesting to see how it is very similar in the educational setting when you consider motivation.

Environment can create initial motivation. As a teacher it is up to us to make our classroom a warm and friendly environment. I thought the comment in the article by Matthew Weller that a business like environment works well for students surprised me a little as I was thinking more of an educational setting, but I think students like to see order and this would fit in with the environment as well.

It is important to help our students set realistic goals which can help to motivate them to achieve those goals and in effect achieve learning as well. Matthew Weller had a quote that said "Success is more predictably motivating than is failure." He states that students will choose an activity of intermediate uncertainty versus one of high difficulty or too easy of an activity.

So in thinking about this I really need to consider how I assist the students in setting goals for the class. I have taken many classes where we need to set a goal for the class, and it never really meant much to me, and often the goals were never looked at past the first class session. I think it would be helpful for the students to continue to refer back to their initial goals, and revise them as needed. This needs to be done throughout the semester. This is an area I really want to spend some time working on and coming up with a good method for.

The other interesting thing I read was the article by Barbara Gross where she discussed de-emphasizing the grades and instead mastering the content of the class. I do try to focus on the main ideas,but so often grades get caught in the middle of it. I think it is helpful to go back over a test and put the question back into the content, or the chapter where it came from. This helps the student see where the question is coming from, as well as it helps me see how many questions are from a certain area of content.

Learning Cycles

It finally is making sense to me about learning cycles.

Get the students Motivated - Why should they be learning

Provide comprehensive material - Explain the content

Allow them to Practice - Lab activities work well for this

Provide opportunity to Apply learning - Relate to the real world


Other words in learning cycles: Reflect on learning, How can you improve?

Development and learning

This unit on development is one that I like reading about. The generational theory was a great way to assess students as so many of the generational differences can affect what happens in a group of students.

I think one thing that really stood out was the concept of keeping the lesson chunked up in about 20 minute chunks. I think I tend to go longer than this at one time, and this is definitely something I want to try to change in my class sessions.

While I guess I always knew that students like to have the visual aids such as a PowerPoint and videos, I don't know if I had thought about it from a generational standpoint where the Millenium generation almost expects that in teaching. I think this is interesting to consider with the middle school student because they do seem to love the computer, but they aren't impressed by it - instead they just really like being able to use it and are very familiar with it.

Multiple Intelligence and my classroom

This past week I have spent a lot of time thinking about how I allow for varying learning styles and multiple intelligence within my classroom. It is very important to remember that each learner is unique and we can better teach someone if we reach out to them in a way that can touch on their interests and strengths.

As I consider the various activities that we do in class I realize that I do provide for varying learning styles. Lecture time as well as class discussion will provide for the visual and auditory learner and lab activities are helpful for the kinesthetic learner. I can really see how some students do much better during the lab activity time.

I would like to have my students take an inventory on their learning style. This would help me to better understand where they are coming from. It would also be helpful to consider an inventory on the multiple intelligences. An area of multiple intelligence that I think is interesting is the interpersonal and the intrapersonal areas. I would like to try and incorporate more of this into my classroom through the discussions and possibly allowing for more time with discussion board as an online component. Sometimes I think I miss a lot of ideas from students when they have to answer in front of the group.

My favorite comment I have read on Learning Theory

Brenda Mergel wrote a paper as a graduate student on Instructional Design and Learning Theory. My favorite statement in her paper is the following:
"We must allow circumstances surrounding the learning situation to help us decide which approach to learning is most appropriate."
http://www.usask.co/education/coursework/802papers/mergel/brenda.htm

Learning Theory and Instructional Design

We have done some reading that aids in designing instruction based on which learning theory you are using. Remember that the learning theories include behavioral, cognitive, social and constructive.

In cognitive theory you are trying to communicate knowledge to your student and you are concerned with the mental processes going on. The article titled "Learning Theories of Instructional Design" (http://www.usask.ca/education/coursework/802papers/mergel/brenda.htm) stated that the influence of cognitive science in instructional design is evidenced by the use of advance organizers, mnemonic devices, metaphors, chunking into meaninful parts and the careful organization of instructional materials from simple to complex.

Does instruction map out learning 9behavioral and cognitive), or does instruction foster more learning (constructivist)?
In the same website as listed above, it was stated by Jonassen that the difference between constructivist and objective (behavioral and cognitive) is that the objective design has a predetermined outcome and intervenes in the learning process to map a pre-determined concept of reality into a learner's mind, while constructivism maintains that because learning oucomes are not always predictable, instruction should foster learning.

Learning Styles, Blooms Taxonomy and Multiple Intelligence Theory

We have moved into a unit that is covering learning styles as well as the theory on multiple intelligence. There are 3 main learning styles:
Visual - take notes, sit in front, benefit from illustrations, find passive surroundings ideal
Auditory - sit where they can hear (not necessarily the front), hum or talk when bored, read aloud, remember by verbalizing lessons
Kinesthetic - need to be active and take frequent breaks, speak with hands, gestures, remember what was done but have trouble recalling what was said, rely on what they can experience or perform, appreciate physically expressed concern (pat on the back).

Benjamin Bloom has a taxonomy (set of classification principles or structure) of learning domains (categories) which can be used to help create teaching plans. The domains (categories) are defined as follows:

Cognitive domain (intellectual capability, knowledge)
Affective domain (feelings, emotions and behaviors, attitudes, feelings)
Psychomotor domain (manual and physical skills)


The theory by Howard Gardner on Multiple Intelligence says there are nine intelligences including:
Verbal-linguistic
Mathematical-logical
Musical
Visual-Spatial
Bodily-Kinesthetic
Interpersonal
Intrapersonal - self-aware
Naturalist
Existential-sensitivity and capacity to tackle deep questions about human existence

There are some books I would like to try and read. They are:
"The Disciplined Mind" by Howard Gardner
"Multiple Assessments for Multiple Intelligences" by Carolyn Chapman