Category Archives: Classroom Techniques

Is your Mind Set?

I teach several mathematics courses in the Liberal Studies Program at DePaul. For many of the students, this will be the only mathematics course that they will take during their entire college career, and many of them are apprehensive. I try to do a few things to allay their fears or at least help them see that they are in the same boat.

During the first week, I ask them to participate in a discussion forum by responding to the following prompt:

“Most children have a natural affinity for mathematics; they take pride in their counting skills and enjoy puzzles, building blocks, and computers. Unfortunately, this natural interest seems to be snuffed out in most people by the time they reach adulthood.

What is your attitude toward mathematics? If you have a negative attitude, can you identify when in your childhood that attitude developed? If you have a positive attitude, can you explain why? How might you encourage someone with a negative attitude to become more positive?”

This quarter, the students responded very well to the discussion. Those who were comfortable with mathematics encouraged those who weren’t. As the quarter progressed, the students have bonded and helped each other both in and out of class. However, every time I ask this question (and I have for more than 5 years now), I see responses similar to these: Continue reading →

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Just-in-Time Teaching

What exactly is Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT)? Wikipedia defines JiTT as “a pedagogical strategy that uses feedback between classroom activities and work that students do at home, in preparation for the classroom meeting.” The goal of JiTT is to enhance the amount of learning that takes place during class time. The idea is that the instructor will give assignments that the students must complete and submit shortly before class, then the instructor will read the students’ submissions “just in time” to fine-tune the lesson of the day to meet the students’ needs.

The dynamics of today’s classrooms are constantly changing, including the kinds of students that fill these classrooms. Classrooms now consist of part- and full-time working students, commuters, and older students. They all come from different backgrounds and different levels of education. As a result, instructors’ teaching methods need to evolve in order to keep up with the varying student population. JiTT approaches these challenges by gauging the knowledge level of each individual student on a given topic. The feedback that is obtained from the out-of-class assignments help to maximize the effectiveness of class sessions. The feedback also encourages the instructor to construct team-building exercises. Before class starts, they are able to use the students’ feedback to create lessons that will allow the class to work together on the same objective.

JiTT assignments (often called WarmUps) allow students to take a more active role in their learning because it is their hard work that shapes the next class. These assignments should be built in a way that requires students to do a decent amount of research by reading a book or an online article, watching a video, etc. Instructors should also encourage students to practice using problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. The best way to do this is to create a few open-ended and short-answer questions that pertain to a subject that was not previously discussed in class.

With JiTT, student learning is enriched, and it increases the efficacy and success of classroom lessons.

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Keepin’ It Idiomatic: Basing Assessment on Authentic Knowledge

I first had a try with Garage Band about three years ago.  I liked the ease with which I could get started, the editing tools were easy enough to use, the sound libraries are realistic, and even finishing a track was relatively simple. However, after three years of using it on and off, I am using different software for most of my recording needs.  Simply put, Garage Band is hard to play.

Let me add a little background to this.  I’m a former music teacher, performer and clinician with a Master’s degree.  I’ve got more than twenty years experience on three of the instruments I have at my disposal through Garage Band, but I struggle to play them well in this software.  Why?  They are not idiomatically designed.  I just can’t get used to trying to play guitar or bass with my fingertips on a screen, touching to play a note. I’m expecting to finger a note, and strum or pick with the other hand.  Here it takes all my fingers just to punch out a decent bass line.  Oh, and did I mention that if I don’t hit the note in exactly the right place, the string will bend?  Ask any guitar player and they’ll tell you that bends aren’t easy to do, but Garage Band makes it almost necessary to bend if you want to play at all.  I miss the feel of the strings on my fingers too.

Now I know that Apple can’t make all those things happen.  There isn’t a way, at least not yet, to make the keyboard actually feel like I’m pressing keys, or make guitar chords that feel right. (By the way, these are next to impossible to do by hand.)  But I did have a hope that perhaps someone who is an actual musician wouldn’t have to feel like a fool using this software.  After many years of playing an instrument, muscle memory takes over.  You may not realize it, but you have learned to expect certain position cues, responses and reactions from the instrument that just aren’t there in a virtual capacity.  Unless the virtual instrument is an instrument first and a computer controller second, those features may never be there.  Whose guitar has only eight frets anyway?

Just as it is important to try and design music performance software that will actually be musical, it is important to make these sorts of connections in all kinds of education. Continue reading →

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Sex and MOOCs

The commonality of sex and the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is they both are very attractive: while the former has been attractive since the beginning of mankind, the latter has become a “hottie” within the last year or so.   In the past few months, the two concepts caught my attention through parallel encounters: one from a book about late-life adventures in sex and romance by Jane Juska who loves using this male masturbator, the other through a series of diaries published by instructional designers at the University of Sheffield on their research and implementation of MOOCs.

Although vastly different in genre, content, audience, and purpose, Juska’s A Round-Heeled Woman and the diaries of Sheffield’s MOOC experiences intertwined and interacted in my mind. They reminded me of the joy of learning through narratives and stories.

As someone with an instructional design background, I shouldn’t be surprised to see that learning happens as an outcome of both casual and intentional experiences. Many learning theorists, from John Dewey to Art Chickering, claim that learning is a result of interaction and connection, and after reading both Juska’s book and the MOOC diaries, I felt a desire to share some of concepts I encountered: Continue reading →

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Mixed Content makes for an Interesting Course Experience

For a while now, both Internet Explorer (IE) and Chrome have been blocking “mixed content.”  In the last few weeks, the most recent Firefox release (Firefox 23) has also begun doing so.  So, what is mixed content and why should you care?

When your web browser connects to any webpage, the webpage is sent to you by another computer called a server. Your web browser and the server know how to connect by way of a set of digital rules, or a “protocol.” There are two types of protocols your web browser can connect through:

  • HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) or
  • HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS)

Secure webpages start with https in their URLs.  These sites have their connections to the webservers encrypted, making the information shared on them more secure from sniffers and man-in-the-middle attacks–in other words, from people who are up to no good.  Sounds good, right?  When you are making a purchase online, accessing your bank account, or taking an online class, you want your data to be secure.  So what then is the problem? Continue reading →