Thought Paper
The reason I choose Delta College for my Ph.D. program was to study constructivism with Dr. XXX. The hope was to return to my home institution, University Z, to provide some sort of instructional support to the faculty and perhaps try my hand at college teaching. After working with Dr. XXX, I have come to realize she does not study constructivism she lives it! She also can give lengthy explanations of the learning theory but falls short on the teaching theory. Her usual explanation is that constructivism is adaptive to any instructional method the difference is in how the instructor believes students learn. I have not found this particularly helpful for developing instructional strategies as a constructivist.
In March, the Provost at University Z informed me of a new position at the college and asked if I would be interested. The position will be half time technical and half-time teaching faculty. I informed her that this exactly the type of position that I was looking for. When I return this fall we will begin working on the details. What I have had in mind is establishing a Center for Distributed Education which wo uld assist faculty in preparing materials for the web and establishing web courses. I would also be teaching 1 or 2 courses in the Delta Education School. However, after taking this course I have decided that this vision is far to limited. For the remaind er of this paper I will attempt to explain the new vision along with a proposed plan for implementation.
Constructivism vs. Learner Centered Instruction
Early in the course there was a discussion of constructivism, humanism and learner centered instruction. I am fairly well grounded in constructivism but was only vag uely familiar with the learner centered and humanism approaches. The constructivist literature describes constructivism as both learning theory and as an approach to instruction. The literature explains the theory well but falls short when describing the instructional strategies. The literature on learner centered instruction, that I have been reading for this course, explains the philosophy and the strategies but does not describe a learning theory.
The thought that crosses my mind is that perhaps learner centered instruction is constructivism put into practice. Both support a holistic viewpoint, they both believe that the teacher is the guide not the center of the learning experience. They also both believe that learning is experiential and is based on the prior experiences of the student. I don’t think these similarities are an accident I think they are different labels for basically the same concepts .
Center for Excellence in Education at University Z
An area where my vision has been expanded is rethinking the Center for Distributed Education and deciding that it should be a Center for Excellence in Education. I k new before this course that it would be important for faculty to examine their instructional strategies prior to placing material on the web or designing a web course. What this course has clarified for me is that most college faculty do not know how to m otivate students, promote critical thinking or the benefits of collaborative learning.
The main complaints of the University Z faculty is that students are not attending class, they do not read the text, they don’t answer question in general a lack of involvement. The faculty have a tendency to put the blame on the students, say ing that the admission standards have been lowered and the students are less qualified than in the past. (This is an argument refuted by the Admission Office.) After this class it is clear to me that the problem is not with the students but with the instr uctional strategies used by the faculty. I do not blame the faculty, they have received very little instructional support, and most teach the way they were taught.
Thus, on my return to University Z this fall, I want to begin working with faculty to help them become aware that different teaching strategies exist. This can be done with a small group of interested faculty, I already have several in mind, and ho pefully grow into a series of faculty workshops on Alternative Instructional Strategies. I will also be drafting a plan to present to the Provost concerning the creation of a Center for Excellence in Education. The purpose of the Center would be to provid e instructional support to the faculty including instructional strategies and distributed education.
The philosophy of the Center would follow that of learner centered instruction. In addition every class should attempt to build a community of learners. To accomplish these goals the faculty need to let students start talking to each other in class . This will involve the use of icebreakers and motivational strategies. Once the students are talking then you can move into the areas of creative and critical thinking and cooperative learning.
Classroom Teaching
Another area of future plans that this course has helped to clarify is that of what to teach when I return to University Z. Up till now the discussion has centered a round technology courses, such as desktop publishing, history of educational thought or the development of computer literacy courses. These are courses that I considered interesting but they have not lit my fire. What I would like to do is design and teac h a course similar to this one. It would be a graduate level course taught primarily in the summer, to inservice teachers and other graduate students. The purpose of the course would be similar to that of this course, to promote the concepts of learner ce ntered instruction.
The one thing I really want to do is to help change our current educational system. I believe that teaching such a course is one way of making such an impact. This would be a survey course where I could try many ideas and hopefully get feedback for classroom teachers.
I would probably teaching another course such as history of educational thought which would allow for an more in depth exploration of some of the strategies. One would definitely be the jigsaw method. A history of thought course is required of all the master’s students and requires a great deal of reading which the University Z graduate students really dislike doing. With the jigsaw method the readings can be divided so that students don’t feel the burden but yet cover the material. Hopef ully, this method will encourage a greater understanding of the material instead of a quick read. I particularly like the jigsaw method for creating a sense of community. Since the members of the base group need to rely on each other in order to complete the assignment. The concept of the expert group helps to ensure a level of competencies for the project. With the expert group students have a chance to share their ideas and opinions with others before returning to the base group. The base group has the added comfort that each part of the reading has been discussed with the expert group and thus is not the sole opinion of one member of the group.
The jigsaw method also allows for more student interaction. If the students are in groups of four, then each student interacts with at least six other students for each jigsaw activity. Since the groups could be changed frequently, the students wou ld have a good chance of getting to know each other and thus hopefully develop a better sense of community.
I was also particularly interesting in using role playing to debate an issue. This method allows students to develop a sense of multiple perspectives. It is very easy to become wedded to one perspective and to ignore the viewpoints of others. If an y group needs to recognize multiple perspectives it is the teachers. If a teacher doesn’t understand this concept how can she teach it to her students?
Another strategy that I felt could be of great value to teachers was that of Force Field Analysis. This can be a very powerful tool when trying to explain issues to parents and community members. It also helps a teacher think through the various as pects of any given projects. The teachers in turn can teach Force Field Analysis to their students to help them understand the pros and cons of any situation. Often a graphical representation is more powerful than a chart of numbers.
Training Seminars
The third area of my professional career that this course has influenced is that of design training seminars for faculty and professional staff at University Z. The first of these will be conducted in the fall semester and is the basis for my final project in this class. Originally I had thought of the seminars as providing information with some discussion from the participants. After taking this class I now envision a highly interactive seminar where the participant will learn to rely on each other and use each other as a source of information and evaluators. I hope that my role will be to plan the activities and be a resource for web design. Since I consider web de sign to be highly subjective, I do not want the role of being a final authority on web design at University Z.
In this seminar I hope to develop a sense of community through the use of ice breakers and critical thinking activities. Since the basis of the course is designing usable web pages, critical thinking activities will play a major role in this semina r. I want people to be able to evaluate a web page and determine its usability from a variety of viewpoints.
Hopefully, this will become a seminar that is offered at least once a year. I would also like to develop a similar seminar for the more advanced techniques of web design. The format would be similar to the basic seminar but would deal with more adv anced topics. Again the emphasis would be on usability with critical thinking playing a major role.
Research
I originally had not intended to write a thought paper for this class. I wanted to do the literature review. However, after spending 2-3 hours looking through the va rious indexes I realized that where not enough articles for the area that I am interested in, higher education. I also realized that this is an untapped area in educational research and could provide some excellent research possibilities. I know of at lea st two faculty members at University Z that use these types of strategies. I would like to either work with these faculty members to both discuss their problems and successes and to observe in their classes. This should provide at least some qualitative r esearch in the form of case studies. The two faculty members are in two different fields, one education and the other business. It may be possible to do some causal comparative research contrasting the two fields.
I am convinced that the instructional strategies in higher education need to change. If I was student in a high school using a learner centered approach I would look for a college that also had a learner centered approach. Higher education has beco me very competitive, I believe that the colleges that survive will be those that become learner centered.