Month: September 2015

cmarek1974

Topic Post #1

The Best Advice for Creating Student-Centered Learning

This article has an embedded video within it that goes though the history of learning starting in the 50’s with teacher centered learning and thought to today where there is more focus on the student being the center of the learning.  There is also a second video that is about 20 mins long showing how a teacher actually implemented Student Centered Learning into his classroom.

The article defines what both learners and teachers do and are responsible for in student centered learning.

Learners

  • Are active participants in their own learning.
  • Make decisions about what and how they will learn.
  • Monitor their own learning to develop strategies for learning

Instructors

  • Provide structure without being overly directive.
  • Encourage and facilitate learners’ shared decision-making.
  • Help learners work through difficulties by asking open-ended questions to help them arrive at conclusions or solutions that are satisfactory to them.

This is my third year teaching and I would saw that I am just starting to implement student centered learning into my class.

The first 3 weeks of my program in mostly theory but there are portions of it that students need to discover and struggle to understand and do certain tasks.  We do a section on blue print reading where I lecture (for too long) and after that the students are thoroughly confused and then I give them the blueprints.  The first few activities they struggle to find information but with each failure and then eventual success they become proficient

After watching the second video in this article it has actually shown me how Student Center Learning can be implemented in real life rather than just talking about a theory.

The one place that I can see it to difficult to be difficult in the aerospace manufacturing program is where it comes to customer specification.  there is no opportunity to discover threw trial and error what is correct.  You are told what is correct.

cmarek1974

This site will be the home of Assignment #2

Topic Post #1 – Student-Centered approaches – views on your chosen reading; post a question to readers based on your reading and writing. Assigned October 1.
Read an article about student centered learning from this link – scan the articles and choose one.
Post #1 due October 8 at the BEGINNING of class.
Set up a blog at wordpress.com – or use an existing blog – add your address to your Google Doc and to Todaysmeet
Create a new blog post to share your thoughts on your reading, i.e., what is the learning opportunity using student-centered approaches; do you do this? if so, how? if not, why not? etc., etc.
Length of each post – 300 words, include a contextual link to your reading

Topic Post #2 – Flipping the Classroom – what are the opportunities for you and your students? Readings to support your blog post.
Post #2 due October 15 at the BEGINNING of class.

Topic Post #3 – Webquests (see assignment #4)
Post #3 due October 22 at the BEGINNING of class.

Topic Post #4 – Inquiry Project – based on Assignment #3
Post #4 due at the end of the course, November 19.