What have I learned from this book?

The main idea I take away from this book is a shift from thinking about teaching to instead think about the learning that must take place. While it seems like those two go naturally together, this book made it apparent to me that those who focus on the teaching only will miss the learning, sadly. Good teachers are focused on the learning and the teaching naturally comes out of that focus.

I also was encouraged that it is not about the method as much as it is the underlying heart of the teacher and what the objectives are. It is encouraging that all personalities, all styles and all methods can be successful (just as readily as they can be unsuccessful). Good teaching is about truly caring for and focusing on the students and HOW they are learning.

Overall, there was a reinforcement of what I have been learning on the subject. It also resonated with my worldview of human interactions and I liked that connection.

I would recommend this book (and already have to one person).

Regarding this blogging process, I already knew I am not a natural born blogger, but the discipline of slowly reflecting on pieces of a book and putting those thoughts into writing was beneficial. Probably due to the size of the class and the sheer number of blogs we could follow, the interaction wasn't huge but it was enough to know there were other people reading and processing similar books and to read their thoughts and to have some interaction on the subjects.

Chapter 7: How do the best teachers evaluate students?

Reproduction of lectures OR ability to reason with concepts
What are they thinking about OR how do they think
Performance OR learning

Is counting off for late papers related to the course objectives?

Teaching students to use their time and helping them get organized might be more effective and in line with best teaching practices. I think of the Pomodoro Technique which I wrote a short report on for a different course. Equipping students with study and time management skills is more effective than threatening to mark them down for late papers.

As a parent, should I say "don't do that" or "do this instead". It seems like the latter is more effective for enacting change in future behavior because it equips the child with knowledge on how they can approach a situation differently. The same is true in teaching any age.

Of no surprise....evaluating the teaching also comes down to the same theme running strong through this book: the focus is on student learning. An true assessment of an instructor is based, not on colleagues' ratings or students' ratings, which reflect other priorities than that of true learning, but on a true understanding of what the students are learning from a given instructor.

What are your thoughts on cumulative examinations? They seem to have fallen out of favor, but this book suggests they encourage more long term learning because the information has to be learned and in place for more than one test. That makes sense. It sounds to me like a type of forced review and once again, good study habits.

Chapter 6: How do the best teachers treat their students?

Whatever it is based on, it is NOT based on personality. Let's get that out of the way first. It is the underlying principles (do we hear a theme here) which the best teachers all follow, either consciously or unconsciously I would imagine.

As I read this chapter, as with the rest of the book yet more so, I considered where I would fall in the continuum of the instructors described. Do I care about the learning that takes place or that they can perform well on an assessment and that becomes the goal? I was inspired by the story of the instructor who knew his "stuff" (in this case calculus) AND students/people so well that he conducted an informal oral exam and through his interaction with the student, lessened that student's text anxiety such that he could actually get a decent grade.

Trust...
Openness...
Focus on learning....
Understanding...
Humility....
Investment in students....

I wonder what a wordle of this book's contents would look like?

Chapter 5: How do the best teachers conduct class?

In our methods class, we explored and discussion various methods of teaching and learning. And lecture kept coming up as a tried and true and yet more recently misaligned method of instructor.  The premise of this book is that it is not WHAT method is used (lecture, case study, discussion, assignments, etc.) that are the key to success. Any method can work or any method can fail. In Chapter 5 Bain identifies (as he does through the book) the underlying principles which are the keys to know for success:

1. Create a natural critical learning environment - be in through lecture or activities, the students should be faced with the material in a way that they find interesting and arouses their curiosity and also critically, in that they learn to reason and examine in the process, not to just accept. He says the best teachers "tend to embed the discipline's issues in broader concerns, often taking a multidisciplinary approach to problems." (p. 101) an example given relates chemistry to history, poetry and human stories.
?? How does what I teach interrelate with the world at large and how can I make those connections for my students??


The way NOT to lecture is to "answer a question that no one has raised." (p. 107)
One challenge is instead of lecturing for 50 minutes, create a written presentation of the lecture material that the students can read in 20 minutes and use the remaining time to discuss in groups, then address misconceptions, answer questions, etc.

2. Get their attention and keep it. What comes to mind here is that physics professor whose lectures were the top watched on iTunesU because of how he presented the material so creatively.

3. Start with the students rather than the discipline. Here he references the Socratic dialogue approach. Start with what the students think they know and go from there.

4. Seek commitments. This principle seems unusually easy to apply. Layout the course and explain what the instructor is committed to doing for the course and the obligations expected of the students in participating.

5. Help students learn out of class. This ties in with the concept of preparing the class... the activities chosen should all fit together for a purpose in helping students reach the end objective of the course.

6. Engage students in disciplinary thinking. The instructor sharing their thought processes with the students (modeling) is a way that I think helps me the most. Understanding what is involved in the thinking processes, what was considered and why, would help me as a student to learn to think that same way.

7. Create diverse learning experiences. Variety! the spice of life! sequentially, globally, written, auditory, images, discussion. Diversify, diversify.

Chapter 4: What do the best teachers expect from their students?

The chapter opens with an example from a psychology study about the effect of negative social sterotypes have on students. I know from personal experience the debilitating effect of anxiety and stress and found fascinating that researchers discovered "if they can keep people from thinking that someone else might be viewing them through the lens of a negative stereotype, they can significantly change what those people accomplished." (Bain, p. 70)

As I was reading, I extrapolated this idea out beyond educational settings and pondered how this plays out in regular social situations (e.g. parenting, with friends, family, etc.) I am observing as I read and study about education and what the best teachers do that the best teachers understand people, are gracious, assume the best of others and strive to encourage others on their journey. Isn't that what the best friends, parents, etc. do?

For instance.... the best teachers: "look for and appreciate the individual value of each student." (p. 72); have 'great faith in the students' ability to achieve," and the key related point is their trust was realistic. (p. 75)

Those sound like qualities we look for in friends, the approach we seek to take with our children and so on. Being a best teacher is directly related to who we are as people and how we treat others.

Chapter 3: How do the best teachers prepare to teach?

I have heard it said that to get the right answers, we need to ask better questions. In Chapter 2, Bain considers how the best teachers prepare to teach. And what comes out immediately is what questions they ask themselves as they are preparing.

For instance, a novice instructor might ask things like: what will I lecture on? how many exams will I give? and other questions related to what the teacher does, as opposed to what the students will be learning.

In contrast, the book presents the ideas that the best teachers are considering...which is focused on what the students should be learning and how can they support that process.

One teacher started with the biggest question the course would address and then thought of the questions that would need to be answered to get there.

The best teachers also considered what concepts students might already have about the topic and how they could help them approach the idea, what information the students would need, and how they could guide the students to asking the questions.

Chapter 2 summary: What they know about how we learn

The book is organized simply and straightforward -- six questions the study sought to find the answers to about the "best teachers". (See previous post for summary of those.) The remaining chapters go more indepth about each question and what they found.

What do the best teachers know about how we learn?


Knowledge is constructed, not received.  Like Dewey asserts, we all bring prior experiences and paradigms to a learning situation and that affects how we view what we are learning.  I like the quote from Josh Billings (p. 27): "The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so!"

Mental models change slowly. The best teachers use questions to help students see their own mistakes in their thinking. Like I recall Vella talks about in Learning to Listen, Learning to Teach, they build "scaffolding" for their students to help bring them along the learning path.  Following the concepts I've read in Vella and Dewey, Bain talks about the best teachers teaching in context.

Questions are crucial. In order to connect the information we are learning, we must have a place where it fits in our thinking. Questions help order the information to "index" it.


Caring is crucial. People learn when they have generated a question they are seeking to answer because they care about finding the answer.


*********
Does what you learn change your thinking?   I made a note in the margin as I was reading this chapter that Calculus was that way for me. I got an A in Calculus but have no idea of how it connects with any "real-world situation."

Have you ever taken a class where you learned how to operate in the class (plug in the right answers) but have no understanding of how that connects with real life? 

Chapter 1 summary: Defining the Best

Chapter 1 summary: Defining the Best

Bain concludes the first chapter with a summary of the major conclusions of the study he is writing on. As I mentioned two posts ago, deep, critical thinking is necessary on the part of the instructor. Here are the other questions their study asked and their conclusions from the responses:

1.       What do the best teachers know and understand?

a.       Their subject matter

b.      Have an interest and can think critically and creatively about their field

c.       Can think “metacognitively”

d.      Understand human learning

e.      View learning as having a “sustained and substantial influence on the way people think, act, and feel.” (p. 17)

2.       How do they prepare to teach?

a.       Start with the learning objectives

b.      Focus on what the student will do, not the instructor

3.       What do they expect of their students?

a.       Expect a lot but it is related to real life thought and actions

4.       What do they do when they teach?

a.       Create a “natural critical learning environment”

b.      Use authentic problems and tasks

c.       Give learners control over their learning

d.      Encourage collaborative work

e.      Provide feedback

5.       How do they treat students?

a.       Have a strong trust in students

b.      Are open, share their journey and inquiries

6.       How do they check their progress and evaluate their efforts?

a.       Use a systematic approach

b.      Student assessment flows from learning objectives

Other thoughts:

Even the “best” teachers will fail or not always hit the mark

Best teachers take responsibility for themselves and their situations

Best teachers are committed to the learning community at large, not just their own classroom success

Five Minute University - NOT what the best teachers do

In contrast to what the Best College Teachers seek to do, here's a little comic relief, courtesy of Father Guido Sarducci.

Sadly, it is funny because people can relate. Granted, he is using hyperbole (college was also about the experience, right?) but unless we seek to create significant learning experiences which result in changed thinking and changed behavior, our teaching will be as useful as those experiences and lack of true learning that Father Guido is responding to.

"Careful and sophisticated thinking" required

My thoughts are interrelating with other materials I have recently read and heard..... such as from 

Hamlet's Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age, which acknowledges how our minds and interaction have changed with the changing technologies and suggests ways of handling it, including the important of reflective thought. This line of thinking is also heard from MIT professor Sherry Turkle, sociologist, psychologist and director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self.  I recently watched a presentation she gave on the topic of her book, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. In that presentation, she suggests that instructors should focus first on encouraging reflection THEN collaborative work. She is observing a demise of reflective thought, which is that level of thought Ken Bain suggests is necessary to be an effective instructor. There is no "quick fix", nor is there, to put it in the current vernacular, "an app for that" to be one of the "best instructors". 

I may wish to be able to read a book like What the Best College Teachers Do and come away with a set of methods to use but Bain states clearly in the first chapter that such is not possible. There are underlying principles which have been drawn out from this study, but not easy tasks to memorize and add to the teacher toolbelt. In other words.... instructors must apply the same critical and reflective thinking when reading this book that they should be guiding their students through in their classes.

How useful are student ratings?

The book discusses the role of student evaluation of courses/instructors and points out the ineffectiveness of many questions commonly on course evaluation forms. Instead of asking students if the instructor was "engaging", which slants towards charismatic lecturers who many or may not be teaching well, the idea of seeking to assess what knowledge the students have gained from the course is more effective.

This causes me to re-think how I word evaluations for my training sessions. The book supports that student evals are important, but we should asked if the class or session "helped or encouraged them to learn" (p. 13) I like the example drawn from some Northwestern and Vanderbilt student rating forms:

• "Rate how much the teaching helped you learn."
• "Rate how well the course stimulated you intellectually."  (p. 14)

WOW!  That really raises the bar for instructors to consider and puts the focus where it should be.

What other survey questions could get at actual student learning/ effective teaching versus how engaging an instructor is?  What survey questions have you found most useful on your student evals?

What is "Excellence" in teaching?

To get to excellence in teaching, we have to consider learning - and what is real learning. Bloom's Taxonomy came to mind as I read in the introduction section about the higher levels of learning which occurred for students of the "excellent teachers". The study that was conducted, "looked for signs students developed multiple perspectives and the ability to think about their own thinking" (p. 10). In other words, the best teachers were developing the minds, not filling them.

The concept is seeking to develop "sustained influence" (p. 11) by guiding the students to their own thought processes.  It comes back to the proverb:

Although we recognize the universality of a proverb, how would we translate that in our mind to education and thought?

Give someone a thought and they think it that day;
Teach someone to think and they will come up with new thoughts for a lifetime.

What ideas do you have for how to re-write that proverb for teaching/learning/thinking?
I look forward to your comments/suggestions.

Book Blog: What the Best College Teachers Do

I am going to be blogging about Ken Bain's book "What the Best College Teachers Do" for the next several weeks as part of an assignment for my EDAE 692 course in the CSU MEd Adult Education and Training program. Of note ... I am halfway through the program!!

Here's the non-traditional cover of the book (have you ever seen a teacher do a one-armed hand stand ...or is that a flip in progress??):

And the Harvard press write-up on the book.

Top web tools for education

My top tools for education:

Blogs – As the book notes, can be a very effective tool in the classroom and for individuals who are journaling their learning. As a community enterprise (the ability for it to be public and have people interact by commenting on the posts as well as link to them from other sites) is a fantastic feature. If I had a setting of ongoing classes (I teach one-time workshops, so I don’t have opportunity to pursue some of these longer-term methods at this time, though I would like to teach online at some point), I would incorporate blogs.

RSS – Blogs can be effectively used in combination with RSS – a class could setup an RSS feed to their classmates blogs and then check one place for updates.  (Unlike a wiki setting where you have to click on each page to see the updates, or get email notices each time, at least as far as I have experienced. Enlighten me if I am off-base here.) If you use Google Reader, you can use that to consolidate your feeds into one place and it’s a nice format.

YouTube – popular and well-known; also has an education site where schools can brand their pages and post videos. I think having students creating videos or share links to applicable videos could be a useful exercise in some settings. Videos can also be embedded in other sites (such as a blog), so would incorporate multimedia but without the students having to log into numerous sites for viewing/commenting.

Delicious - a social networking site. I recommend trying it out and start experimenting with assigning 'tags' to your bookmarks. It took me a little time to get accustomed to doing that as I have a hard time being consistent with my tags such that I can pull up related topics under one tag. But the more I do it, the better I become.

One benefit: you can access your bookmarks in delicious from anywhere, e.g. you are not limited to your one computer/browser.Another benefit: you can share your bookmarks with others as well as access other people's bookmarks.

For a class assignment, an idea would be to have everyone go out and find online resources/sites related to a specific topic and bookmark them (tag them) in their delicious site. You can then share the ideas that were tagged the same and everyone can benefit- easy way to share online resources and it remains available and is accessible anytime you login to delicious (e.g. don't have to remember where that document was with all those great links from two classes ago. . .)< A personal use example: I create a tag/bookmark for all the links I access for this class and any related resources. I can view by links by class or by other tages (e.g. edcuation, teaching, methods, learningstyles, web2.0, etc.)

Check it out and try it out!
http://www.delicious.com/

YouTube video explaining how it works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1pOsYjCvE8

A few general resources about Web 2.0 and education:

If you haven’t yet, check out Barry Dahl’s blog about social media and FERPA: http://barrydahl.com/2011/02/15/ferpa-and-social-media-in-education/

And his resources page: http://barrydahl.com/resources/

He has a list of Web 2.0 tools: http://barrydahl.com/web-20/

Related readings:

I recommend the book Planet Google by Stross: http://books.google.com/books?id=xOk3EIUW9VgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=google&hl=en&ei=5MZvTbTUNJG2sAPtrO3DCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAjgU#v=onepage&q&f=false

I also enjoyed The Big Switch by Carr for the big picture of technology and society. http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/bigswitch/

Also of interest and somewhat related: NY Times series on computers and our brains:

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/features/timestopics/series/your_brain_on_computers/index.html?scp=1&sq=computers%20brain&st=cse