Letter to a New Teacher

Dear Teacher,

I would like to congratulate you for choosing teaching as your professional career. I hope you will love and enjoy your new position as an IT / Business Faculty. Like you I have started my career as teacher just four years back and since then it’s a great journey. I believe that I have learned more then what I have taught during this period. An advantage of being a teacher is that every day is full of adventure and challenges, you will get endless opportunities to learn new things from your students and colleagues. Today I want to share my experience with you so that you don’t do same mistakes as I did and hopefully have a good beginning.

I started my teaching career as a traditional teacher because this is the only way I knew at that time. I went to class and presented my lecture and expected that students will listen to my boring lecture for next 60 min and digest everything but soon I realize that it’s not working and the students learning style has been change. Thanks to new technology students have more knowledge as compare to 20 years back they all are connected to virtual word through their iPads, Smart phones and Laptops. Students are performing multiple tasks inside the classroom and as teacher you need to make sure that you grab their attention and for sure the boring slides will not help it. You have to make sure that when you are teaching it’s not only one way communication. You need to make activities which will involve students and make sure that they will participate in the learning process as well.

I have learned many different teaching strategies in last two years like (DI) Direct instruction, (IL) Interactive lecturing, (CL) Collaborative learning and (PBL) Project base learning. What I have realize is that you cannot just pick one of them and follow it in a particular course you need to use a mix of these strategies according to situation. For example if you are teaching some definition which require student to remember and understand then DI and IL are best strategies but if you require them to analyze, evaluate and compare things then the other techniques will suit more.

As a teacher you have to clearly define the goals and expectation of a course to the students at the beginning of each course. You should provide them course planner which include the learning outcome on weekly basis and also an assessment schedule with its breakdown. Your assessment plan should be align with learning outcome and your expectation of students otherwise students will remain confuse in your class and will focus on material which is related to exams only.

Always make sure that you listen to students and provide them guidance whenever required.  Make a friendly atmosphere is classroom. If you become too strict student will be afraid and never ask you question also if you are very lenient they might take advantage and not pay attention at all. You have to follow a mid-way approach.

You should always keep the learning door open as you will learn many new things from your students for example last week my students showed me how to use an iPad for writing online books. You should take advice and guidance from colleagues as they are in this field for many years also be ready to share knowledge and your expertise with other. In some cases you can observer your colleagues inside classroom and learn how they manage students and how you can adopt this strategy.

When assessing students make sure that that you use both summative and formative type of assessment. Do not make the course too much theoretical that it become boring, provide students activities which are relevant to real world example. Make these activities as graded activities so students will have more interest.

Hope this letter has provides you meaningful experience and will help you in your career. Above all always be happy and enjoy whatever you do .

 

Regards

 

Owais Tariq

Effectivness of teaching strategy

Flip Class Room

As mentioned in my last blog student welcomed the idea of Flip class room which in combination of Direct Instruction and Interactive learning. Their level of interest increase in the class. More students participated in the class activities as they knew what is happening in the class. Below is a survey which show the effectiveness of this teaching strategy. Also the next graph shows the improvement in the student result.

 

Collaborative Learning

This strategy is very successful for group work. Students worked very well when put in groups to do discussion. They feel boring doing individual assignments and often end up copying from each other. But here they got a chance to reflect and share their own thoughts. Below is the result of a small survey on the effectiveness of this strategy.

New teaching strategy

The two new teaching strategies which I have tried are mentioned below. I have got positive feedback from students for both of these strategies. I am planning to use them in next semester as well.

Collaborative Learning

I have tried the collaborative learning during this semester. Instead of students doing individual assignments I gave them topics on LMS discussion board where they have to do discussion with each other and come up with a single solution for the problem. Students love the idea to share their work with each other using Internet from their home. They share their own opinions and commented on others opinion. Student engagement and participation level was very high.

Flip Class Room

I have created a small learning nuggets for Management and Leadership course. Students were given these videos one week before the lecture. Students go over these lectures during the week. Once they come in class we go over these concepts quickly and spend more time on the cases and exercise during the class time. Students like idea as they were able to translate the difficult word in advance and they have an idea what is discussed in the class. This allow me to minimize the lecture time and increase the activity time in class in which all students participated keenly.  

Teaching strategies - individual reflection

Direct instruction and interactive lecturing are good teaching strategies when students are at beginner’s level stage. They help in remembering and understanding the concepts. These type of strategies are best when we need to introduce the fundamental concepts. For example if we want to teach accounting equation then both of these methods can be used. These type of strategies are covered in the first two cognitive level of Blooms taxonomy which are knowledge and comprehension.

On the other hand Collaborative Learning and Project-Based Learning requires students to work together in groups and analyze, evaluate and create. Students will learn from each other or by their self. The will get reflection from their peers and instructor. This type of teaching strategy is good when students have basic knowledge and they are ready to apply this knowledge. These strategies reflect the top order of blooms taxonomy.

In my opinion we cannot just pick one strategy and follow it in class room. We have to use the all of them together according to the topic cover and cognitive level of students. For example. When teaching the definition of leader teacher can adopt direct instruction but when then have to analyze and compare between different leaders then Collaborative Learning or Project-Based is the best approach.

Aligning goals with my course

As shown in the video level 3 teachers should make sure that goals in their mind are aligned with the assessments so that students have clear idea that what is required of them. If the course is unaligned then students will lose their interest and only focus for exams. Blooms taxonomy clear define these goal in six categories and help teacher’s to define their interest and align assessments accordingly.

As a teacher I follow the same strategy of a level 3 teacher and try my best to align the assessment with leaning outcomes (course goals). At that start of each course I provide clear course outline to the students in which I explain them that what they will cover in the course and what is required out of them. I focus more on understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating and creating rather than remembering. This provide students more opportunity of learning by doing.

For example when I teach leadership topic in Management and Leadership course my interest is that students should be able to describe, classify, compare between different types of leaders. I engage students by giving them class activities where they have to use these concepts and skills.

Students can demonstrate their progress after completion of each learning outcome. In my case I make sure that there is some type of assessment graded or ungraded at the end of each learning outcome and this assessment is aligned. For example at the end of leadership topic students have to interview a manager to learn his leadership style. After the interview students have to describe the manager, classify his leadership style and make a comparison.

After the assessment I provide feedback to the students and point out the shortcoming and mistakes so that they can understand how they can improve and do better in the next assessments.

100 ideas for assessment (Part 2)

Assessments are very important part of any course as they are the key tool which help us in measuring the transfer of knowledge between the teacher and students. It provides us an idea that how much understanding does student have of a particular topic after attending a course or workshop.

In the last century assessments were mainly paper base exams where students usually have to do a written exams to demonstrate their learning. Students usually focuses on memorization and have very less knowledge about the practical use of this knowledge. But as we all know with the development in teaching practices and technology this is not true anymore. Teachers have more liberty to use different type of assessments which is now possible with the new technology. They can make the learning experience more exciting and enjoyable by integrating “learning by doing concept” in their assessment   I will be focusing on such type of assessment in my blog as  these are assessment for 21 Century and the way forward.

1.   Using simulator!

Students are provided with a simulator where they can implement the real life data or situation on the system. Students get chance to apply knowledge that they have learned in class room. It prepare students for the work environment. This is new type of technique is very useful in technical courses where students can learn by hands on experience. For example business students can use Finance simulators to know whether the borrowing will be feasible for the business or not. It can be used by creating different scenario in class room as well. The downside is that requires more time as we need to teach or create simulation to the students. Most of the teachers require training as they are not familiar with this technology.

2.    Discussions using online discussion Forms.With development of technology it is now possible for students to participate and engage in discussion outside the classroom. There are many different tools available for discussion. It is one of the main component of an LMS. After delivering the lecture teachers can use discussion board by giving students related discussion topics. It an excellent way to see that how deeply student understand the content. This type of assessment is widely use these day even in this course. Majority of people are aware of this technology and can easily implement in the course. It requires teachers to put an extra effort and follow these discussion boards and create innovative and relative discussions.

3.    Use of blogs
This is again an excellent way where teacher can use blog and ask student to do reflection of their work. Students get opportunity to work from anywhere and learn from each other rather from one source. Teacher have to follow up many blogs and provide corrective response. Majority of the people are aware of this technology and can easily embed this in the course.

4.    Create Digital Narratives
Students have to produce work which can be viewed digitally. Students have more interest in such type of projects as they are involve with search and development of the content. Technology is not an issue like old days as these days every student possess two or more smart phones with camera and multimedia facilities. Teacher need to be innovative when creating such projects.

 

About My Students

My students are high school graduates who join our college for bachelors program. But before they start their bachelors they should have IELTS band 5 as this is the minimum requirement for this program. If they don’t meet this requirement they have to study in the foundation program where they will learn English language and improve their communication skills.  Most of them are young and are in the age group of 18 to 24.

They are learning Business, Engineering and Information Technology courses at our colleges.  As shown in the video there are very few students like ‘Susan’ and many like ’Robert’. Most of the students want to get certificate or degree so that they can get better salary.  I think this is because since childhood they have been told that they need to study to get better job and that why most of them just are in college to finish their degrees.

One of the best things at HCT is that learning outcome and course outlines are defined and agreed by experts in the field. Teacher and students have clear idea about the objective of the course and the content coverage as well. With E- books websites like Pearson and Wiley plus students always have an opportunity to look at the course material any time anywhere.

Students at this stage require proper guidance and need a teacher which can make explain the content to them with examples and make it easier for them. Student cannot learn on their own by doing self-study. At HCT students are required to have 4 contact hours.

The vision at HCT is to promote learning by doing rather than memorizing theories. Assessments are divided into different components. Most of the assessments contain a project portion where students have to demonstrate practically what they have learned throughout the course.  Its up to the teachers to link this project with industry and make it more interesting. There are other components like Mid exam, Final quizzes, and Class participation depending on the course content.