I'd love to encourage my students to reflect and create goals for themselves. As many of us know, self-motivation is key to success in any setting. Without it, we get mired or discouraged. I like the idea of learning about student goals and working on them throughout the semester. Watching students progress and succeed is the best part of the job, so having students commit to something specific to their learning would be a great way to facilitate student success further!
Bryan, I could not agree with you more. It comes down to meeting the individual student on their level. Create that bond, know them. Approach them from their own angle. Try to tap into what makes them tick, what motivates and inspires them. I don't think that is overwhelming or impossible, I believe it is essential.
I think engagement is less about the content of the course and more strongly impacted by the relationship of the student and the instructor.
For myself, Intrusive leadership works. I try find a common bond with each student. Once they see that I am approachable, the level of engagement always increases.
Often I find that thte reclusive students either fear failure or have lack of confidence in their ability to succeed. Students are people as well. Many have been told they could not succeed and were not good enough by many people in multiple facets of their lives. Once you build them up, they will almost teach your class for you. Every environment and audience is different as well.
Know your students!!!!!
The UDL concept seems overwhelming, at first, but I think it can be achievable with incorporation of a few key concepts; namely, creativity, offering the learning material in multiple formats, stating clear objectives and applying them to the students' lives to improve buy-in and motivation to continue learning, incorporating student goals so they develop further buy-in, and providing timely feedback so students can adapt strategies and internalize what works and what doesn't to make informated decisions about their learning progress. I think the most time-consuming part for me in regards to lesson planning, wil be ensuring that all of these concepts are being incorporated throughout the semester.
This concept is very time-consuming for the instructor. With that being said, I find that the success for students has to be the positive feedback, and critique of the students' work to be time-sensitive. understanding a student's learning style with a ten-week instruction does not give the instructor time to help the success for their student.
I teach adult students, and their time is weighed against being a student, mother/father, and employee. Most times, by the end of the course they discover that what works for some of their colleagues does not always work for them. And sometimes I have witnessed, it takes till the end of the program itself before they discover what their particular learning style is.
