Miriam,
You have a clear understanding of how you can use the life of experiences of your students to connect with the content being offered. I like the way you are helping your students to see the value of developing their "soft skills" as well because they are essential in career success as we know.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
by getting to know your students strengths
Understanding how learning works can benefit us in the classroom. A good mechanic understands "how" an engine works, they do not just replace parts and hope for the best. The same is true with good teachers. If we understand how someone learns we can approach them with the proper attitude and teaching style. Knowing that adult learners want to generalize information, a teacher might explain how a lesson plan applies to their industry.
Understanding the basics of learning will help me as an instructor determine how my students learn. I use repetition with my students to keep our course objectives on their working memory. This also helps to move information to their long-term memory.
An adult learner is likely only to retain 25% of the information from what they hear, and 40% of what they see and 70% of what they do. With this knowledge, I attempt to have multimodal teaching strategies for each topic in the class. Just as there are different learning styles, students need to be instructed as to what the important issues are and what can be marked for 'deletion'. showing the students how this topic applies to them personally, helps them engage and invest in the knowledge.
You must try and adapt to your students even tho sometimes its hard especially if you have a large class, so hopefully all your students will be on the same page.
I've explored this line of "meta-thought" before, and it's never quite found firm footing in my mind - but the context of this discussion seems helpful...
if I can understand the various stages of memory formation that my students go through as I introduce new concepts, I can better deliver content in more meaningful ways
William,
Your analysis is right on target. Many instructors do not see learning from this perspective so they just "force feed" the content without really involving or engaging the students. Adult learners do not like to learn this way and if taught this way are going to reject much of the content being offered.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Jessica,
I use repetition a lot in my classes as well. My content requires that students memorize a lot of terms so I have developed a lot of activities and games that we play to get the students to use the terms and get them burned in their memories for use later.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Clare,
Like your approach in how you are offering your instructional content. This method gives your students different ways to intake and then store the needed content. Also, you are showing them the relevancy of the content and how it can be applied.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Jason,
Great to hear about the value of the discussion to your instructional development. By having this information you can be creative in your selection of activities that will reinforce their memory stages and thus increase their retention of the needed content.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Hi Dr. Speers --
When we as instructors had a better understanding of how people tend to learn we can tailor our learning methods to take into consideration a variety of learning styles and preferences. It was great to see the data in module one about the percentages of learning that occurs through visual, auditory and kinesthetic styles. If we make changes to our teaching so that there is a combination of things students see, things they hear, and things they do in all or most lessons we will be helping them to access different aspects of their learning capabilities and thus maximizing what they take away fro the process.
Debra
Debra,
Glad the information contained in the module is being helpful to you. As you saying knowing this information you then can take a student centered approach in the selection and delivery of your content. Keep up the good work and I wish you continued teaching success.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
When teaching the adult learner and taking into account that adult learners become motivated when they can relate themselves in their carreer and how class material applies to them, I realize how beneficial sharing my real life on-the-job experiences with them will help them to realize how what they are learning will apply to them in thier own real life job situations which is more likely to promote learning in the classroom.
Sharing real life on-the-job experiences in the court reporting field in the classroom will promote the learning of the student and also assist in motivating them because the student can actaully see themself in situations and help to realize how pertinent and personal the information they are learning is to them.
Kathy,
Real life experiences helps students to see why certain content is being taught and how it applies to their career growth. This is how you increase the value of the course to the students as well as increasing their excitement about preparing to go into the field.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Kathy,
I am sure your students really enjoy hearing these stories and asking you questions about how their field operates. Being in a court setting there is no shortage of stories I am sure. Keep up the sharing!
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Understanding the basics of learning helps me as instructor to relay information to my students so they can receive the information and store that information in their long-term memory.
Diane,
Glad that you have expanded your knowledge base in this area because the more all of us instructors know about this area the more effective we will be in our instructional delivery.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
A strategy I use on the first meeting of class is always to learn as much as I can about each student and their experiences. I listen closely as they share and focus on how this can be used to relate course material and objectives to them. I found this module enlightening. Understanding how the brain functions and learning occurs will help me to refine some of the methods I use in the classroom to help students to retain and apply new information.
