Get Your Students Hired
Most of the students are now from the WHY generation. This generation is a generation that has been bombarded with media from the time they were babies. I feel that we still cater to the snore and pour technique when it comes to orentation and retention. We put them in rooms and have speaker after speaker puking information at them by the bucketfull. I feel that the WHY generation student would feel much better if we used the media that they grew up with to help them in retention, orentation and in the class room.... oh yea, our campus is fixin to start the latter. (hehehe)
What I'm trying to say is use the media technology we have to help our students in all of their needs and wants.
allowing our students to ask their question and answering it in a manner that they feel comfortable and keep commiunicating with them as often as possible will be great help
Yes, lectures are great for those stimulated auditorially and labs for those that are tactile.
Elisa,
Good to meet you! You made a number of truly excellent remarks here and I enjoyed your post.
You mention that students’ attention spans are extremely short these days, and I agree. There are so many excellent resources available, and many students are surprised that many of them are free.
I teach math and IT classes, and students often have a difficult time with mathematical concepts. I like to suggest to them that even something as simple and popular as youtube is a wonderful resource for studying. There are many tutorial videos on a variety of topics and students are quite literally shocked that these things exist :) I think teaching them to learn to explore topics on their own and to find resources by themselves is one of the most critical skills to success.
I do have a question: do you feel that there is a balance between catering to students’ shorter attention spans yet teaching them to learn to be focused for longer periods of time (which in my opinion is a fundamental skill for all life activities, including school)? If so – how is this balance reached, in your opinion? I would be very interested to know your thoughts on this.
Thanks again for the great post!
Jeremy Bolton
"The generation of students living now are the technology kids with a gadget for everything that does everything" "and their brains turn to mush" (my quote)
I deal in an vocational educational enviroment where students come with "visions of grandure" (I want to build race engines)only to be sorely dissapointed when the harsh reality of now becomes evident.
One of the classes I teach requires math, and what is the most common comment I get when I tell them that alot of math is involved in this clinic, "oh I was never really any good at math", or "I'm not good at math" unfortunatly, I am not a math teacher nor do I have time to "teach math" even at the redimnetary level of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
My students have difficulty even using a calculator when it comes to some of the equations that have to be performed in order to get the answers.
Now with the amount of students I regularly have doesn't allow for the amount of time to spend with each student as I would hope for, if I give more time to one, it takes away from another.
I offer tutoring either an hour before class or an hour after class, but no one ever takes me up on it, after all when class is over (11:30pm) it time to hit the bars! not sit down and go over math calculations.
WebCam, Skype and Facebook may work in other types of education, but unfortuatly "my students would have been better off without "modern technology" imho, it does nothing but but turn their brains to mush, they can't think for themselves, they need some gadget to do it for them.
Texting is an intriguing notion. What are the barriers to being able to do that? Is email - albeit not as immediate - a viable alternative?
Anyone have experience using texting to connect with students?
I have found the same response. They do not like speaking to people via the phone. They rather speak via a non-verbal communication through e-mail or through facebook. It would be nice if our school would incorportate texting to our students for the staff to use for when students miss class. It would allow for better retention since that would close the loop hole of non-communication more.
I find that 99% of my students text. They claim is it faster that making a phone call.
My apologies, Loren.
I was in a hurry and used the wrong word - the word I meant to use is fundamental.
What forms of communication do you use in your classroom, Cole? If a student wants to contact you, do they use email, text messaging?
Does the institution use twitter or Facebook to communicate with current students? How about prospective students?
Judy, what do you mean that "it is detrimental to the learning process that we all be on the same page"?
Also, being aware of the paradigm shift and using current technology and communication methods doesn't mean we should give up on expanding the skill set of the students and expect them to learn the tools of the workplace.
I do feel that media is a more important tool now than ever, especially since there are so many different ways we can communicate to our students. If the technology is used correctly I believe that the students will be more receptive and more apt to learn. It just has to be presented in a manner that the newer student population will catch on to. In a sence we have to get to their level to successfuly get through to them.
This response is such a good assessment of today's students. Coming from another generation often presents problems when interacting with the present generation; however, it is detrimental to the learning process that we all be on the same page. They are not going to change, so it is obvious that we need to meet the needs of this generation. Being open-minded is key to this process and understanding the paradigm shift to student-centered.
It seems that this generation is only interested in the meat of the subject matter. They have no interest in understanding the processes that are involved in any situation because any button on the keyboard will perform the tasks that they want or need. Is that good or bad or too soon to call? They just want to know if what is being taught to them is relevant and how does it apply to any given situation, otherwise they are not interested in obtaining that knowledge.
It's important to incorporate all the ways that students learn. Labs are great for the tactile and kinesthetic learners. Lectures engage the visual and auditory modalities.
The use of mediums in which the students are familiar eases early tensions about the course of study. I particularly enjoy teaching technical skill requiring tactile application because the student becomes the medium, action art!
Certainly, there is an entertainment part of learning. It is well documented that there are different styles of learning and students have preferred modes of learning. But as you observe Dale, even the most ardent auditory learner will lose interest eventually.
The most effective instruction touches all the learning modalities and keeps the student engaged, including applying the newly learned material.
Keep up the good work.
While it is clearly true that students seem more accustom to encountering information through a wider spectrum of communication mediums, it isn't clear that just because student's seem more visually attuned that they are then necessarily better at decoding or comprehending visual medium to comprehend complex ideas. I teach an electrical course, and it has been my experience that no mode of communication actually impacts the students more than others, by which I mean that computer graphics, and video do not seem to accomplish the task of imparting knowledge or comprehension of difficult concepts to students any better than sitting with them and explaining different sections of the text book.
I think there might be some sense among the students that the class is more stimulating if there are videos and computer graphics, but I haven't actually seen an improvement in assessment scores.
It seems to me that the most mark improvement in performance comes through learning processes that are interactive, wherein students manipulate something rather than just attempt to retain facts. This is very labor intensive though, and I am fortunate to have rather small classes.
I do think, however, that regardless of what methods actually work in terms of helping students comprehend and apply information, their sense of boredom might be much less acute with communication methods that are more visually stimulating, I am just skeptical that these are actually more educationally effective. But students who feel less bored are more likely to show up the next day, so that is a huge reason to keep up with evolving methods of communication and transmission of information, skills and knowledge.
At my school, I am actually one of the more versatile teachers in terms of providing visuals and computer graphics, and this is probably why I am also a little more skeptical about them as a panacea for the difficult task of communicating complex ideas.
On of the main reasons I like to use a variety of instructional delivery methods is that when I do just lecture, no matter how much of a performance I make out of it, I sort of bore myself after about 20 minutes...and I am not shy about telling the students that I too am bored sometimes.