communicating for
LEARNERS
SUM
MER
2009
featured in this issue
Learning Communities
Brain Rules
Hot 5
PowerPoint
Visionary Status
Did You Know?
Learning Community Opportunities for 2009-2010 Last year, over 140 Bowling Green State University faculty, graduate students, and staff participated in the twelve learning communities hosted by the Center for Teaching and Learning. This year, eight learning community opportunities are available. All communities focus on one or more areas of scholarship— discovery, integration, application, teaching, and engagement— and all of these collaborative, supportive, and active learning groups provide a strong foundation for members’ scholarly work and professional development.
CLICK HERE for 09-10 LEARNING COMMUNITY
APPLICATIONS 2009-2010 Learning Communities Active Learning and the Transition to Digital NEW Exploring discovery and integration questions pertaining to teaching and learning with technology in order to foster environments conducive to active learning and student engagement that individual teaching needs and the learning needs of students Cultivating STEM Student Motivation, Engagement, and Learning NEW Designing, studying, and revising learning environments to optimize and cultivate student motivation, engagement, and learning during membership in this two-year learning community; for faculty, graduate students, and others interested in engaged teaching and learning pedagogies in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines
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Creating Digital Collections for Teaching, Learning, and Research NEW Conceptualizing, describing, organizing, and uploading digital content within the BGSU/OhioLINK Digital Resource Commons or other appropriate digital platforms; faculty will be able to design a digital collection that will enhance student learning and promote faculty research agendas
Integrating Publication and Undergraduate Learning NEW Fostering an environment of scholarly exchange with the shared goals of publishing work and serving as a resource for undergraduate learning and understanding of researching and writing for publication (geared toward the Humanities and Social Sciences) Library e-Tools for Teaching, Learning, and Research Exploring newer, cutting-edge technologies available through University Libraries and OhioLINK, including how these e-tools will enhance faculty teaching and research as well as bolster student learning Pedagogy and Scholarship in Second Life Developing effective strategies for pedagogy and scholarship and focusing on ways in which teaching and learning can be enhanced using virtual worlds, including using the Second Life virtual world as a platform (for faculty, graduate students, and staff ) Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Valuing, encouraging, and engaging in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) by researching and discussing professional practices leading to the development of scholarly teaching and enriched and meaningful student learning Service Learning Supporting the creation of high quality courses using servicelearning pedagogy addressing the development of personal and social responsibility and civic learning; a two-year learning community focusing on expanding understandings of servicelearning pedagogies, dialoging with peers engaged in course re/design, and participating in an on-going support network during course delivery (Co-sponsored by the Office of Service-Learning)
How do I apply to be an LC member?
Learning community information and applications are available on our website: http://www.bgsu.edu/ctl (click on the 09-10 Learning Communities link). Complete an application and return it to the Center for Teaching and Learning by Friday, August 7, 2009.
Read, Close, Recall, Write, Repeat: More “Brain Rules” for Learning B R A I N
As a follow up to our Spring #2 article on John Medina’s Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School, here are two more resources for your consideration as you continue to make plans for your fall courses.
Brain Rules #5 and #6 – ‘Repeat to Remember’ and ‘Remember to Repeat,’ both aiding to reinforce neural pathways in the brain. This principle is also referred to as “practice at retrieval.”
Although his session and ideas were well received at NCAT, there were some educators who voiced concern David Glenn, in his Chronicle of Higher Education over this apparent push for more article “Close the Book. Recall. memorization and promotion Write It Down” (http:// of lower levels of learning. But chronicle.com/weekly/v55/ McDaniel argues two points. i34/34a00101.htm), points to First, in many introductory MarkA.McDaniel’sconference courses, facts are more prevalent session at the National Center in order to build foundational for Academic Transformation knowledge—from biology to (NCAT) and his recent articles 1. Read a passage or section. Spanish or history. Second, just in Contemporary Educational 2. Close the book or put away your because learning begins with Psychology and Psychological notes. memorization, doesn’t mean Science. Briefly stated, to read that higher levels of learning something and then read it 3. Recall the information you just read are excluded or prevented. In again does little for long term or summarize it. one of McDaniel’s experiments, retrieval and can even lead to 4. Write it down; or better yet, recite students were better able to solve a “false sense of confidence” problems through inferences in one’s own learning. Instead, it aloud (to create more neural and analysis after reading a he suggests that the learner pathways). complex passage and reciting must put away the book or 5. Repeat this process. the information than those notes and then try to recall who just read the passage twice. the information, write it down, or even say it out loud. For more information on these strategies and many others related to the cognitive science of learning, visit Although this insight may not be new and it’s certainly the University of Memphis Department of Psychology’s not high-tech or novel, the research shows that it Life Long Learning at Work and Home website, http:// works. When ‘forcing’ the brain to recall information, psyc.memphis.edu/learning/principles/index.shtml. Just new pathways of retrieval are being formed, ones remember to read, close, recall, and write down all that you that will need to be revisited in the future for longlearned and plan to implement in your courses this fall! term learning to take place. Medina refers to this as
There are Five Simple Steps to Remembering Information:
R U L E S
HOT 5 1
JoSoTL iupui.edu/~josotl peer-reviewed research journal on effective practices in teaching and learning
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(click the link to visit)
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5
web conferencing through your web browser
academic discussions, presentations, teaching, and learning
AAC&U’s site fostering civil engagement and discussion on diversity issues in higher education
dedicated to college and university discussions, teaching, and learning
Dimdim dimdim.com
Lectr lectr.com
Diversity Web diversityweb.org
YouTube EDU youtube.com/edu
A Student’s Point-of-View on PowerPoint for Learning by Eric Bower I think it’s safe to say that we all know what PowerPoint is and what it is used for—presentations. Over the past decade the number of presentations fueled by PowerPoint, and its competitors, has grown at an exponential rate. So there is no shock value when I say that PowerPoint has invaded the classroom experience. Every lecture class that I am attending currently is using PowerPoint presentations as the mode of transferring information from the instructor to the student. But, are these presentations more effective than previous methods of teaching? Do PowerPoint presentations convey information in a way that engages the student to learn? From my perspective as an undergraduate student, I have a hard time nodding in satisfaction to these questions. There are issues with PowerPoint presentations and how they are being used in the classroom environment, especially at the university level. Addressing the core issues with PowerPoint presentations and the instructors facilitating these presentations will hopefully create a window of opportunity to raise the collective awareness of the issues with these presentations for instructors and students alike. Tom Creed wrote a great article on PowerPoint presentations, titled “PowerPoint No, Cyberspace Yes,” where he describes the characteristics of good pedagogy that contribute to a better quality of learning: • Courses should focus on learning rather than teaching (student-centered vs. teacher-centered); • Interaction with the material should be student- controlled rather than teacher-controlled; and • Courses should be structured so that students interact with material in a pedagogically sound way. These are just a few of Creed’s main points, but they are exactly in line with what students are looking for in an engaging, effective classroom experience, and they resonate with the premise of why I feel PowerPoint presentations are ineffective: PowerPoint lectures are controlled completely by the instructor. Whether the student is ready for the next slide or not, it makes no difference. Teachers have sets of slides that they want to cover in a class and if the students do not understand the material by the time the next slide needs to appear, too bad, they missed out on the information.
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Typically, teachers are open to questions throughout the presentation, but the overall vibe that reverberates throughout the progressing semester is that questions interrupt the flow of PowerPoint slides and disrupt the instructor’s concentration. Lately though, it is becoming more of a standard every term I progress in college to include the PowerPoint presentations online, available to download for the student to review. But honestly, if all the information we need is already on the PowerPoint presentation, what’s the point of going to class? Why can’t we just review the presentations and show up for
the exams? This infrastructure is ineffective and does not engage the student in any fashion toward deeper learning. Do PowerPoint presentations engage a student to assess and critically think about the subject matter? The short answer is, not necessarily. If the communication between the instructor and the student is one-way, how can that possibly effectively engage the student to critically think about any subject? This “one-way” mentality of sending information from the instructor to the student and not receiving any feedback from the student does not engage the student at all, nor does it allow for the teacher to learn from the student.
Not only is it extremely boring to sit through fifty minutes of PowerPoint slides, everyday, every week, every semester; but it also sets the student up for an ineffective way of transferring the concepts retained in class to the real world environment. Just to accentuate my point, here is an excerpt from a New York Times article, “PowerPoint Makes You Dumb” by Clive Thompson (2003): In August, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board at NASA released Volume 1 of its report on why the space shuttle crashed. As expected, the ship’s foam insulation was the main cause of the disaster. But the board also fingered another unusual culprit: PowerPoint, Microsoft’s well-known “slideware” program. NASA, the board argues, had become too reliant on presenting complex information via PowerPoint, instead of by means of traditional ink-andpaper technical reports.
Is PowerPoint inherently flawed? I don’t think it is. For PowerPoint to be utilized to its maximum potential, it really needs to be acknowledged for its true purpose: PowerPoint creates an infrastructure for presentation. The problem ensues when presenters or instructors start allowing their PowerPoint presentations to control their entire lecture. David Keefe also shares my sentiments in his article, “A Case for PowerPoint as a Faculty Authoring System”; “[…] PowerPoint serves more as a means of mapping and directing the flow of a classroom discussion on a topic than as a means of presenting the materials themselves.” If PowerPoint is used as a guideline, rather than an all-inclusive package for a lecture, then it will create a more effective mode of conveying and retaining information. Presenters, professors, instructors, and teachers should all be focusing on classroom discussion, not creating great presentations. Cynthia Lanius, states in her article, “PowerPoint, Not your Grandmother’s Presentations, but is it Evil?”: “PowerPoint won’t turn a bad presentation into a good one, and it won’t convert an ineffective presenter into an effective one.” Using PowerPoint as a crux for a presentation will not automatically create a classroom experience that is engaging.
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PowerPoint conclusion Ultimately, the goal of every instructor should be to create a presentation that engages the students to be active in the classroom and fosters a positive environment for discussion. The University of Minnesota has put together a great resource for active learning with PowerPoint at http://www1.umn.edu/ ohr/teachlearn/tutorials/powerpoint. This resource offers strategies for active learning, while at the same time utilizing the convenience and functionality of PowerPoint. There are some advantages to implementing PowerPoint presentations in classrooms, but when its use deters from teaching and learning and focuses too heavily on creating a “great” unidirectional presentation, there will be a backlash from students who are ultimately dissatisfied with their classes and education. A strong connection between instructors and students is also a critical point in creating an effective classroom and PowerPoints that completely “bombard” the student with information diminishes that connection. Classroom discussion, in my opinion, is the apex for a great classroom learning experience, even when the class happens to be a massive lecture hall. Author Eric Bower is a BGSU junior majoring in Neuroscience
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Did You Know About Library Liaisons
Would you like to see the quality of sources students use for papers improve? Or do you have a book, video, or journal recommendation for the University Libraries’ collections? The library has a collection development and instruction liaison program that can assist you! Collection development library liaisons work with faculty representatives in your departments to select print and electronic library materials in support of faculty and student research needs. Library instruction liaisons provide course-related instruction, offer individual consultations to faculty and students, and create instructional materials. For examples of the type of instructional materials librarians create, go to the main library web page and click on Research Guides by Course or Topic. The collection development and instruction liaison contact list is available online at http://www.bgsu.edu/ downloads/lib/file40305.pdf.
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visionary
STATUS
Laurie Richlin teacher, speaker, author
Laurie Richlin believes that to improve student learning you must enhance faculty learning. The problem, she noted in her book Blueprint for Learning (2006), is that “just as we would not expect our students to acquire the ability to perform complex tasks without study, practice, and feedback, we should not expect college instructors to learn to teach effectively without similar processes” (p. ix). Richlin has spent the last twenty years working with faculty and future faculty to facilitate the teaching-learning connection. Early in her career, she won the Donald A. Gatzke Award for Dissertation Excellence from the American Association of University Administrators and was awarded two $100,000 FIPSE grants to create teaching assistant development programs. Since these early successes, Richlin has served as a director for faculty development offices, an educator-in-residence, a consultant for higher education and an adjunct professor. Her current occupations include Director of Preparing Future Faculty Program/Faculty Learning Communities at Claremont Graduate University, President of the International Alliance of Teacher Scholars, Inc., and Executive Director of the Journal on Excellence in College Teaching. Her most recent books, Blueprint for Learning (2006) and What They Didn’t Teach You in Graduate School (2008), both offer practical suggestions for improving the teaching-learning connection. Richlin continues to grow in her own learning, working with colleagues to explore how Second Life could benefit learning for students with learning disabilities. It is clear that Richlin models passion for the teaching-learning connection and will continue to help educators grow in their own learning and development for years to come. Learn more about Laurie Richlin: Resume: http://www.cgu.edu/include/vitae111302.pdf Article: http://innovateonline.info/index. php?view=person&id=47182 Book: http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&search- type=ss&index=books&field-author=Laurie%20 Richlin&page=1
This newsletter is a publication of the Center for Teaching and Learning. Visit us online at www.bgsu.edu/ctl/ or in 201University Hall.