Reflecting upon higher education learners

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Reflecting upon Higher Education Learners

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed. School of English Faculty of Social Sciences Universidad Latina de Costa Rica Tuesday, May 3, 2016 Post 266

Through my many years of higher education teaching, lots of things have been fairly learned and quickly assimilated to enhance my teaching style; then my teaching behavior has adapted to new circumstances and to meet the new challenges of the ever-changing deep learning process with new theories, new Web 2.0 approaches, educational practices, etc. Here I present the reader with a rather small collection of samples of pieces I have been using for some time now.

The importance of knowing your learners As Dr. Rafael Espinoza (personal communication) stated in a qualitative research course I took with him a couple of years ago, it is important to create an ethnography of one’s class environment as well as of one’s students. It is not to know their

demographics; it is to know who they are, what they feel, how they behave, what they aspire and want to learn, and so on. Through this qualitative research exercise that can be a bit of mindful contemplation of what learners want to tell you without words, you discover a lot of your class challenges and your students’ strengths. Besides, one can get to discover how that information can help to find ways to guide students towards deep learning experiences.

The benefits of switching from a teacher-centered classroom to a learner-centered classroom Teacher-centered instruction, at least in my field language teaching, is simply the wrong methodology, the wrong way to go about educating others. Education must be geared towards helping students build their knowledge, skills, and competencies.

Otherwise, the purpose of teaching is defeated from the very start. Teacher-centered instruction is to simply teach in automatic pilot, when you are not really addressing student needs to quench their learning thirst. How can deep learners be identified and motivated to go the extra mile and become better at what they are acquiring? Learnercentered instruction is the key. Empowering students with their capacity for selfregulation is the path to be followed to supply them with what it is needed, deep learning experiences.

Changes in your attitude toward your learners My attitudes toward my students have not changed at all. I would say that it has become robust and more solid through the years. Since I have been using Kolb’s Learning Model for a very long time, I am more convinced of its use and importance in education and language learning. Kolb’s Learning Model can be a solid foundation for any faculty member looking for leaner-centered instruction techniques to boost student deep learning and content engagement, whether that is F2F, fully online, or hybrid

teaching/learning. It is certain that there are other teaching backgrounds whose foundations are not Kolb’s; in spite of the fact that many faculty members do not endorse Kolb’s teaching rationale, other approaches can be functional because in the end it is the instructor who can get to know that there are different ways to deal with students’ attitudes to move them from one stage in their learning to another. As a conclusion, be open to experiment with Kolb’s, Marzano’s, Bloom’s, and so on. Just be open to different possibilities since it is you, the teaching professional, who really know what happens in your particular teaching circumstances.

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enhance student learning and motivation Motivation is key in learning, knowledge building, skills development, and the acquisition of new competencies. Students must be taken out of their learning comfort zone and move them into “serious” learning situations and tasks. Teachers can get stuck in the creation of learning tasks for the sake of “killing time” while trying to achieve course goals. The idea is to have students work and discover their potential for knowledge building, and why not to move them to virtual scenarios. Due to the amount of information available online, lots of interesting apps can come handy to boost student learning and competencies.

The act of learning is a fascinating self-treasured moment for any human being.

Getting to know a bit more every day makes the students consider the scope of their learning process they have accepted to undergo in higher education. When selfregulation is inculcated in their way of studying and seeing their learning, the possibility to create meaningful learning experiences becomes a nice challenge to face and very rewarding, especially when one gets to see the results of one’s teachings materialized in skills and competences learners will use at work.