Trying new teaching tools

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Trying New Teaching Tools

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed. School of English Faculty of Social Sciences Universidad Latina de Costa Rica Thursday, May 5, 2016 Post 268

For many faculty members and instructors in various learning institutions, change is stressful. The implementation of a new teaching tool in their classroom can be challenging, both for the teacher and for the students. While continually relying on the same teaching tools and practices can be part of one’s comfort zone, as well as the learners’, it is feasible that change may also bring lots of opportunities for deeper learning and stronger student engagement for one’s pupils.

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To what extent is active learning a new concept for us faculty members?

I would not say that that active learning is a new concept for me or for many of

my colleagues at the two places where I work and teach; it is something that in language learning we teachers try to foster in our classrooms on a daily basis. We just don’t want to provide learners comprehensible input for them to build up their new knowledge, but we seek for opportunities so they can practice (and manipulate) what

they are learning. This is the concept of active learning that is applicable to language development.

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How are you making decisions about your own teaching practice?

What influences your choices?

My teaching decisions, as the ones made by many faculty members or language

teachers that work with me are made on what needs to be comprehended by students, the necessity to build specific skills they will use to perform language tasks, and the need to materialize competencies that will distinguish them professionally making them more desirable candidates to be hired. The main influence in my choices is coming from the course outline program and the expected exit profile students are meant to have achieved once they conclude with all major’s courses. If exit profile is respected, students will no doubt will demonstrate what they are worth for the labor world.

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What is your experience of trying something new in the classroom?

And how did your students react to it?

Every time I teach a course at the university, I base myself on what I had

already tried with other students who had been with me before. I rarely repeat the very same learning task with another group since I tend to make little or major adjustments to better fit their learning needs. Due to the fact that students know I am technologically-oriented, as soon as they take a course with me they understand that I incorporate a lot of online resources and Web 2.0 elements to motivate them and hopefully maximize their learning. Because of this I tend to have good reactions and reviews from learners. And I also know of many other higher education colleagues of mine and language teachers who do the same to “spice up” learning in their courses and in their groups.

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What experience do you have with implementing active learning in your classroom?

If you have not done so, why not? What are your concerns about it?

There should not be any kind of discussion in regards to the implementation of active learning in the classroom or on an online learning environment. Since 2008 when I started incorporating lots of changes in my teaching by using different methodologies and approaches to language learning, such as PBL (Project-Based Learning) and IBL (Internet-Based Learning), I have been able to see that kind of language teaching professional Universidad Latina (where I currently work as a senior ELT professor) is shaping for the sake of our country’s English-speaking benchmarks and needs.

To conclude, as I was asked once in a Laureate Faculty course in the Higher Education program, it is a wise idea that any teaching professional asks him/herself the following questions: •

To what extend is active learning a new concept for you?

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How are you making decisions about your own teaching practice? What influences your choices?

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What is your experience of trying something new in the classroom, and how did your students react to it?

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What experience do you have with implementing active learning in your classroom?

If you have not done so, why not? What are your concerns about it?

Answering this set of questions can be a great reflective exercise for any of us teaching professionals.