What Future for Education?

Education and Learning, Future for Education?, Learning 1comments

What Future for Education?

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña Solano

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Twitter: @jonacuso

Post 154

Based on my experience as a learner and as a faculty member at Universidad Latina in Costa Rica, the future for education is quite intriguing but fascinating. The puzzle starts when one looks back in time and you see how education has –little by little- changed from the moment you first stepped into a classroom as a very young kid (probably in Kindergarten) and now that you may even be part of the education of different age groups (in my case at the university level). This though-provoking guiding “star” brought me to Coursera to help me mull over the future for education, at least in a Latin American country like mine, Costa Rica.

When asked “what ideas do you already have about the future of education?,” I must confess that I have several. On the one hand, education is harmonizing with the new trends that technology is bringing along. As an educator interested in “deep learning,” I have been working with several types of educational movements aligned with the use of technology. It has been now five years since I started working with blended learning along with Project-Based Learning (PBL) and Internet-Based Learning (IBL), which have proven good allies of learners surrounded by social media, Google, and gaming. Notwithstanding, none of these trends prompt “deep learning” and deep processing of information that can last beyond the ringing of the bell at the end of the class per se. If deep learners are meant to “organize new ideas and concept into a coherent whole based on principles,” to use “learning strategies that emphasize understanding, application, and critical thinking,” and to “build on and connect knowledge from one subject to the next and one course to the next” (Laureate Education, 2010), blended learners can benefit from education and its actual evolution and direction, but what will happen to surface learners?

The Internet has become a great associate for any student, but is it an ally for deep, hierarchical thinking? What kind of impact is the Internet really having on education? I am afraid that it is not really provoking the desired effect in education, which is to help students learn. And that learning, which can be labeled as mere knowledge, is not exactly creating any kind of skill development in the learner, nor any type of competence that can be actually utilized in a working environment (Crespo, R. M., Najjar, J., Derntl, M., Leony, D., Neumann, S., Oberhuemer, P....& Delgado Kloos, C. 2010). On the other hand, it has helped many autonomous learners achieve their desired learning and expand their horizons through social media, educational videos in various websites, eBooks that can now be downloaded for free just because there are authors who are also willing to share their insights and know-how. Is this another element for the future for education, in which more and more people can have access to quality education? I really hope so. And what about the dichotomy that somehow traps us all: “Task-conscious or acquisition learning” vs. “Learning-conscious or formalized learning” (Smith, M. 2003); which of the two types of education can be more profitable for students? Perhaps both?

To sum up, globalization is indeed having a great impact on how technology is used in education, but how is it affecting learning? This is indeed the puzzling question that brought me to Coursera. Perhaps, after reading all contributions by participants and what Dr. Clare Brooks, Institute of Education, University of London, has chosen for us to read, listen to and reflect upon can help me find a satisfactory answer.

Laureate Education Inc. (2010). Learner Approaches to Learning. Retrieved on October 7, 2014 from https://www.dropbox.com/s/886cactgktmt2is/Doc%201%20-%20Learner%20Approaches%20to%20Learning.pdf?dl=0

Crespo, R. M., Najjar, J., Derntl, M., Leony, D., Neumann, S., Oberhuemer, P....& Delgado Kloos, C. (2010). Aligning assessment with learning outcomes in outcome-based education. IEEE Education Engineering 2010, 1239-1246. Retrieved from http://dbis.rwth-aachen.de/~derntl/papers/preprints/educon2010-icoper-preprint.pdf

Smith, M. (2003). Learning Theory: models, product and process. Retrieved on October 1, 2014 from the Infed.Org webpage at http://infed.org/mobi/learning-theory-models-product-and-process/

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Tuesday, October 07, 2014

The Importance of Planning your Lessons

Lesson Planning, Reflective Teaching, Teaching, Teaching Practices, Teaching Tips 0 comments

The Importance of Planning your Lessons

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña Solano

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Twitter: @jonacuso

Post 153

There is no doubt of the tremendous importance of planning one’s lessons carefully, which is decisive and vital to support students’ deep learning of the content and to ensure that learning lasts beyond the end-of-class farewell. For this reason, there are indeed several factors that can doubtlessly and directly affect the steps followed for planning and assessing learners and the tryout of new ideas that can be incorporated to one’s way of planning and assessment as well.

“What steps do you work through to plan your lessons and student assessments? How effective do you believe they are?” (Laureate Education, 2014). When inquired about this, one must reflectively consider how one goes about planning lessons. In my case, planning bas become a series of steps that consists of the following: 1) reviewing course (outline) objectives to have my teaching aligned with them, 2) course content attached to the objectives and that needs to be learned by students, 3) the learning outcomes that I visualize for my students in term of skill development, and 4) the way I want to test student learning (assessment of skill or behavior). In regards to effectiveness, like in any other process, planning becomes –at times- a trial-and-error mechanism. That is, there is always room for improvement, but that improvement depends on the ethnographic characteristics found amongst one’s students and their learning backgrounds: Deep Learners vs. Surface Learners. Every single class, then, is a radically different teaching and learning scenario that positively challenges both the instructor and the learner.

“What new ideas about lesson planning and assessment … might you incorporate into your teaching?” (Laureate Education, 2014). In terms of the search for optimal planning and assessment techniques, faculty members, as well as any other teacher at any level (in primary or high school), must rely on their vivid creativity to always find alternative ways of assessing student learning outcomes. The incorporation of new trends in educational assessment, or even old ones one has never tried before, can shift one’s perception of the learning process that leads students to build and consolidate knowledge, skills, and, why not, even competencies. As a faculty member of the English Department at Universidad Latina, I have consistently tried different ways to help learners achieve course learning goals and to expand their horizons in terms of skills that can turn into competences for their future or current working performance; among these tryouts with college students I have to mention Web Questing (part of Project-Based Learning) combined with blogging, IBL (Internet-Based Learning) research assignments aiming at developing students’ hierarchical thinking, Blended Learning where students work on a Moodle LMS, etc. And I must admit that learners’ performance has been improving the more I polish assignments for student assessment.

A lot can be reflected upon activities that can boost student participation in and out of the classroom, as well as planning and assessment. Participation boosters, whether they are incorporated while working with pupils F2F or while students are using social media networks, are necessary to consolidate learner’s learning process and to validate the accomplishment of learning goals, one’s lesson planning, and the assessment tool one has chosen to provide formative and summative feedback to students. Education is indeed a complex process we are immersed along with our pupils. Words such as success and failure in one’s teaching are no doubt labels we can attach to a process that lacks prioritization of student learning.

ESL Sparks. (2012, Nov. 8). The Art of Lesson Planning. [PPT]. Retrieved on 2014, October 4 from the Slide Share website at http://www.slideshare.net/EslSparks/the-art-of-lesson-planning?related=1

Laureate Education. (2014). Certificate in Higher Education.

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Sunday, October 05, 2014

Redesigning One’s Lessons: The Importance of Reflective Teaching

Lesson Planning, Reflective Teaching, Teaching, Teaching Practices, Teaching Styles, Teaching Tips 0 comments

Redesigning One’s Lessons:

The Importance of Reflective Teaching

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña Solano

Friday, October 3, 2014

Twitter: @jonacuso

Post 152

When it comes to reflective teaching, one needs to sit down and analyze why a lesson went right or went wrong. Beyond the success one may have had while teaching a class, -and as my colleague Arturo Muñoz used to tell me, “There’s always room for improvement,” an instructor can always find ways to increase student participation in the one’s classroom.

Last week, while reflecting upon my Introduction to Drama class at Universidad Latina (in Costa Rica), Arturo’s words started coming back to my ears: How can I improve student participation in my class? Besides asking this rhetorical question, Professor Roger Núñez’s teachings in methodology came back to me, too: Why not to incorporate additional reading and writing techniques that can benefit student deep learning and more active participation in class?

My Introduction to Drama planning started out with the following objective:

http://reflective-online-teaching.blogspot.com/2014/10/outcomes-and-assessment-making-sense-of.html

Reflective Online Teaching: Outcomes and Assessment: Making Sense of What we are Teaching via kwout

Now, what steps can I now take to direct my teaching to even produce better results with future students taking this literature class? Well, this is what I came up with based on my former training in reading and writing methodology:

· Dense Questioning, and

· Inferential Reading.

Dense Questioning is a reading technique that can be used while students are reading a text, such as Oedipus Rex, and can

· Interpret and synthesize recurring themes/ideas

· Pose personally relevant questions about texts

· Relate new information to prior reading and/or experience by making text-to text, text-to-self, and text-to-world connections

(Greece Central School District)

Though I tried to somehow integrate this in my plan and class time with students, I should worked more on it to make them go deeper and deeper into the recurrent themes that can be found in Oedipus Rex.

Inferential Reading is another technique in which we have students exercise their critical and hierarchical thinking skills. As its name suggests, students are faced with the fact that they need to read between lines to get to the gist of the topic or question. While students work on this, they can

· Draw upon prior knowledge

· Draw conclusions and make inferences

· Recognize the effects of one’s own point of view in formulating interpretations of texts

(Greece Central School District)

Inferential Reading can make use of cyclical-spiral organization of the content that needs to be covered and explored in a course like Drama. Not only does it give me the chance to recycle content, but it can also allow students to get deeper and deeper into their reading and learn from it the more they connect to it.

Both reading techniques can help a teacher to prioritize the teaching of strategic content that needs to be mastered by students by the end of the class or segment of the college term. The two strategies can help the instructor choose an organizational strategy to cover key elements of the course outline and quite relevant for the understanding of later topics that need to be addressed. And bearing in my that one needs to plan for student needs and not for one’s own sake, Inferential Reading and Dense Questioning can be of great use to maximize student participation in class and will help learners boost their text comprehension and interpretation.

Greece Central School District. (n.d.). Reading Strategies: Scaffolding Students’ Interactions with Text. Retrieved on 2014, October 3 from the Greece Central School District at http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/academics.cfm?subpage=930

Laureate Education. (n.d.). Planning for Learning. Retrieved on 2014, October 3 from http://mym.cdn.laureate-media.com/2dett4d/LIU/LCTL/0001/03/mm/planningforlearning_english/index.html

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Principles of Learning from Lynne Tolentino

Tolentino, L. (2014, July 4). Principles of Learning. Retrieved on 2014, October 3 from the Slide Share webpage at http://www.slideshare.net/darlynne16/principles-of-learning-36634677?related=1

Friday, October 03, 2014

Legends in Language Teaching & Culture Learning

Culture, Culture Teaching, Reflective Teaching, Teaching, Teaching Practices, Teaching Tips 0 comments

Legends in Language Teaching

& Culture Learning

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña Solano

Friday, October 3, 2014

Twitter: @jonacuso

Post 151

At some point in our lives, especially when we were children or we became parents, folktales and legends were part of our daily bedtime stories. As a kid, we probably enjoyed listening to an adult recounting an old tale that was probably transmitted by a distant relative or that was heard in another town or far-away place. As parents, we probably used these stories to amuse our kids and prepare them for sleeping and to somehow teach them something that was encoded in the story, some sort of moral or hidden teaching, which is part of our children’s enculturation.

Since legends and folktales are part of a culture’s folklore, “folklore constantly reinforces cultural lessons” (Samovar, Porter, & McDaniel 2010). And folklore can be spotted in a great variety of settings within society; it can be witnessed in school, at home, etc. As proposed by many language teachers, legends can be used to reinforce students’ four skills; we can have students respond to a story in writing or by giving a short presentation. If the instructor is an experienced storyteller, folktales can be used to practice listening comprehension and why not, some interpretation of the facts provided in the story. Reading is indeed another option to teach the language but the culture synchronously.

As suggested by Rodriguez (quoted by Samovar, Porter, & McDaniel 2010), “Folktales are not only regarded as some of the best keepers of our language and cultural memories, they are also helpers in the process of socialization.” Through this process of socialization and/or enculturation, we the culture outsiders, along with our students, can get to see what a culture labels as important, irrelevant, funny, ironic, sarcastic, etc. All these can be taught to language students in class to be better fit to interact with the target culture, and even with any other culture the learners are bound to encounter in their future. This, depending on the level of the students, can become a great asset in their work-readiness training.

But if we were dealing with children rather than adult learners, Rabbidge & Lorenzutti (2013) point out extensive reading, which can no doubt be applied to folktale and/or legend reading as part of the English class, “benefits the development of speaking, listening, and writing languages skills, as well as involuntary acquisition of vocabulary.”

No matter what the level of students could be, legends, folktales, and the like are great sources of enculturation patterns that can be taught to students so they can better understand the target culture. These stories have benefits that go beyond the mere comprehension of the story, benefits that are intrinsically related to language development and cultural understanding. Legends and folktales can indeed be great sources for teaching in the EFL classroom along with the teaching of cultural tolerance.

Rabbidge, M. & Lorensutti, N. (2013). Teaching Story without Struggle: Using Graded Readers and Their Audio Packs in the EFL Classroom. English Teaching Forum, 2013, Number 3 [28-35]. Retrieved from http://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/51_3_6_rabbidge_lorenzutti.pdf

Samovar, L., Porter, R., & McDaniel, E. (2010). Communication between Cultures. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning

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Ten Techniques For Teaching Culture from Joe_McVeigh

McVeigh, J. (2010, March 23). Ten Techniques for Teaching Culture. Retrieved on October 3, 2014 from the Slide Share website at http://www.slideshare.net/Joe_McVeigh/ten-techniques-for-teaching-culture-tesol-2010?qid=af271bad-e1a3-4e9f-837e-ff323233a0d5&v=qf1&b=&from_search=1

Friday, October 03, 2014

Outcomes and Assessment: Making Sense of What we are Teaching

Assessment, Reflective Teaching, Teaching, Teaching Practices, Teaching Tips 0 comments

Outcomes and Assessment:

Making Sense of What we are Teaching

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña Solano

Friday, October 3, 2014

Twitter: @jonacuso

Post 150

When dealing with outcomes and assessment in teaching, it is important to consider various aspects to make student learning meaningful, deep, and applicable to their future working environment. For this reason it is a good idea to take into account the time available to achieve learning goals. Likewise, the time required by students to learn must also be considered. Similarly, the instructor had better estimate the time required by a learner to demonstrate what they have been learning in one’s class.

Bearing in mind “the time available,” “the time required by students to learn,” and “the estimated time for learners to demonstrate their recently-acquired knowledge,” now let us take a look at a learning task that was given to drama students at Universidad Latina (San José, Costa Rica) and how a measurable outcome was developed. To start with, as part of the introductory part to classical Greek theater, learners were provided with a Prezi presentation and an explanation on how ancient Greek drama evolved from the Dionysian rites into a sophisticated staging of tragedies and comedies. Secondly, a learning research task was designed and developed to trigger student understanding on how classical Greek dramatists encoded themes and topics into their plays. Finally, students were told what the learning objective for this writing task was all about, so they could produce a quality essay:

At the end of this segment of the course on classical Greek theater and after reading Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, drama students will write a short research essay identifying the play’s main themes.

This learning task took place between September 15 and 29 (2014), being the 29 the due date to provide formative and summative feedback to students. And when asked what kind of technique was used for assessing the outcome that can be summarized as follows:

1) An online research project was created for learners aligned with learning objective and the course outcomes.

2) In class they were instructed what to do to guarantee that pupils will get into deep learning. Each step of the assignment was explained to avoid misunderstandings.

3) An essay rubric was also given to students so they could guide themselves while developing their writing and critical thinking.

4) They were given back their online assignments with formative and summative feedback which reflected the critical thinking or deep learning projected by students into their writings.

Always bear in mind	Timing
Time available to achieve learning goals	Consider the time you have allotted in the course outline to achieve goals
Time required by students to learn
Time for learners to demonstrate their recently-acquired knowledge

Example: My Drama Class at Universidad Latina:

Always bear in mind	Timing
Time available to achieve learning goals	2 weeks – two sessions
Time required by students to learn	2 weeks – a presentation and a research paper
Time for learners to demonstrate their recently-acquired knowledge	2 weeks – summative assessment

The combination of measurable learning outcomes, along with the right assessment strategy can indeed produce some great deep learning in the students. Learning is just not the possibility to retrieve information that one has stored in one’s brain, but the chance of using it in real world situations, either as college students or as teaching professionals. Allowing students to demonstrate that they are able to use the information provided to them via F2F or online teaching is a way to measure how much they have learned and acquired new knowledge they can manipulate independently when needed.

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Assessment of learning outcomes from Royal Child Academy of Mactan. Inc.

Royal Child Academy of Mactan Inc. (2014, June 27). Assessment of Learning Outcomes. Retrieved on October 3, 2014 from the Slide Share webpage at http://www.slideshare.net/royalchildacademylapulapu/assessment-of-learning-outcomes?related=1

Friday, October 03, 2014

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