Taken
from https://www.linkedin.com/topic/collaboration
Active, Collaborative, & Problem-Based
Teaching Task Selection
By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.
School of English
Faculty of Social Sciences
Universidad Latina de Costa Rica
Sunday, May 14, 2016
Post 276
While taking an online course with
several faculty members of various Laureate universities, we were prompted with
a reflective assignment. The idea behind this reflection task was to
introspectively help us visualize a learning activity we tend to use and make
it more active, collaborative, and/or problem-based learning-oriented. Based on
this reflective experience, I shared with my learning community an activity I
regularly use when I get to teach literary criticism.
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Course:
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BIN-29 Literary Criticism
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Activity:
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Analyzing a short story based on the Formalistic Approach
along with Reader Response
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Topic: Formalistic
Approach / Reader Response
The Formalistic Approach aims at describing any piece of
literature in terms of its form/structure. It doesn’t really look for trying
to provide meaning or interpretations; it just describes the final product
based on what the genre is supposed to be.
Your second task on the Formalistic Approach is to analyze a 19th
Century short story by American writer Ambrose Bierce entitled The Man and the Snake. Please focus on
the following aspects:
1.
Analyze the structure of the short story: How is it divided?
What can be found in it: allegory, foreshadowing, symbolism, etc.?
2.
Analyze what theme is being use in the short story.
3.
How does the theme make you react? What emotions or memories does
it awake in you, the reader? Phobia for snakes?
4.
What kind of narrator (point of view) is telling the story?
5.
What kind of conflict can be found in the story?
6.
What kind of reflection do you think the author is making
through the story? Consider this from your point of view.
Work on you analysis individually, and have it ready to be
posted on our LMS by [Day], [Month] [#] no later than 12 noon. After than
hour, you won’t be allowed to submit your analysis.
Save your
file as a “PDF” document in this way: Lastname_FirstNameInitial_LITAN02
(Ex. Smith_A_LITAN02)
Resources
for Analysis:
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Why this is active
learning- oriented
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This literary analysis of a short story is a sample task for active
learning because literature learners cannot just be passive recipients of
information, when it comes to discuss a literary approach for literature
understanding. Students need to use the correct principles behind literary
analysis, reflect upon it to be able to come up with answers to the questions
posted on the class virtual room in our LMS.
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Why this is
collaboration-oriented
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Collaboration takes place in class when learners are presented
with a task similar to the one they will be graded on and that they need
develop with peers in a F2F classroom setting. Since a demonstration of the
technique needs to take place in the classroom, by the time students get to
be working on their personal interpretations individually, they will have
been exposed to how to use the approach while collaboratively working on it
with a group of their peers (scaffolded by the instructor).
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Why this is
problem-based
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Learners are provided with a real-life teaching “problem” (or
connected to their future teaching scenarios) where they will be asked to
actively work with literature when teaching in high school in their home
country. By using the suggested approach, learners’ imagination and
creativity are triggered so they can –by means of the pool of their life
experiences- provide their own and personal interpretation of a literary
piece. What is the “correct” interpretation? This is the problem they must
solve.
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To sum up, any learning task that we may be currently using in our classrooms, no matter what our field of expertise is can be transformed to meet more deep learning standards. Collaboration, problem-based learning, and/or active learning need to be part of the activity so learners can feel how they gain ownership over their learning and how they become autonomous learners. And this autonomy can transcend the classroom boundaries for them to use their knowledge when needed and elsewhere.
Saturday, May 14, 2016
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