Active, Collaborative, & Problem-Based Teaching Task Selection

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.

Course:	BIN-29 Literary Criticism
Activity:	Analyzing a short story based on the Formalistic Approach along with Reader Response
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: 1. The Man and the Snake by Ambrose Bierce 2. Literary Analysis: Elements of Literature 3. Analyzing the short story: Types of Narrators 4. Types of Conflict 5. General APA Guidelines https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/
Why this is active learning- oriented	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.
Why this is collaboration-oriented	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).
Why this is problem-based	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.

          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.