Enhancing your teaching: Focusing on large groups workshop (+ Eric Mazur)

I attended this workshop today led by Priska in ED. Interestingly enough, she showed us a video featuring Eric Mazur (Applied Physics Prof at Harvard) and his interactive teaching style he uses in large lectures. I say interesting because two days previous I watched the 1.5 hour long clip (Confessions of a converted lecturer) on the PGCAP module website. I found how he engages with students inspiring, especially teaching a difficult subject like Physics. Using his ideas such as pre- and post-tests to see where the students are at, at the beginning and end of their learning journey provides good feedback to teaching staff to better unpack the critical areas of the subject content that students are strugggling with.

I also liked his idea of giving the students reading to do prior to coming to lectures, and then spending very little time lecturing during the scheduled time, but rather asking & answering questions and discussing questions and answers with peers. By using 'clickers', he gets instantaneous feedback as to whether or not students understand the topic being covered. This type of approach will require a fair amount of work in the development of the module as you need to design really good questions, but once you have a bank of questions to pull from, leading the discussions and facilitating students' learning should be easier and less time consuming.

As for the rest of the workshop, it was interesting that there was a person that teaches in education in the group that was fairly argumentative. He thought what students said about how they learned was total crap.... really?? Don't they know how they learn? He said that some students using 'learning styles' as a crutch or rather, an excuse... For example, "I'm sorry, I can't learn that because you are not teaching it in a way that I learn." I can see his point to a degree, but isn't it our job to teach the content in a VARIETY of ways to engage with the widest audience possible? I think that it is the role of an educator.

Through the discussions that took place, we talked about TEL in the classroom. The argumentative man said something about using Twitter in the classroom. I asked about what he was doing to engage the students in that way. He uses the module code as a #hashtag and can then address any questions/concerns/etc by looking at the comments/questions the students have posted and lead their learning in that way. I thought that sounded like a great idea. I will ask the 2nd years whilst in South Africa what their thoughts are on such an approach to Q & A sessions.