Tuesday, November 27, 2012
SST Staff & Faculty Meeting on 11/27/2012
Projections for student numbers in Spring 2013: 9200 - 9400 students
Around 1500 students are expected not to return in Spring 2012 and this gap will be replaced by the new students joining GGC in Spring 2013. The total number of students in Fall 2012 and Spring 2013 would remain similar.
Top 3 majors at GGC:
1) Biology: 13.6%
2) IT: 7.5%
3) General Business: 7.5%
Projection for student number for academic number 2013-2014
400 additional students than AY 2012-13
No new faculty recruitment might occur for AY 2013-14
AY 2012-13: about 75% of credit hours are taught by full-time faculty and this number might fall in AY 2013-14 to around 65% due to increase in student count in STEM majors and not new faculty recruitment in AY 2013-14.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Building Active, Successful Learners (Thu. Nov 15 2012 10:30am - 12:00pm)
This is my summary of the presentation given Dr. Michele L. Simpson, professor emeritus at UGA. Author of many books including:"Teaching Study Strategies in Developmental Education: Readings on Theory, Research, and Best Practice"
The speaker presented us with a comprehension passage and made us answer questions based on the passage.
Fake Reading:
This paragraph did not make any sense to me but I was able to answer 80% of the questions via fake reading. This is common in students where students don't see the relations between the ideas presented in the passage but just look for few points that answer the questions. Instead of doing fake reading its a good habit to writing on the books and annotate their learnt thoughts in their notes and text books.
Beliefs about learning:
- Liearning is quick
- is easy
- is something that someoneelse does to you
- Learning is inherent property of a person
Characteristics of active successful learners
- Sophisticated view of learning that involves making idea-connections.
- Repertoire of strategies, there is not one generic method of learning
- Successful learners monitors their learning continuously
- Reflect, evaluate and plan their learning strategies after their exam results
How can we promote active learning in our classrooms
I). Communicate tasks explicitly to students
a task can involve a project, a test, a paper, a presentation. A lot of following things can be done communicating the tasks to the students.
A) detailed syllabus
B) Frequent quizzes, sample questions, several unit tests. Giving frequent quizzes helps students to get used to start learning regularly and this also helps in reducing the stresses associated with limited exams.
C) Provide students with model answers, pass around the previous years projects, showing the best essays, project reports from previous years, old exams with solved model answers also helps.
D) Provide checklist of things to students indicating all the things that need to be done before submitting an assignment to the instructor
II). Demonstrate the critical thinking processes
A) Provide subject related suggestions to student in between the first day of class and the first exam day.
B) Provide models of doing active reading, solving problem, applying equations in Physics problems and let students know how an experiences Physicist solves a given problem. Read aloud instructor's thinking process while solving a problem. Paraphrase the problem that you read, communicate the ideas, concept learnt to yourself, summarize your learnt ideas.
III). Encourage engagement and meta-cognition
A) Give students credit for writing the important concepts that were taught it a given class period.
B) Quiz with a card
C) Quick writes annotation
D) Think/pair/share technique: Dr. Wiegert at UGA started the class with aa question screened at the front and students were asked to solve the multiple choice problem. After a given time, the students worked in pairs and ask students to come to a consensus to come to an agreeable solution. In the mean time Dr. Wigert would go through the class to know the general understanding of students. their pitfalls and then addressed the same during the lecture.
IV). Nudge student's beliefs
A) Share the learning theory and show the research resulting graph data to inform students about ineffectiveness of just hearing and reading. I have this data plot and will put it here sometime.
B) Incorporate self-evaluation
C) Capitalize on testimonials of other students from the same class who has shown improvement in their grades during the semester.
Putting it together for attaining successful students
A) Making sure of the understanding the task given to students.
B) Tailor student's reading and thinking skills
C) Engage and monitor students
D) View learning of students through out the semester.
The speaker presented us with a comprehension passage and made us answer questions based on the passage.
Fake Reading:
This paragraph did not make any sense to me but I was able to answer 80% of the questions via fake reading. This is common in students where students don't see the relations between the ideas presented in the passage but just look for few points that answer the questions. Instead of doing fake reading its a good habit to writing on the books and annotate their learnt thoughts in their notes and text books.
Beliefs about learning:
- Liearning is quick
- is easy
- is something that someoneelse does to you
- Learning is inherent property of a person
Characteristics of active successful learners
- Sophisticated view of learning that involves making idea-connections.
- Repertoire of strategies, there is not one generic method of learning
- Successful learners monitors their learning continuously
- Reflect, evaluate and plan their learning strategies after their exam results
How can we promote active learning in our classrooms
I). Communicate tasks explicitly to students
a task can involve a project, a test, a paper, a presentation. A lot of following things can be done communicating the tasks to the students.
A) detailed syllabus
B) Frequent quizzes, sample questions, several unit tests. Giving frequent quizzes helps students to get used to start learning regularly and this also helps in reducing the stresses associated with limited exams.
C) Provide students with model answers, pass around the previous years projects, showing the best essays, project reports from previous years, old exams with solved model answers also helps.
D) Provide checklist of things to students indicating all the things that need to be done before submitting an assignment to the instructor
II). Demonstrate the critical thinking processes
A) Provide subject related suggestions to student in between the first day of class and the first exam day.
B) Provide models of doing active reading, solving problem, applying equations in Physics problems and let students know how an experiences Physicist solves a given problem. Read aloud instructor's thinking process while solving a problem. Paraphrase the problem that you read, communicate the ideas, concept learnt to yourself, summarize your learnt ideas.
III). Encourage engagement and meta-cognition
A) Give students credit for writing the important concepts that were taught it a given class period.
B) Quiz with a card
C) Quick writes annotation
D) Think/pair/share technique: Dr. Wiegert at UGA started the class with aa question screened at the front and students were asked to solve the multiple choice problem. After a given time, the students worked in pairs and ask students to come to a consensus to come to an agreeable solution. In the mean time Dr. Wigert would go through the class to know the general understanding of students. their pitfalls and then addressed the same during the lecture.
IV). Nudge student's beliefs
A) Share the learning theory and show the research resulting graph data to inform students about ineffectiveness of just hearing and reading. I have this data plot and will put it here sometime.
B) Incorporate self-evaluation
C) Capitalize on testimonials of other students from the same class who has shown improvement in their grades during the semester.
Putting it together for attaining successful students
A) Making sure of the understanding the task given to students.
B) Tailor student's reading and thinking skills
C) Engage and monitor students
D) View learning of students through out the semester.
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