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<\/a><\/p>\nask professor pedagogy<\/strong> is a twice monthly advice column written by 2022年世界杯中国小组赛积分 staff. one aspect of our mission is to cultivate dialogue about teaching and learning, so we welcome questions and concerns that arise in the classroom; particularly those from vanderbilt faculty, students, and staff. if you have a question that you’d like professor p to address, please send it to us<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
dear professor pedagogy,<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n
sincerely,<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n
learning spaces<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n
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- community: <\/em>i want to support more peer-to-peer learning and interaction through engaging discussions.\u00a0 i want to create a strong community of learning where students feel accountable for learning and synthesizing the content in creative ways.<\/li>\n
- movement: <\/em>i want my students to be at ease moving around the classroom, but have good reason to do so.<\/li>\n
- modalities: <\/em>i want to incorporate many different modalities of teaching and learning; i want to engage all of my students\u2019 senses (e.g., hearing, seeing, feeling, talking).<\/li>\n
- relevancy: <\/em>i want my own pedagogical practices and environments to seem relevant and similar to other (informal) learning environments (e.g., playing video games, messaging on facebook) in which my students flourish.\u00a0 i want to leverage new media and technology to communicate disciplinary content to my students.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
after you have identified your teaching and learning objectives, think about how making modifications to the classroom space can support achieving these objectives.\u00a0 below, are some ideas to get you started in making your classroom a vibrant and engaging place for teaching and learning.<\/p>\n
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- community:<\/em> get rid of the traditional classroom formation of desks in rows.\u00a0 move desks into groups of four to five seats so that groups will naturally form at the beginning of each class time.\u00a0 this will naturally facilitate conversations between your students and change the dynamic of you being the \u201ctransmitter of knowledge.\u201d\u00a0 if the same people always sit together, make a new seating chart and have it projected at the beginning of class.\u00a0 that way, as students come in, they will locate their new seat and take it without losing any instructional time.\u00a0 even though you now have your students facing each other, it\u2019s important to remember that everyone needs to be able to easily see and otherwise access any visual or material resources you\u2019ve located around the room.\u00a0 in other words, avoid having people\u2019s backs to the screen if you\u2019re projecting a presentation, or making tight spaces that require students to squeeze in and out of if they need to move for some reason.<\/li>\n
- movement:<\/em> design instructional activities that require your students to leave their seats.\u00a0 this will keep your students\u2019 minds and<\/em> bodies engaged and alert.\u00a0 put images related to the content that you are teaching that day around the room, and have them do a \u201cmuseum walk.\u201d\u00a0 as they circulate around the room, they can make notes about the images they see, and then discuss these observations after a set amount of time.\u00a0 if there are locations or artifacts around campus that somehow relate to the content you are teaching, give your students twenty minutes or so to go find those artifacts, then return to class and have a set of related questions to discuss.<\/li>\n
- modalities<\/em>:\u00a0 let\u2019s face it, a lecture delivered via powerpoint doesn\u2019t usually do much to entice the senses.\u00a0 some instructors are much better at incorporating evocative audio and video clips and images.\u00a0 but these presentations still rely only on hearing and seeing, and ignore the many other modalities of communication.\u00a0 worse yet, most instructors feel compelled to read bullet points directly from a slide while students disengage from extreme boredom.\u00a0\u00a0 but think about \u2013 did you not learn the most from either talking, writing about, or experiencing a topic yourself?\u00a0 think about ways to stop talking.\u00a0 make your students do the talking, the writing, the experiencing.\u00a0 design a learning space that has your students making and presenting original work or research.\u00a0 make it convenient for students to plug in their own laptops to project work they are doing for the entire class.\u00a0 allow room for creativity in graded assignments so that music, art, or even food, are incorporated and assessed.\u00a0 create a space that supports peer assessment and feedback.<\/li>\n
- relevancy:<\/em> by now you\u2019ve recognized that your students learn in all kinds of settings and activities.\u00a0 for example, they are watching youtube, they are writing blogs, they \u201ctweet,\u201d they listen to music, and they \u201cfly around\u201d to any location on the planet using google earth.\u00a0 (it\u2019s always a good idea to take the time to ask your students what they like to do outside of class.\u00a0 doing so will strengthen your relationship with your students, and make your instruction appropriately relevant).\u00a0 to make your instruction relevant to their lives means leveraging new media and technology (e.g., flickr, google maps, wikis).\u00a0 this could entail designing a learning space outside<\/em> the classroom that exists online, but actually increases interactivity between your students.\u00a0 creating a classroom space online, in addition to the one you have carefully designed inside, can serve many purposes:\u00a0 your students have yet another venue to share thoughts and interact, different modalities of communicating are opened, and you have more ways of assessing what your students know.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
i hope these suggestions work for you, and of course, tailor these to your own content area.\u00a0 i also suggest referencing these handy resources to keep you thinking about effectively designed learning spaces.<\/p>\n
http:\/\/facilitiesplanning.cofc.edu\/learningspacestaskforce\/lstf%20lit%20documents\/oblinger.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.thethirdteacher.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n