Feedback on the selected strategy

How effective was the selected teaching strategy?

I think the selected strategy that I have talked about it in my previous post was really effective especially after I compared its output with the contents of the given article “From Teacher to Facilitator” http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/74/from-teacher-to-facilitator. this strategy achieved students’ engagement in a real working environment which leverage their knowledge in computer’s hardware & software through the number of technical problems they have seen their which develop students’ critical thinking skills

How did I measure its effectiveness?                            

Two evaluation criteria were applied; first one was during the class as a group discussion was going on about participating in IT help desk and connect what they have learnt there with what was covered by curriculum in that area (computer’s hardware/software) and I did enjoy the feeling of being a facilitator, second evaluation criteria was a simple verbal quiz.
 

What is the down side of this strategy?

From IT help desk manager’s perspective; it might be another commitment and work load for her as students are special trainees whom need a special attention (attendance, motivating students, …..).

From students’ perspective; sometimes IT help desk will be very busy with customers and students might be affected by doing extra work; sometimes IT help desk will have less traffic and students might be affected (less things to do).

From facilitator’s perspective; more administrative work to be done in coordination of this activity with the IT help desk & students plus the probing of students’ attendance & performance at the IT help desk from time to time.

Am I willing to do it again?

Sure. I think this approach is like the flipped classroom in the way that students watch/observe the contents in real work scenarios (IT help desk in this case) and then do the homework in class through the group discussion and interviews with the facilitator.  

Trying a new teaching strategy

I did try a new strategy with my students in Computer Hardware & Networking course by sending them in groups to our IT Help desk (I really appreciate that initiative from our IT Service Dept.) to practice some concepts before I teach it, for example they learn from this working environment the different types of hardware and software used in computer by observing/practicing number of problem solving scenarios that is happening on daily based, that really helped me a lot when I was teaching these terms and concepts during the class. Plus students’ feedback was really good about this experience.

There were many tricky points in this strategy:

1-      I got my IT dept. chair approval & IT service Manger approval.

2-      5% of the total marks were given to this strategy (activity).

3-      A dedicated time need to be agreeing with IT Help desk.

4-      Attendence was taken by IT Help desk representative.

5-      You need to predefine which part of the curriculum will be covered by this strategy. (In my case it was only one chapter).

6-      It is a good strategy to warm-up students but you need to have a dedicated computer lab to pursuing on what was built during their IT Help desk engagement.

7-      It needs a lot of coordination to make it happen smoothly.

Another strategy that I would recommend for IT students is engaging some of them with any new IT project that is related to their discipline that is happening in our college (for example last semester we had engaged some students with our College wireless LAN project deployments).

Finally; I think learning by doing is the greatest teaching approach whenever it is doable.

Teaching Strategies

Let’s start with SOLO taxonomy; students are classified into five categories; first category is pre-structural student who do not have the basic information about the subject matter and I think Direct Instructional (DI) could be useful in this situation with some technology tools/techniques to present the curriculum, this could be applied for example in teaching English as a foreign language for our foundation student, this approach would be effective for providing information or developing step-by-step skills; second and third categories are uni-structural/multi-structural  student who have the basic information but from one angle or multi angle but only as a Surface Understanding as the student is not being able to put this information together to form a solid knowledge and I think interactive lecturing could be useful in this case to increase the students engagement inside the classroom in order to foster deeper understanding of the course content through group discussion and practice by doing; fourth and fifth categories are relational/extended abstract student who have the deep understanding in the subject matter and I think Problem/Project based (PBL) approach could be used to develop to achieve the deep understanding and build the critical thinking skills needed in real life environment.             

Personally; I would go with a combination of the above approaches (DI, PBL, and Interactive learning)   as we have different levels of students in our classroom and to align ourselves with a level-3 teacher who is concern is about what a student does and the product or the learning outcome of the teaching.

Regarding Bloom’s taxonomy; I think a combination of PBL & interactive lecturing would be an essential teaching approaches in any classroom if we want our students to gain the creating, evaluating, analysis, applying, and understanding skills; I think that Direct Instruction (DI) could be useful in remembering and achieving understanding.

Regarding Assessments; for formative assessments (just-in-time information on what students know or can do) I would go with Case study, group activity, and researches which a reflection to the teaching approaches using PBL & interactive lecturing (also teacher & students can pinpoint to the concepts those are not clear yet or misunderstood (metacognition)); for summative assessments (reflect students understanding during the course or a unit (module)) I would go with projects which a reflection to PBL teaching approach as exam should test the ability to explain, relate, prove, and apply (same as the teacher intention).