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).

Aligning goals with my course

From a level-3 teacher perspective we need to focus on what a student does before/during/after teaching and to achieve that we need to use the proper teaching strategies as follows:                                        

● Deal with misconception to correct any misunderstanding before we start teaching new concepts; I start each module with the learning objectives (L.O) of it and what type of assessment & activities will be included in this module (unit) to explore these L.Os, then I go through Q&A session with my students where I ask them directly about some previously studied core concepts  that will be used to construct a new knowledge to correct any misconception and to know my students’ levels as some of them might need more efforts/help to behave in active learning way.    

● Apply interactive lecturing to make sure students get what we want them to learn during teaching.    Clicker, Discussions, Group activities are good examples in this area.  

● Built-in activities/quizzes/assessments/researches/project s within curriculum that reflects students’ understanding/applying/analyzing/evaluating/creating after the teaching

I am using a problem/project based teaching approach in my Computer Hardware & Network course that relaying on creating a case study scenarios and projects which emulate a real work scenarios which give an opportunity to the students to apply their knowledge, some of these activities are group based where each group can discuss & collaborate about certain topic and its application while some other activities are implemented individually based through simulation software and lab activities to ensure student’ understanding. Most of activities with marks and I use it as an assessment way especially the final lab project at end of each module (unit) which test students with the desired L.O (for example Module-1 final project is Construct a computer from physical components and recognize different hardware components and specifications which exactly aligned with the L.O.1)

I periodically give feedback to my students as we do a lot of Lab exercises where I can pinpoint to the area that both of us need to work it out together to enhance it.                                                                                           

This is really active learning model as students do some work in classroom/Lab other than merely passively listening to teacher; I think also lab activities/hands-on experience is a good thing in my course whereas students can measure their understanding (metacognition) and applying the concepts. Plus the assessment is really a reflection to the students’ activities and teacher’s intention.

Ideas for assessments

I think the whole idea here is to know what the students are learning, did they really understand what they have learnt, can they apply this knowledge in different contexts, and can they use it in constructive way?  

So we need ideas (ways) to measure (Assessments) the output of learning process. I would start with the classifications of assessments “Summative & Formative”.

How can we enhance the formative assessments? 

As you know formative assessments can provide “just-in-time” information on what students know or can do and I would suggest using the following ideas (ways) to achieve that: 

1- Case Study Quiz; ideally you can do it in interactive lecturing model where you can measure the understanding and applying it in real life scenarios. Actually I used this technique in my class where I present them a scenario for some IT company which has some IT requirements and let the students list how they can fulfill these requirements.(problem solving/critical thinking)                                                   

Tip: the instruction should also use many Case-study scenarios to cover the subject matter.                                                                                               

 2- Discussion board; where you can have verbal, written, and face-to-face discussions about certain topics, like the discussion board we have it in Moodle & BbVista.                                    

3- Group Activity; where you can have your class divided to groups and each group participate in collaborative activity, for example I assigned an activity to my class and I called it “Get the best Laptop” which depends on knowing the technical specs of PC parts like the CPU, RAM, Hard-disk, monitor,.., and budget. It was very useful activity (Quiz) for them as it makes them apply what they have studied to select a good laptop amongst variety of vendors.                                

4- Simulation tool; we are lucky as we have plenty of simulation tools in IT field those could be used to assess & train our students, for example I am using PC assembly tool where students reassemble the whole PC and it can be used as a training tool and testing tool as well. 

5-Researches: you can use this type to stress the deep understanding for students for the core concepts.

How can we enhance the Summative assessments?

As you know summative assessments tell us which students are having problems or developing misconceptions during the course or unit (module) and I would suggest using the following ideas (ways) to enhance this type of assessment:                                                                                          

1- Projects: Project-based learning is one of the greatest approaches that can be used with students as it prepare students to working environments through applying long term projects that simulate the real-life scenarios                                                                                                  

 2- Presentations: I think that one can replace the traditional written exams in IT courses in future,  it gives opportunity to the students to stress their deep understanding on core concepts as they need to present/explain it to audience (also anyone of audience can ask the student if she/he is not clearly understanding some point that cover by the student)                                                                                                                                  

3- Lab assessments: this is the favorite type for my students and for me personally, it really stress the hands-on experience for the students and it measure applying their current knowledge in solving problem from real-work industrial scenarios. 

Finally, I think that is fair enough that we teach/present the curricula in creative ways (not the traditional direct instruction lecture) using the interactive lecturing and project/problem based learning before we apply these ideas (assessments should be a reflection to the learning process).

 

What about your students

Learner could be a non-student or student or graduate person, old or young person, learner could be anyone who is seeking knowledge in any subject matter formally or informally.

The reasons for learning are varying from a person to another; for example, some people might be seeking knowledge in certain areas as it gives them the opportunity to have a good certification that would enable them to have a good job/salary/position in near future and learning process end for them with achieving this certification “Done, no more study for us. Said by this type of learners” (unfortunately; most of our students belonging to this type), another type would be the active lifelong learner who acquire knowledge to deeply understand the subject matter to apply it in different contexts.

Learner could be motivated by many things to make the effort in learning such as the enthusiasm to be the expert in this subject matter, competency with other learners, financial reasons, and applying this knowledge.

For my students; they learn the Computers’ Hardware-Software & Network, this course Contents introduces students to the essential components of a contemporary computer system, the learning outcomes of this course are: recognize & identifying various types of computer system and explaining the function of their components. Construct a computer from physical components and recognize different hardware components and specifications. Define the role of operating system and demonstrate the ability to install and apply the required configuration. Explain standard network models and demonstrate the ability to construct and operate a peer to peer network.

It is a blended course learning using an interactive lecturing and project-based learning. Students demonstrate what they have learned through hands-on lab activities and case study problem solving.

The assessment is mix of written exam (40%) which tests the understanding of core concepts and knowledge plus students’ projects (60%) which tests the ability of applying this knowledge in simulated real work scenarios.

 

 

 

Module-II Project

This is the time to put it all together in one document; here is the link for my project http://ahmad71173.wix.com/using-technology-in

I hope you like it J

Moodle Week-13 Task

Plagiarism

This article is really a valuable one. I think many Skills are already integrated with my course.

For example critical thinking is one of the important skills as the simulation tool (packet Tracer) can have many design scenarios (Solution-oriented scenario) with some errors in configuration (or missing configuration in some network devices such as routers and switches) to simulate the real working environment, students responsibilities is to find these errors plus completing any missing configuration, they need to make it working properly. We usually divide the class to five or six groups (each group is 3 or 4 students) and we assign to them some troubleshooting scenarios, the idea behind that is to let the students practicing what they will face in their future career, they need to work as a team in different areas to sort out all the problems and to make it up and running normally. During the troubleshooting cycle; students need to search internet and handbook or any other source, they start to analyze and evaluate the information and how to apply it to their scenario, which develop analytic thinking and application for students. From my experience; students really enjoy this type of activities (assignments/projects/..), they really get inspired by doing lab activities and simulation tools activities.

Understanding the big picture skill; this is the most important part in my course as it will help students on how to construct the knowledge from many different areas, I applied it using a mind map program which links the entire learning outcome with different learning modules. I have three different modules in this course (PC-Hardware, PC-Software, and Network Devices), the mind map was a helpful guide to students on how we can reach our final target which is building computer network (LAN) to share data and resources between different PCs by first building the PCs itself (Hardware and Software) and then using Network device (router, switches, access points) to connect these PCs to each other.

I think balancing between preventing plagiarism and learning to work together and construct knowledge collaboratively is really a challenge, actually we had a good brainstorming about that in Moodle discussion with many ideas like giving students assignments that fits with their competency level another idea is having oral or practical assignments rather than written one.