1

Learning and Teaching Styles

Adapted from the work of:Martha Stacklin, CTD

Ed Price, CSUSMBarbara Sawrey, Chem/Biochem

2

Who Are UCSD Students?

Total Women: 11,209 (52.4%) Total Men: 10,165 (47.5%) Total Undergraduates: 21,374 Mean Freshmen GPA: 3.94 Mean SAT: 1253

Fall 2006

3

Who Are UCSD Undergraduates?

Ethnicities Asian 37% Caucasian 32% Mexican-American 8% Filipino 5% Latino 3% African-American 1% Native-American <1%

4

Who Are UCSD Undergraduates?

Top Majors by Department Biology 18% Economics 9% Psychology 7% MAE 5% BENG 5% Chem & Biochem 5% CSE 4% Comm 3% ECE 3%

5

Where Do Our Freshmen Come From?

Los Angeles 47% San Francisco 22% San Diego 14% Other CA 11% Out of State 4% Other Countries 2%

6

Who Are They In Class?

Prepared with Background Knowledge?

Active, Independent, Hands-On, Collaborative, etc., Learners?

Indifferent? Graduate School Bound? Motivated?

7

How Do You Teach… reluctant

students? scared students? lazy students? entitled students? high achieving

students? domineering

students?

careless students? obnoxious

students? silent students? perfectionist

students? under-prepared

students? your dream

student?

8

Teaching Formats

Lecture Discussion Problem-Solving Group Work Office Hours Lab

9

What’s the Goal of Teaching?

Content - conceptual Content - quantitative Process - how to think Science - what it is, how it’s done

10

What’s the Goal of Teaching?

LEARNING!

11

Shifting Perspective…

From …

Instructor to student Teaching to learning “Sage on the stage” to

“Guide on the side”

12

Theoretical Frameworks of Learning

Two Extremes:

Information Processing

Constructivism

13

Information Processing Heir of behaviorism. Mind as computer (input –> output). What happens in between is not the

interesting part. Treats students as blank slates. Gave us understanding of working

memory capacity and chunking.

14

Information Processing

Is it so ineffective?

15

Constructivism Knowledge is not passively received,

but is actively built up by the learner. Teacher can’t pass knowledge to

learner. Teacher is a facilitator, not

transmitter. Recognizes that students come with

prior knowledge.

16

The Constructivist Classroom

Less telling. More questions and discussion. Teacher needs to be good listener. Accepting of alternative schemes. Not everything can (or need be)

constructed from scratch.

17

The Constructivist Classroom

Need to think on your feet. Need to be a good manager and

negotiator. Need to draw out prior

knowledge. Epistemological obstacles should

not be avoided or short-cut.

18

19

Thinking about learning

Clearly the point of education is for students to learn something

Shouldn’t we focus on learning? What goes on inside students’

heads? How do students learn? How do we know they’ve learned

what we’ve taught?

20

Thinking about students—Types and Styles

Independent Dependent Avoidant Collaborative Competitive Participant Entitlement

21

Learning Style Preferences

Modalities: Visual Auditory Reading & Writing Kinesthetic

22

More from cognitive science about student learning Knowledge organization is important

Pre-conceptions matter

Active engagement is effective

Learning is incremental

Practice & spiraling back help

Epistemological beliefs play a role

23

Teaching for learning

Plan instruction based on student learning (and content) Concrete before abstract Concept before name

Acknowledge students’ preconceptions

Get students active during class

24

Facilitating Learning

Students will construct understanding if instructors create a classroom environment

where students are actively involved in learning process learn to monitor their learning learn from each other

instructors motivate and engage students by Choosing examples that interest them Challenging them and letting them participate

25

Some Student Perspectives on Good

Teaching

Enthusiasm and passion Rapport Intellectual challenges Clarity and organization Scholarship

26

What Do UCSD’s Best LAB TAs Do?

provide warning signs to look for highlight what’s problematic highlight procedures, connect things--

ideas, lecture to lab, lab to the real world highlight what could go wrong talk about their own work & experience let students figure it out (within reason)

27

What Do UCSD’s Best SECTION TAs Do?

put current material in perspective with the course explain how concepts apply to the class and how

they apply to the real world very organized and clearly explain prepared with problems for students to do provide an outline give lots of opportunities to ask questions have a good sense of whether students understand

or not show alternative approaches to solving problems never get frustrated

28

Scenarios: WHAT DO YOU DO?

SECTION: You’ve planned a great problem-solving lesson for your students involving the homework problems. Unfortunately, it seems that very few of them have even attempted to solve the problems. What do you do?

29

Scenarios: WHAT DO YOU DO?

Although you’ve planned a reasonable agenda, you find that you consistently run out of time to cover everything. What do you do?

You ask your students a question, and no one answers…ever. What do you do?