Recently in Intro to Economics, I've reverted to teaching, as the kids would say, "old school." Based on student feedback and performance, they've displayed an aptitude for succeeding in a traditional classroom environment. With this particular group of students, collaborative learning is a key to their success, and for them, that means having the opportunity to ask questions, engage in discussion, as well as have specific problems with each piece of new content.
To facilitate learning over the past several weeks, I've taught with a traditional textbook, assigned readings, and supplemented those readings with practice problems for each chapter. Students both succeeded with this method (they scored well on quizzes) as well as seemed more comfortable.
I attempted to supplement their readings with videos from Khan Academy, but students expressed the concepts to be too abstract to understand without having the opportunity to discuss the answers with either myself or their classmates. As this student group consists of mostly sophomores and juniors, they may just be exhibiting a developmental preference for hands on, concrete examples of complex ideas. While the Khan videos are rich in theoretical content, they are difficult for students to grasp if such a student has difficulty with abstract thinking.
What I've noticed that students REALLY need above and beyond anything else is practice. Based on the last unit, a traditional method of teaching was more readily able to achieve that objective. However, in my next unit, I'm going to have students use digital resources to prepare a collaborative project and teach a lesson to the class. I will post my next update with this unit is completed.
Teachers from The Meadows School in Las Vegas reflect on using Khan Academy and other online resources to enhance learning in their classrooms.
I hear you Adam. After trying just about every possible new education approach this year (flipped, blended, online, mastery based, self paced, etc.) I am coming to the conclusion that for the majority of our students, old school teaching works best.
ReplyDeleteAll of which goes against the kinder, gentler theory that has ruled American instruction over the recent decades. The customary way of thinking holds that instructors or academic writing should tease learning out of understudies, instead of pound it into their heads.
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