Generally, I think my ability to communicate is fairly good. Much of this is simply the benefit of being somewhat older, and of truly being an expert in the practice area in which I teach.
That said, I do have challenges, just as everyone does.
The first challenge I have is that I can spend too much time giving the students information from my career. In small doses, this is valuable, and that is the case in most classes. However, the first class of the semester has stretched longer and longer as I gave more detail on my background. As a result of the pedagogical session, I realized that I was really giving far too much detail. I was quite pleased to be able to give a greatly stripped down version for feedback at the communication session, and think I was able to hit a nice balance between giving some weight to my expertise, while not overwhelming with detail. I hope to be corrected if my perception of that is incorrect. :-)
My second challenge is classroom behavior. I tend to have an American sense for what is appropriate in the classroom, and for what responsibility the student has to create that environment. Specifically, the level of chatter that goes on in class would be completely unacceptable in the US, and that level would be enforced by the other students when chatter got to be too loud. I am still struggling with this, but I think I will do a combination of two things next semester to try to address this.
First, I will take some time during the first class session to have the class themselves come up with in-class behavior rules and consequences for failing to follow the rules. This has been recommended by many pedagogical experts. Many with whom I have talked comment that the consequences suggested by the students are usually more severe than those that the professor would have suggested. Also, since the students themselves choose these rules, they own them much better. And, finally, the professors find that the rules that the students settle on usually reflect those that the professor themselves would have chosen. :-) I will modify this *slightly* by myself suggesting three norms as dictated by either the school (1 and 2), or by my culture (3) that should be included: no use of cell phones, no use of computers, no conversations in class except *with* the class.
My final challenge is with student engagement and preparation. But that will come in the pedagogical session next week.
I have not found a TED talk, etc. for this; however, I did include information I have gotten from previous pedagogical experts about classroom norm setting. And I did find the idea that the students generally are more severe than the professor rather surprising. Nonetheless, I will find some further information to extend this, and reflect on it in my next entry.
Dear Chris, thank you for sharing all your reflections. I really appreciated learning more about you and your thoughts about teaching and learning. I have questions, comments, personal reflections to share (food for thoughts) that I compiled chronologically:
ReplyDeleteCommunicating effectively:
1. "‘and think I was able to hit a nice balance between giving some weight to my expertise’: as I said in my feedback, the impression you gave by focusing less on your career was that you sounded more approachable and the pieces of info you gave were relevant enough to state briefly your expertise in the domain (especially as someone from the field).
2. « have the class themselves come up with in-class behavior rules and consequences for failing to follow the rules”: I also agree this is a good way that some profs would find time consuming. I believe you do gain time in class management when rules are clear and fully agreed upon. You also create responsibility and self-regulation. Even our “half adults half teenagers” need classroom management. And when it is co-regulated, you do not spend so much time “punishing” deviant behaviors.
3.There is a lot of literature on class management even for higher education students.