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November 10, 2005
You Can't Learn It for Them
This past Thursday and Friday, the Center for Instructional Development and Research at UW sponsored teaching seminars by Dr. Marilla Svinicki from the University of Texas. Svinicki is the author of Learning and Motivation in the Postsecondary Classroom, which I've not read, but I did go to both seminars and found them excellent. Her Friday seminar was entitled 'Helping Students Help Themselves' with the subtitle, 'You can't learn it for them." The room was jam packed crowded -- with a waiting list. Dr. Svinicki, whose appointment is in the UT Psychology Department, reported on recent teaching and learning research -- her own and others. Lots of interesting ideas.
One that struck a chord with me is the power of goal oriented study. Probably not a new idea in itself; the news is probably the emerging evidence of its efficacy. Anyway, one example is to ask students to read with a particular purpose in mind. Instead of an assignment like 'Read pages 110-127,' the assignment should be to use those pages to define certain terms, relate ideas in a concept map, solve a problem, compare and contrast several theories, etc.
Even if this is old news to us, it may be new to the students. They may be giving themselves goals like, 'Read the book for an hour.' The problem with that goal is that one can fully accomplish it and not learn a thing. Rather, the students should be given, or give themselves, specific tasks to accomplish -- using the reading pages as a a resource.
Posted by DavidK at November 10, 2005 07:26 PM | Permalink