I truly consider myself a student of the learning process and have had the opportunity to immerse myself in the literature via the Cognate in College Teaching at the University of New Hampshire. I’ve taken six graduate level courses on different teaching and learning related matters including one that is specifically tailored to teaching and learning within the field of Sociology, titled Teaching Sociology. Other courses include Issues in College Teaching, Classroom Research and Assessment, Cognition, Teaching and Learning, Undergraduate Culture, and Teaching with Writing.
I’ve also attended a variety of workshops that focus on research and issues related to higher education. They’ve covered topics such as managing collaborative writing, incorporating experiential learning, technology, teaching and writing, open educational resources, desirable difficulties, assigned reading, applying the science of learning in face to face and online courses and teaching and learning with multimedia.
As it pertains to incorporating empirically valid teaching methods into my classes, I allow my students to take their online, pre-class quizzes twice. Their final grade ends up being the average of the two attempts. This pedagogical decision does three things: (1) Takes advantage of the consistently validated
“testing effect” which claims that students do better on long term assessments (mid-term and final exams) if they are previously tested on it. (2) It motivates students to do the reading. (3) It provides immediate feedback to the student, as I set it up, so they are able to see the answers they provided and whether or not they are correct immediately after submission. This gives them the opportunity to rethink, reformulate, re-engage with the material and self-correct in the most expedient timeframe possible. Student feedback both in person, on mid-term evaluations, and on end-of semester course evaluations suggests that they don’t like the quizzes but appreciate the structure they provide.
I started my teaching philosophy statement by saying that I believe that learning is a cumulative, life-long process that can be challenging, nurturing and rewarding all at the same time. I ended it by saying that I strive to achieve balance between challenging and supporting my students. I want to focus on the challenging and supporting (or nurturing) parts of these statements because that is precisely what the literature on desirable difficulties claims is the most effective way to improve learning and long-term recall. This has been found using different settings, samples, methodologies and outcome measures. As such, it’s a very robust finding.
I often provide my students the power point slides before each class recognizing that the literature has shown that they do better if provided structured notes that they can fill in. Structured notes permit a reduction in cognitive load because they don’t have to focus all their attention and efforts on copying down the projected slides. Instead they can focus more intently on the instructor and their classmate’s contribution to the discussion.