Learning and Teaching Styles Adapted from the work of: Martha Stacklin, CTD Ed Price, CSUSM Barbara Sawrey, Chem/Biochem

1. Learning and Teaching Styles Adapted from the work of: Martha Stacklin, CTD Ed Price, CSUSM Barbara 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. 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? How Do You Teach…

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.

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?