The Field Mouse's View

Today was the field mouse's view of things - the details. Based on our discussions of the last two days, the following topics were listed and voted on for further discussion:


As we were almost unanimous is wanting to talk about engagement, it was held over until tomorrow for the large group discussion. David reviewed each of the issues on the list and had the following words of wisdom for us:

• Engagement can be taught and learned - motivation cannot. It's all about expectations. Call on ALL of your students by name. Use index cards or a similar process to keep track
  
• Making it real - relevancy - it has to make sense. Classroom to reality, reality to classroom. Don't call it the "real world" - classrooms ARE in the real world. Use another term like "the outside" or something
• High Touch Through High Tech - social networking tools
  
• Story Behind the Students - understand and know your students, it makes them human. Get your students to reveal more about themselves (and maybe I need to do the same - reveal more of myself to my learners?)
• Evaluating students - creativity, not just classic grading.Frequent and instant evaluation
• (Un)covering the material - you cannot cover the material. Decide what is most essential and teach that. The rest gets discovered by learners. Simplify the course and gain learning (another AHA!! moment)
• Collaborative Learning and Collaborative Teaching - working together, small groups, pairs, classes, programmes, teachers/students
• Students' responsibility in the learning process - (or "Get a Life"). Learning goes faster when responsibilities are given. Student to student learning
• Presumed Guilty - lighten up - do the best you can, can't get them all

We then created a rigid limited structure schedule of workshops and broke into small groups to discuss the issues.


I attended the "Collaborative Learning and Collaborative Teaching" and the "Evaluating Students" workshops. Both were great opportunities to talk with each other about what works, and what issues we have. Somme of the conclusions that we came up with include the fact that we as NSCC staff and faculty need to be collaborative across courses, programmes and schools to be better at what we do. Collaborative activities for students are great, but also need to be relevant too.

As for evaluation, there were some amazing ideas passed around - peer evaluations, rubrics, weighing peer and faculty grades, eliminating grades to get away from grades and go towards competencies, and may more ideas that I cannot remember (sorry but the conversations are so engrossing that I forget to take notes!).

The incredible journey that is the GTS continues. This blog has been a great tool for me to pull together my immediate thoughts on each day's events, but I think that it will be some time before I truly appreciate the magic that is happening here. Bring on tomorrow!!...