Learning and Teaching Styles

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

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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

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Who Are UCSD Undergraduates?

• Ethnicities
• Asian 37
• Caucasian 32
• Mexican-American 8
• Filipino 5
• Latino 3
• African-American 1
• Native-American lt1

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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

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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

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Who Are They In Class?

• Prepared with Background Knowledge?
• Active, Independent, Hands-On, Collaborative,
  etc., Learners?
• Indifferent?
• Graduate School Bound?
• Motivated?

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How Do You Teach

• careless students?
• obnoxious students?
• silent students?
• perfectionist students?
• under-prepared students?
• your dream student?

• reluctant students?
• scared students?
• lazy students?
• entitled students?
• high achieving students?
• domineering students?

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Teaching Formats

• Lecture
• Discussion
• Problem-Solving
• Group Work
• Office Hours
• Lab

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Whats the Goal of Teaching?

• Content - conceptual
• Content - quantitative
• Process - how to think
• Science - what it is, how its done

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Whats the Goal of Teaching?

• LEARNING!

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Shifting Perspective

• From
• Instructor to student
• Teaching to learning
• Sage on the stage to
• Guide on the side

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Theoretical Frameworks of Learning

• Two Extremes
• Information Processing
• Constructivism

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Information Processing

• Heir of behaviorism.
• Mind as computer (input gt output).
• What happens in between is not the
  interesting part.
• Treats students as blank slates.
• Gave us understanding of working memory
  capacity and chunking.

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Information Processing

• Is it so ineffective?

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Constructivism

• Knowledge is not passively received, but is
  actively built up by the learner.
• Teacher cant pass knowledge to learner.
• Teacher is a facilitator, not transmitter.
• Recognizes that students come with prior
  knowledge.

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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.

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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.

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Thinking about learning

• Clearly the point of education is for students to
  learn something
• Shouldnt we focus on learning?
• What goes on inside students heads?
• How do students learn?
• How do we know theyve learned what weve taught?

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Thinking about studentsTypes and Styles

• Independent
• Dependent
• Avoidant
• Collaborative
• Competitive
• Participant
• Entitlement

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Learning Style Preferences

• Modalities
• Visual
• Auditory
• Reading Writing
• Kinesthetic

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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

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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

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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

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Some Student Perspectives on Good Teaching

• Enthusiasm and passion
• Rapport
• Intellectual challenges
• Clarity and organization
• Scholarship

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What Do UCSDs Best LAB TAs Do?

• provide warning signs to look for
• highlight whats 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)

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What Do UCSDs 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

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Scenarios WHAT DO YOU DO?

• SECTION Youve 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?

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Scenarios WHAT DO YOU DO?

• Although youve 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
  answersever. What do you do?