At least in my department (Spanish & Portuguese), the idea is for TAs/instructors to use the types of design principles suggested in the Moreno & Mayer (2007) article: guided activity, reflection, feedback, pacing, and pretraining.
From a learner point of view, I feel like all of these things have helped me learn better in the past, but it's hard to tell how much of that is true and how much is just my perception: I might as well say that I'm an auditory-visual learner for all the empirical proof I'd have to back up my claim. Still, we know that in general, these principles help students learn, and I've had instructors use these principles in classes I've taken, and I have done well in said classes, so it certainly seems like they might have helped me (then again, I'm pretty sure most grad students have heard and internalized the phrase "Correlation does not equal causation").
Returning to the instructor point of view: which of these principles do you regularly use in the course(s) you teach, and how do you implement them? Are there any limitations that keep you from implementing one or more of the principles? Do you have other principles you (would) like to implement?
"In general", sure... though, I feel that the reason any one (or two, or three) modality (modalities) `works' (...) for a particular student is that the other modalities just bore them. Eh? I mean... some humans' attention is so dependent upon visual stimulus that any long string of lonesome aural information doesn't even get a chance of acknowledgement. If I were such a student, sure, I may say, "I'm a visual learner". Perhaps more accurately, though, I should say, "I prefer to learn visually."
ReplyDeleteAs for the design principles, I've never intentionally implemented one; the idea of such well-defined principles is new to me. However, looking back at my typical strategy, I'd say most of my lectures include (in order of decreasing frequency) feedback, reflection, guided activity... and probably pacing. Though, the boundaries are not so clear.
I say feedback in the sense that I will address common problems that I witnessed in the last homework assignment, or on the exams. I ask if anyone has particular questions, and we discuss the problems... in that sense, this probably includes reflection, as well. This is good to `seal the deal', so to speak. I suppose the `feedback' principle also is satisfied when I stop at a particular point in the lecture to ensure if everyone is following? ... in that I'm waiting for feedback, and will offer my own in response. This probably also satisfies the pacing principle - giving students a chance to take a breath and ask questions if desired.
Any thoughts?