Teaching in 2011

I have been a student and an instructor in both online and face-to-face learning environments.  I believe both types of learning have the place and their value in the educational community.  As how we learn evolves, the new technology will become increasingly important.  When calculators and word processors took to schools, schools accepted the convenience they provided their students.  As the technology provided more, for the most part, the education community accepted it.  Now we learn at a whole different level because of technology.   Sometimes I look at my struggling math students and I am not sure some of changes are good.

Change is inevitable.  Learners memorize less and are able to dig deeper into the concepts or idea.  This allows students to discover what is important in that concept or idea.  Allowing a student to discover their learning is, at times, very difficult for students to do.  My high school students think the teachers should spoon-feed them the information they need for their next test.  True learning has no applications.  When a teacher stands back and says why or explain, the student is often times lost.   They only learned what was given to them and didn’t make the connection to anything else.  However, my online students are required to read the text and work the examples.  They need to figure out a lot of the information on their own.  I am there to facilitate the learning and answer their questions.  I guide the discussion to make sure the students cover the concepts required.  The students make the connections to prior knowledge and to their lives.  Making the student do the work to learn has a great deal of advantages. 

How could ARCS have helped??

Our school system implemented a new electronic grade book program.  It was connected to our attendance and report card software.  We were told to start using this program two years ago.  Many people had problems with the grade book and couldn’t figure out how to work it.  In addition we had many teachers who would rather keep their grades in a hard copy grade book.  The resistance was great among most teachers.  This system was to help reduce our paperwork.  Many teachers just plain refused to use the system.  Others used the system unsuccessfully and became frustrated.

I believe this system would have worked better if our teachers had had someone supporting and training them on the new system using the ARCS program.  Our teachers were never trained on this system.  Therefore, there was a great deal of frustration.    We could have gotten the teachers attention by making sure they understood the relevance of the grade book.  If we could have explain how much this new program will lighten their load  (Driscoll, 2005).  In addition, our teachers needed trained on this new system and then they needed support to help them when they had problems.  Many times our teachers gave up when they ran into problems.  This support would have given our teachers the confidence to continue with the grade book even if problems arose.  After we saw the grade book worked properly and experienced how much easier this grade book made things, I believe the resistance would have been lessened. 

Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson Allyn and Bacon.