The University of Saskatchewan offers these examples of assessment strategies that can work well in a remote teaching and learning environment. Summarize the author / presenter’s position or objective. Inquiry learning is question-based rather than thesis-based. Create a media literacy challenge for your course subject. Flexible Teaching Strategies. Spend time fostering good questions and projects. Professor of the Year award. This is an excerpt from a report, produced by The Open University in collaboration with SRI International, that proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education. Discovery generates better learning retention, particularly when assisted by timely guidance (Halpern & Hakel 2003). Description: A course with fewer than 50 students that meets face-to-face and includes some percentage of students participating remotely during the same synchronous session.Classes are recorded for asynchronous learners. Give students inquiry / research projects before presenting a full explanatory framework. Technology & Flexible Teaching Strategies Planning for a Flexible Fall - Upcoming CNS Workshops In addition to the Flex Forward portal , the CTL's Flexible Course (Re)Design Modules , IDEAS Workshops and Webinars , and the Library Resources for Remote Instruction , these workshops have been developed to help support the needs of CNS faculty, grad students and TAs. This provides a realistic experience of workplace constraints and collaboration. It can make students anxious or irritated,... Interactions in class are often skewed toward more confident students. Effective teachers use a variety of strategies and a range of methods, and they change and refine these over time. Other activities might be asynchronous, like readings and homework assignments. In introductory psychology, students could earn points for a “Top 10” list of the most useful theories or concepts in psychology, along with a brief explanation and personal example. Explain abstract content with practical examples or case studies. Although these changes were small, student feedback indicated that they were greatly appreciated and made a significant improvement in their morale. They do not teach the same way and use the same instructional repertoire year after year. has value. In a traditional course, some activities are synchronous, like listening to lectures or participating in discussions, labs and small group work. Critique a variety of examples of existing flexible learning and teaching options. Use these seven strategies to become more flexible at work. 4. In 2019, she edited a special issue of the journal Frontiers in Psychology called “Engaging Undergraduates in Publishable Research: Best Practices” (all 44 articles can be found online). Differentiated instruction. Investigate multiple dimensions of flexible learning. Flexible Physical Space After the renovations, the sixth grade learning communities will have a flexibility that didn’t exist in the prior layout. Having students interact with one or more peers can build community, increase engagement, and … Make sure you have a good benchmark understanding of what your students know, so you can give them appropriate challenges. Problem-, case-, or project-based activities that can be divided into clearly defined contribution roles and then workshopped/presented as a group. What is obsessive compulsive disorder? Incremental learning should build toward increasing complexity. A Flexible Teaching Model: A Seamless Pivot from Face-to-Face to Online Teaching August 24, 2020 Julie Sochacki, JD When I envision teaching this … Malcolm Knowles , a pioneer in adult education, popularized the concept of five teaching strategies for adults, which states that students learn best when: It goes without saying that sharing knowledge in the form of reading, videos, podcasts, simulations, lab demos, etc. During course preparation, it would be helpful to have these changes already in mind. Avoid making assumptions about who will or will not have access to technology and internet resources. Used across disciplines, this approach helps students learn to do scholarship rather than absorb it. Being … Designate time within the weekly workload for students to discuss and collaborate on the group activity. 53 ways to check for students’ understanding of course material, Lecture-Based Pedagogy and the Pitfalls of Expertise, Peer Instruction for Active Learning – Eric Mazur, Bozeman Science (introductory science) resources, Google Arts and Culture (includes maps of museums to digitally explore), Carleton University Cooperative Learning Activity Library, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Her favorite part of being a professor is mentoring undergraduates through the research process. Create a concept map connecting the new material to topics already covered in class. Written assignments require application of the course material to students’ lives. This can be done via Zoom or video recordings. Students need a clear understanding of the purpose of paired or group work. Give them resources and guidelines instead of step-by-step directions. Present recorded field work, subject-expert interviews, or sample project work. Students can benefit from your presence, enthusiasm, and engagement through direct instruction. The students’ work will generate questions, making them want the explanations you present afterwards. Are you wondering how to develop flexible thinking in children? Flexible teaching and learning involves delivery in a number of forms. Being quarantined presented students with many challenges, including issues with internet connectivity, family stress, financial hardships, increased distraction, low motivation and loneliness from missing campus friends and activities. Students formulate new knowledge by associating it with and refining existing knowledge. Inquiry is most effective when students have a degree of control over their work. Our goal is to reach the remaining and most vulnerable 5% of children with no access to education in the region and support quality improvements in learning for every child. I emphasized that they should study as hard as they did for in-class exams, but use their cheatsheets to organize their studying and as a “safety net” if they couldn’t remember a concept. Here are some examples of what you might include in these recordings: Demonstrate a procedure, project, or method of reasoning, Showcase examples of the kind of work you want students to produce. I decided against completely “open book/open notes” exams because I thought students would lose their incentive to study at all. I was really impressed with students’ thoughtful work on these assignments, and the students appreciated the chance to boost their final grade. Finally, to acknowledge the hardships caused by the quarantine, I provided additional opportunities for extra credit. Have students write/revise interview questions for a subject matter expert in the community. Guiding principles Learner-centered: Design courses that offer students flexible options to participate fully in the course. However, given academic dishonesty concerns surrounding online exams, I wanted to “level the playing field” as much as possible. 10 Innovative Learning Strategies For Modern Pedagogy. Motivate students by displaying enthusiasm for and showing the relevance of the material to real-world applications and students’ current and future lives. Flexible Grouping in the Higher Education March, 2008 2 Transformative Dialogues: Teaching & Learning Journal Volume 1, Issue 3 (Tomlinson, 1999). While there is no cure for the disorder, there are treatments such as … This is particularly important for challenging reading material or presentations. Structure a group project or experiment where each student suggests strategies, and have the group vote on the approach(es) taken. Ideally these steps will be learned in the same sequence in which they will be performed. Note: Explore the wide range of available media and Open Educational Resources. The motivations to learn evolve as you become older; and for an adult educator, teaching can be even more difficult without a basic understanding of adult learning theory. Student feedback was positive and they concluded that although cheatsheets were a welcome adaptation for online exams, they weren’t necessary for in-class exams. The communication of findings is a key part of this process. Full-service remote support is available to all PSU instructors through the Office of Academic Innovation. Five tips for flexible teaching during... © 2020 American Psychological Association. 2. Newsletter Blog About Us Join the Club For $1! Leila Christenbury. Suggestions for adapting your course without sacrificing course standards. Whether in person, online or remote, flexible teaching strategies allow synchronous activities to become asynchronous while still remaining engaging and interactive. General Recommendations Anticipate varying degrees of internet access and consistency for yourself and for your students. Interactions in class are often skewed toward more confident students. Many of these are adapted from Todd Finley’s 53 ways to check for students’ understanding of course material. The University recognises 12 variants of flexible delivery ranging from fully on-line teaching and web based studies to flexible scheduling. Flexibility can help you to respond to unexpected changes quickly, calmly and efficiently. You can read the full report, with in-depth explanations and examples of each learning … An overarching term for: non-formal education, accelerated learning, equivalency programmes, flexible schooling, alternative learning/education and complementary education, they can be developed at any level and respective subsector of education. Groups and group work are woven into the fabric of many classrooms. Two flexible delivery methods “flexible pathways” and “workplace learning” have been excluded from this Evaluation. Many of these strategies transfer easily to a remote learning environment. Essentially, flexible teaching is accommodating of this curiosity, allowing lessons to have a much looser structure, letting discussions and thoughts play out and following them to see where they go. A broad term used to describe the design and delivery of programs, courses, and learning interventions in such a way as to cater for student demands for variety, access, recognition of diverse learning styles, and student control over and customizability of the learning experience. Explore principles and processes of flexible learning and teaching. The Flexible Teacher. Since starting at Southwestern, she’s published 30 journal articles with 68 student co-authors, and is especially proud that 25 of the 30 articles were first-authored by SU undergraduates. In social psychology, students could watch up to three videos (including social psychologist interviews and/or Ted Talks) and write reflections. Field-based experiential inquiry lets students connect their work to a community rather than abstract values. It can make students anxious or irritated, but is very effective when students feel that it’s relevant and useful. What are its assumptions/preconceptions? One of students’ most common complaints about being quarantined off campus was that they had no structure and lost track of assignments and due dates. Have students post “One thing I understood well” and “One thing that’s still unclear” on a discussion forum, and then pick one student’s post where they can help on the topic. Collaborative written reports where each student in a group contributes one topic. In short, moving to online teaching doesn’t have to mean dramatic adjustments; even small changes can have a meaningful and significant impact on students’ well being without sacrificing course standards. Flexible grouping is a data-driven teaching practice.It puts students into temporary groups to work together for only as long as is needed for them to develop an identified skill or to complete a … In both my intro and social psych courses, I allowed students to drop an extra reading quiz and an extra written assignment (e.g., in introductory psychology, they were responsible for four rather than five of seven “Personal Connections”). Create a visual collage/video around the material’s themes, and briefly describe your choices. Have students find good/bad media examples and create a process for evaluating them. Then identify an opposite theory and how that framework presents a different perspective. List 10 key words from the material and write/record a summary based on these words. 3. This can be done via Zoom or video recordings. Have students pair up and peer review each step in a multi-step project for feedback and help (“workshop” each incremental step). We'd love to hear from you. by TeachThought Staff. Six Traits of Writing. Traci Giuliano (BA, psychology, University of Texas; MA, PhD, social psychology, UCLA) is a professor of psychology at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. They often feel more comfortable asking questions and can gain deeper knowledge by explaining concepts. Focus on introducing, roadmapping, sparking curiosity, and integrating new material with previous topics and course activities. If you avoid flexible teaching, instead sticking to your lesson plan and rigidly enforcing the teaching you envisioned for the lesson, you might get out the information that you wanted to. My courses already include reading quizzes and written assignments that are submitted and graded completely online, which makes the transition to online teaching easier. Currently, her research examines factors related to faculty-undergraduate publication. Hybrid-Flexible (or Hyflex) Implementation Guide. Viewing flexible learning through the lens of the following six pedological ideas - learner empowerment, future-facing education, decolonizing education, transformative capabilities, crossing boundaries, and social learning - can help instructors in the transition towards a more flexible learning experience, one that is co-created with students. To have the most impact, consider the sequence of your instruction in relation to students’ experience and prior knowledge. Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Sending many more reminder emails: after having students miss deadlines and exams (even those listed on Moodle before the pandemic), I sent email reminders before each class day. I found that decreasing the workload — but not my expectations for the quality of the work — reduced students’ stress levels, made the course more manageable, and motivated them to do high quality work. By the end of the day, participants discovered that flexible learning strategies provide pedagogical and logistical flexibility. COVID-19 resources for psychologists, health-care workers and the public. Use this list as a guide to set your learning goals for this topic. 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