Eric Mazur – the story for me.

[ElizabethECharl]

From the 5 stories presented I initially selected: Eric Mazur, Sugata Mitra, and Stephen Downes and George Siemens.

After reviewing them I was more drawn towards Eric Mazur’s and Sugata Mitra’s stories. That is not to say that I am less interested in MOOCs because if that was the case I wouldn’t be on this course but I felt that the first two had points of interest that would have a greater impact on my teaching practice at this time.

The reason I find Eric Mazur‘s approach so powerful is because it seems to more closely align itself to the subject I teach – information and information skills. The bringing of “peer instruction into the lecture theatre” [1] results in students having to actively engage with the subject, assimilation to take place, and collaboration. The idea of posing questions along with small group work (2-4 in a group) with clickers or any other type/method of voting device is doable and scaleable; from delivering a session in a large lecturer theatre, or a workstation rooom, through to a room with just one PC. It would also work in an online/distance learning environment using perhaps ‘Blackboard Collaborate’ and break-out rooms for small group work to take place – then reconvening and sharing findings with the whole group.

My current practice is all about the transfer – telling how to do it, mainly because with large groups and very little time for hands-on sessions there or afterwards one has to cover as much as possible. There is also no time or opportunity to find out what their previous levels of experience/attainment are! It is also not possible for me to know how many of them actually move from the transfer to using what they have learnt. The variety of previous experiences that students bring to the class, further lends itself to this approach of having small group work – to get them to collaborate and share their experience before hearing how others have undertaken the task. That sharing of experiences and ideas can then be augmented by any guidance that might be needed to bring about better/more refined results before they depart. That is a powerful enough reason for me to choose this story instead of any of the others.  I am sure that if I was teaching a different subject/discipline my choice might well be very different.

[1] ALT ocTEL week 1

[ScottJohnson]

Hi Elizabeth,
I liked Eric Mazur too. Not a big fan of lectures yet he seems to be one of very few studying that delivery method to find out where improvements can be made. My concern is more along the lines of time shortage being pressed onto education as if somehow the universe was running faster these days. Mazur suggests that time is a factor in properly processing information taken in and I wonder if we can design around this by reducing content or picking global principals that fit many seemingly different questions in different fields? I often feel I studied many things so I could retain a few. Remembering 10% meant losing 90% and raising that 10 to 15% was a matter of two extra years to attain a loss rate of 85%. Maybe more time on math is suggested by this reasoning but it seems time has taken on too much importance in education.

[ElizabethECharl]

Hi Scott,  As due to time and student numbers more and more teaching seems to take place in lecture theatre – I was really pleased that there was a story that could possibly address this situation.  The processing, reflection and application/planning for implementation that is supposed to take place also requires thinking time.  However it is such a precious commodity and you are right that to allow for this to take place the content would have to be reduced drastically or one or two universal themes/global principles addressed instead! Trying to get the balance right is always very tricky.

[ScottJohnson]

Hi Elizabeth,
As someone who helps build online courses I suppose thinking about lectures is a betrayal of the team but I still like the determination that Eric Mazur presents in order to make the lecture form better. Even our online students have f2f labs and coop placements that include being lectured to and real-time limits on learning “events.” Some fields require quantities of information to be passed on and an optimal method needs to be discovered to facilitate that. Even, or maybe especially, online where students set their own learning time limits we need delivery strategies that sticky and not lost by the next sentence. It still could be very cool have a one-time course in understanding everything at once:-) Then the rest could be 4 years of exceptions to that rule Though I don’t think 4 years would be enough, so we are back where we started.

[Joseph Gliddon]

I recently read an article on flipped maths classes.  The students were tested Vs control classes (which hadnt flipped).

Although the flipped classes did slightly better on the test, it was not statistically significant (i.e. it could be down to random chance) but what was interesting was that the students were 2 whole weeks ahead in the curriculum after 6 months of teaching.

So flipped classrooms can actually increase the amount of materials that students can cover.

 

[Joseph Gliddon]

Here is my video response comparing Mazur with Downes (Flip with Mooc)

http://youtu.be/yvEo0Tq0i4k (its 2.30 mins)

Joseph

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