“Neither students nor teachers are static entities, and this has direct consequences for both teaching style and course content. Failure to recognize the fluid nature of a classroom will likely lead to failure.”

This was my favorite part of this group post! How often do we see professors (let’s be honest – especially those that have been around for a while) teach the same exact material over and over again each year? The world changes, people change, and even scientific beliefs and ideals change. Therefore, what we teach in the classroom, as well as how we teach in the classroom, also have to adapt accordingly. A prime example of this is technology in the classroom. At the beginning of my undergraduate career, using a phone in class was typically deemed as unacceptable. Nowadays, technology in the classroom is often encouraged. I think my question to others would be: How do we influence or communicate with others that their teaching practices may need to be modified to be more “current” and/or more open?

For me, equity is more related to diversity. When developing a course, we have to research our students to figure it out how diverse they are. By understanding their academic skills, background, or previous experiences we can create a more inclusive course that fits students needs.

This is a great point! Assignments and learning that uses critical thinking takes more time, effort and mental energy than less critical thinking assignments. They also can take more time to grade, because not all students will come to exactly the same answer. And we should consider this when we are asking students to do critical thinking in our classes, give more time and maybe fewer assignments.

I missed this class but liked that i got to “eavesdrop” on your table’s discussion through this post. After reading about what you did in class I realized that I taught a similar Jigsaw activity in my class last week. I assigned small groups a soil micronutrient and asked them to design a cycle diagram for that nutrient, because most textbooks skip micronutrient cycle diagrams. They could use any resources they found and they had to explain their cycle to the rest of the class. I was really impressed by how students utilized information I gave them and then went looking for more on their own and how each group represented the forms and processes of each nutrient in their own way. Now, the students have access to a collect of micronutrient cycles that they all can use to study and learn. It really is amazing how much we can learn, share, create and explore when we (and our students) are given the opportunity, space and encouragement to critically think for ourselves!

“Why” is the first word in learned as a child. It is important for the high education and for the educator,” We should encourage students to interrogate all the time what they are learning.” It means, in the class, the teacher is not the only person to transfer the knowledge. Students also would display the positive and negative attitudes towards the information and ideas that teachers demonstrate in class. The voice of students are even essential for the teacher and peer to offer diversity in the class and promote the development in specific scholarly circles.

So much good stuff here, thanks guys! I was struck by the comment about how we can be tempted “accommodate their inconvenience”, and how this can “discourage them to be become independent learners”. It makes me think about how we ask (require) students to submit assignments. If we given them very prescriptive forms and formats, I think we are at risk of limiting critical thinking. In my class there is a big project with lots of calculations and the professor created a excel spreadsheet with drop down menus that the students just have to click and fill-in. But I worry that when they do this they don’t really understand what they are doing and why. While I does make it easier to grade, I don’t think I want to use this spreadsheet in my class next year because I want students to think through these steps for themselves.

I have the same experience Armani had with most of the students in my classes, who, as far I as I know, do not have any disabilities. But this type of behavior has prompted me to adopt several strategies for my office hours for help on problem set calculations assignments. First, I will not work with any student until they have tried the problem for themselves. If they show up without any work attempted on their own I will send them to the empty desk in my office or the table in the hall to work on the questions first. Second, I never tell students the answers to questions. I frequent start by asking the student what they did and why. Almost always, I find some misunderstanding or incorrect assumption or missing units in their problem solving approach. The third thing I do during office hours is, after helping them understand what they were confused about, I have them try to solve a problem and I let them make what I know is a mistake. After multiplying instead of dividing or using the wrong unit conversion in step one, they will get to step two and realize that something isn’t right. And then I can step in and explain what happened and how they can avoid making this mistake in the future. Most of my office hour visits last between 15 and 30 minutes, because it takes more time to let students do critical thinking, but I have seen significant improvements in student understanding and critical problem solving from one week to another after coming to my office hours. I have been thinking about how I can take these techniques and incorporate them into a classroom setting with 30-60 students because I see so much benefit.

Thanks all for sharing your experience in classes. It is fascinating, and I know more organized in different courses. I also like the highlight keywords. In my opinion, engagement is the most critical aspects of the art and design class. Teachers transfer the knowledge in course, but the students not only need to understand what the teachers educated but also combine with the individual educational background to develop for the important thing. It is a challenge for both educator and students, which to dialogue and engaging in both ways.

I really like the work of VT Engage, mainly because I love service. I believe that service work is a learning experience that will make the academic learning relevant and will enhance and/or develop social and analytical skills. Students can apply classroom content to real-world situations while meeting community needs.

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Thanks for your comment, Shiqiang. You bring up a valuable point about striking a balance between (graduate) school workload and a student’s home-life.
Courses that are designed for critical thinking do require a lot of time for students to be successful (and to get the desired effect/achieve the learning goals) and this often creates conflict for students. I can empathize with your comment on the sacrifice of sleep for school work! I do it, too. It’s a vicious cycle!

So in response to that shared experience (I’m confident that there are other students and instructors reading this blog/comment that can relate to this) what can we do to help our students with this conflict in their lives outside of the classroom? A commitment to the course material is expected from the students, but is there anything we can do to help support our students in their learning without driving them to compromise their health and wellness?

One of the techniques I’ve tried is to encourage students to TRY to complete all assignments if possible, but at the same time I advise them to not spend too much time because at a certain point, it’s not helpful to keep pushing if you’re to a point where you’re not taking care of yourself. We offer time built into the classes for students to work with us on their assignments and ask questions, and most take advantage of this opportunity. Learning different skills, such as speed-reading or other approaches to taking in material can help. But even the best speed-reader will need time to digest what they’ve just taken in and to also reflect on it–especially if there is a Blog or other required written component.

How do you cope with the demands of graduate school and the sleep deprivation? Can you talk more about your ideas on the principles of critical pedagogy and how it can be applied to degree/program requirements and expectations? That’s a pretty novel concept to me and I am curious how that might be integrated into higher ed.

Great post! I like Kaisen’s idea of “customized” learning. It is very important that we help learners build a strong foundation in the beginning, but once they have a strong base, we can provide them freedom to build on the foundation on their own and explore their interests. Letting students determine the topics of their interest for projects is a great idea to engage students and facilitate critical thinking.