Dalya! First I would like to say, well done on customizing your blog! This looks great!

I want to say I appreciate your remark, “[teaching is] not only a way to pass information to students, but rather a way to mentor their education and get more personal with them, allowing them to shine in their own way.” In my opinion that’s what teaching is really all about. Mentoring your students, guiding them to the final destination; they can take whatever route they please to get there.

I agree with your view that doubt needs to be embraced. Students have to learn that uncertainty is a key to creativity and to learning. And teachers need to structure learning experiences that create disequilibrium in their students and grading systems that value questions as well as answers.

I agree that the same learning style does not work for everybody. I think that it is also true that the same learning style does not work for every subject or topic. I think that individual students are capable of learning multiple ways. Some students figure out multiple ways to learn themselves and other students need someone to teach them how to learn. Teachers need to understand this and be able to remember that the goal is always learning and thinking–no matter how they happen.

We treat education as a mechanical system instead of a human system, we discount human variation and treat them as if they are all the same. This is not a way for people to excel. I think you should check out Tim’s blog post: https://tlfilbertblog.wordpress.com/2017/01/31/mindful-learning-important-but-critically-and-radically-insufficient/

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Great post, Khaled. Are you familiar with the SCALE-UP program in physics? (See https://www.ncsu.edu/per/scaleup.html for more info.) It is a version of the flipped classroom in physics. The VT Physics department teaches the intro classes for majors this way. It is pretty cool to go to the classroom and observe. Not much delivery of information. Lots of time spent working in groups to answer carefully selected questions.

I’m curious to know what was different about the world religions class?

Was there something different about that class [discussion vs. lecture]?
Did this professor teach in a different way?
Was the content vastly different from what you have been working with for your prior years of enrollment?

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I really liked this post, especially the value of extra curricular activities. When I was in undergrad I participated as much as I could in ASCE’s concrete canoe team. I found it difficult to manage undergraduate coursework, research, and applying to graduate programs with extra curricular activities, but we made concrete into a boat and it floated..And it was Star Wars themed.

This reminds me of Ellen Langer’s discussion on delayed gratification, why do we think of learning and education as “work?” She says that work implies pressure, deadlines, possibility of failure, drudgery.Where as play is other side of coin; it is energizing, fun, relaxing. Who says you can’t learn from play?

I loved reading your post, Iris! I think that in Ghana you were an excellent student and in the US you are an excellent learner. Good students are good at school. They do whatever their teacher tells them and do it well even when their teacher tells them to complete tasks that are not useful. Good learners are curious and self motivated ask their own questions and to take the time to find their own answers. You are good at both. Do you think there is a relationship between these skills?

I thought this post was great! I really like how you wrap the Mindful Learning/Anti-Teaching material back to last week’s discussion on Networked Learning. I like that you are saying that we can encourage mindfulness and curiosity with a classroom cohort without cutting into classroom time that ABET will come down on you HARD for missing a lecture on some particular (often mundane) topic.

Really great job; you should check out Craig’s post on Engineering Curriculum. https://blogs.lt.vt.edu/altmanct/2017/01/30/is-engineering-curriculum-in-u-s-universities-dead/

I, like you, have been able to memorize what I needed to and also been able to critically analyze and create new products. I don’t think that my education stifled my creativity and I wonder why some students get stuck in rote learning. Why do some people take what they learn and make new connections while others find abstractions difficult? There are certainly teachers who discourage multiple ways of knowing and learning, but in my experience, those teachers are the minority. As a teacher, I have found that some students needed me to explain how to study material that required understanding. I remember helping a friend’s child with her calculus homework. The child was doing all of the homework and spending hours studying, but still struggling. When I met her to help, I saw that she had spent hours creating color coded flashcards to help her memorize rather than spending hours working calculus problems. She did not understand that she was at a point where rote learning would no longer work. Some students need to be taught how to learn by thinking rather than by memorizing. It can be a hard transition, but maybe it is a step on the path to mindfulness.

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