Yanliang, you are correct in a class with manageable number of students, we can think about teaching them in old fashion using black board, discussions and activities. it might be difficult in a big classroom. but I surely have an idea, that we will have the “best class that day” and I am confident. Ok why? I think I will engage my students and play a quiz in the class. It will involve class materials and also outside knowledge or it can be just a fun game. We can also play dumb charades with movie names and in-class conceptual terms. The class that will be different from all the other days and hope students will love that.

Yanliang I think I could understand you exactly, since I faced the same situation when I taught for the first time in US. Yes, you suggestions are really true. Talking slowly really helps. I too used to go to other instructor’s class to see how they taught. You nicely expressed your experience. I really liked your blog.

One small question: with which words did you make the world cloud? Is it with the words in your blog? Just curious about it…looks cool though.

I really liked the points you made. If the instructors are not treated with similar respect to research faculties, I think the creativity in teaching/assessment may not come. The good teachers must be given incentives for their good work as researchers. This will motivate new graduate students, who are really good in teaching to not just look for research positions but also instructor positions. The second point is correct, but I think it is really tough to come up with subjective assessment techniques.

Absolutely, I also think it in the similar way. From my childhood I have seen some of my friends, even me stressing with the fact that “the timed test is going to judge us”, which scares a lot of students. A student can be good in his/her skill (lets say in programming) but for the time constraint and the typical type of exam (write about the key features of a procedural programming?), students performs poorly and ultimately they get a bad grade. I think the assessments can be done in a much creative way without stressing students but rightly judging their knowledge and skills.

I think, network resources can be incorporated meaningfully in a classroom setting for STEM courses. Students can either explore internet to do research work about a topic, teachers can assign videos to students to help them prepare about a concept before class or to elaborate on a topic, or have discussion forum where the teacher pose challenging questions around the concept being learnt in class for students to answer. This being said, connected learning becomes effective when the facilitation is done is a proper way.
For this class, I liked that we can express our understanding through Blogs and each one can read others’ blog to understand their view point. But still I do not understand the pressure of replying to 3 blogs and what we learn out of it. I understand may be, that develops our reflecting power, but I like class discussions and reflecting in class, rather than reflecting to a particular blog. I have also seen people interpreting connected learning in various ways that if different from my understand. So is all the view points valid or not? Lets see…
Waiting for today’s class to see how these blogs and replies are connected in the discussion of the class and how it is used to clear/modify everyone’s understanding about connected learning.

I like the way you envision connected learning. Yes, Students can learn a lot and understand their courses better if they understand the connections between them, which is often lacking.Interdisciplinary knowledge also help students to appreciate the contribution of other disciplines, open their minds and assist them in learning how interdisciplinary knowledge can be applied, while solving disciplinary problems. This connected learning by connecting disciplinary courses and non-disciplinary courses will be advantageous to students.