Comments on: Training First Years to be Intentional Learners

By: Terry

Terry — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 14:46:06 +0000

Steve,
I am still thinking about this. I heard a talk at the educause conference about a course that was nearly student led, using a collaborative virtual environment to learn about Web 2.0 tools. The students did a beautiful job, and there were no grades! But they were seniors. The students themselves described the discomfort they felt at first, how they had to struggle to define things for themselves, but then the magic happened. They said they could not have done it as first years.
I really believe first years have been trained into submission for 12 years, and it takes a year of carefully designed work to help them shift their paradigm. But giving them more of the same (structure structure structure) won’t help them. Neither will just setting it up the way we want them to behave and then hoping. What is the in between? I think the key (or one key) is to set them up for cognitive failure in a way that gets them fully engaged (I explain it here: http://tdolson.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/making-them-curious-again/) a la Ken Bain. When we put motivation first, it seems to me, the stone is rolled away and a resurrection of curiosity is possible.

By: An APGAR Test for Students

An APGAR Test for Students — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 12:05:20 +0000

[...] consider how the five actions described in the questions might (or might not) help her learn. As Steven Greenlaw points out, this can help students, particularly first-year students, become more intentional learners, which [...]

By: Pedablogy: Musings on the Art & Craft of Teaching » Blog Archive » Response to Gardner’s Rock/Soul/Progressive: II

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 15:08:21 +0000

[...] down the type of analysis and other work that we expect of first years, but rather that we need to provide more structure, more scaffolding about how to achieve the type of [...]

By: Falling In Snow « Loaded Learning

Falling In Snow « Loaded Learning — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 05:47:51 +0000

[...] time learning about things I wanted to instead of doing the task at hand, at least I was being intentional about some learning heh. There are many conclusions that I have come to during the semester and [...]

By: Gardner

Gardner — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 19:06:06 +0000

Well, I want to be more optimistic. I did remind my students several times, but I didn’t want to nag. Perhaps that was not a wise decision on my part. There’s a way to remind folks regularly without nagging. Perhaps my real issue (love that word) here is that I want my students to find intrinsic motivation for the assignments I’ve given them. I understand that’s a tall order, but as you say, it’s the tall order we should be investing in.

The saga continues–that’s the beauty of this job, isn’t it? We can keep trying until we get it right, or closer to right.

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 14:51:54 +0000

I’m more optimistic. Jerry asked me if I had told the students that I expected them to read everything that any of us del.icio.us tagged ‘FSEM100j’, or to each others’ blog posts, to comment on same, etc. I couldn’t remember if I had explicitly. I really think that had I regularly reminded them to do these things explicitly, I would have gotten better responses. I’ve put it on my plan for next year.

By: Gardner

Gardner — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:36:04 +0000

Well said. I’ve struggled with these issues in my own FSEM. I even left a fairly sharp (for me) comment on a student’s blog when she complained I had not “told them what I want.” To her credit, she immediately commented back that I was right and she was simply expecting to be spoon fed.

That lesson didn’t stick, of course. This same student–a perfectly bright and polite person–has continued to sing versions of the same song, even once admitting that though she felt bad about something she wouldn’t be doing anything to change it. There’s a deeply cynical passive-aggressive behavior that K-12 instills in students, I fear, that gives them just enough self-awareness to be truly unreachable. That said, I feel, deep down, that students do in fact want the real thing, no matter what they say on their blogs or the course evaluation. I suppose I have to believe it. Now, of course, the question is: can I help that “real thing” to appear in our time together?

This time of year, I’m not sure what *I’m* able to bring to the table…. But that’s not unusual at the end of term.