Monday's workshop
Whew! After a summer of being able to do my work in my own good time, being back in the groove has been particularly hard. I haven't walked since Sunday and can really feel it.
But I said that I would write something about the 6hr workshop I attended on Monday. The faculty have been engaged in conversations about Deep Learning for the last year. Generally as it has been explained to us, I would characterize this as higher order learning at the Bloom's levels of synthesis and application. Many of us in the college of ed said 'bout time and were happy that the entire university was going to work on improving their teaching. Some of us even accepted an open invitation to a workshop conducted by Dr. Dee Fink (Uof Oklahoma). This is the same person who conducted the workshop on Monday. He is a good presenter (lots of energy and jazzy PowerPoint slides) and included theories of learning and teaching that have a solid research base. He modeled good teaching --- lecture mixed with whole group and small group work. All in all, not a bad day --- except those of us in the COE are hard put to say that we learned anything. O, there was that one thing that was the first thing mentioned by each of my colleagues the next day. It is worth an entire post so I will get back to it soon. Here is a tease --- teaching one course that we have taught before should be considered as taking 20% of my work time and this is based on a 45 hour work week.
Anyhoo, the reason for all of this is that during one of the small group discussions a fellow faculty member from another college mentioned learning styles and followed up with the fact that they give the Meyers-Brigs to all of the majors in her content --- and that the result of the test indicate they are all either visual or auditory learners --- so that department uses that to plan lessons and assignments for their majors. Okay, I did over react and regret my sort of OMG attitude and said so later. I did ask her what research she had that led the department to believe this makes any difference. She had none but explained that she is totally unable to learn by listening. This is where I grab hold of myself and shut up. Not the time or place to continue and everyone else at the table was visibly uncomfortable. Sometimes we in the COE who are concerned about the reliance on this learning styles feel like pilgrims wandering in the desert, but recently I have been so happy to see others on the blogsphere take up this cause. For some interesting reading try these bloggers who want to clear up these mis-conceptions. First, a fella Special Edder, John Wills Llyod discussed lack of research on 5 July , then I found this challenge by Will Thalheimer on 4 August, and finally Liz Ditz 16 August I am feeling better now. . .but what to do about this idea floating around here? Any suggestions --- other than mind my own business, I can't let go. Many thanks to John, Will, & Liz for keeping us honest! Will, i bet your money is very safe.
