{"id":39,"date":"2014-09-11T20:08:48","date_gmt":"2014-09-11T20:08:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.miracosta.edu\/asaxe\/?p=39"},"modified":"2014-09-11T20:37:24","modified_gmt":"2014-09-11T20:37:24","slug":"a-student-centered-or-teacher-centered-approach-to-learning-or-something-in-between","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.miracosta.edu\/asaxe\/2014\/09\/11\/a-student-centered-or-teacher-centered-approach-to-learning-or-something-in-between\/","title":{"rendered":"A Student-Centered or Teacher-Centered Approach to Learning (or Something in Between)?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ThinkingSmiley\"<\/a>My score on the POT beginner’s questionnaire was a nine. This score would indicate that I favor a highly student-centered approach to my teaching, and it’s true – I do! However, when I examine the way I actually teach my online classes I find that I’m not implementing as many constructivist activities as I apparently think are important. I find myself thinking that perhaps the constructivist approach is more of an ideal in my particular classes rather than something practical, and in some cases feasible. For example, I hear other online instructors raving about the group projects their students successfully complete. But every time I have attempted a small group project in my online classes, I have encountered the usual problems that coincide with small group activities: the one student in the group who never responds, the one student in the group who seems to do all of the work and gets frustrated, etc. I understand that there are ways to reduce these problems, and I think they’re wonderful in the traditional classroom environment, but I eventually decided it wasn’t worth the headache to continue trying to have my students perform small group work in the online environment.<\/p>\n

Large group discussions are another animal altogether. The heart of my online classes is in the discussion boards. In my discussion board assignments, I try to give my students options for finding content on their own wherever possible and to leave my questions open-ended. A primary objective for all college instructors, I think, is to engage our students in critical thinking. And for me, the discussion board is where the critical thinking is required.<\/p>\n

Regarding the textbook reading, I just have one question: Where can I get a TA to help me with grading my discussion boards?? But seriously, my interest was piqued when I read about having groups submit projects by using wiki software. I haven’t ever tried assigning a wiki to my students, probably because I don’t know how to do it myself. I’d love to hear if anyone has tried wikis and whether or not they’d recommend them for group work.<\/p>\n

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My score on the POT beginner’s questionnaire was a nine. This score would indicate that I favor a highly student-centered approach to my teaching, and it’s true – I do! However, when I examine the way I actually teach my … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":78,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.miracosta.edu\/asaxe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.miracosta.edu\/asaxe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.miracosta.edu\/asaxe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.miracosta.edu\/asaxe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/78"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.miracosta.edu\/asaxe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.miracosta.edu\/asaxe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.miracosta.edu\/asaxe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions\/47"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.miracosta.edu\/asaxe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.miracosta.edu\/asaxe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.miracosta.edu\/asaxe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}