A jump into teaching!

This week, we had our first teaching session. Competence goals for this session were that we understand the meaning of learning in higher education and also understand how interaction affects learning. Wednesday’s webinar focused on pedagogical planning and group teaching sessions had been divided into four topics:

1: How do the official documents and regulations affect the planning of the teaching in your vocational field? Where can you find all this information?  

2: What are the theories of learning and how do they affect the planning of the teaching in your particular field and in competence-based education? Choose at least one learning theory that you use in your teaching task!  
 
3: How does student centered approach, personalization and competence-based system affect the planning?  Can you imagine different scenarios? 

 4: What is a pedagogical script? How can that help you promote learning in a classroom, on the job learning and virtual settings? 

Pedagogical script and its benefits in promoting learning in different environments

My group (Carlos, Majid, Myriam, Veronica) had the pleasure of working on topic four. We started the session planning by reading through the resource material Kimmo and Riikka had provided. While the Handbook for teachers for example had relating discussion, we also had to search for extra material while planning the session.

While searching the internet for possible sources on pedagogical script I noticed that majority of the articles and models referred to online learning. Perhaps this is not such a big surprise as my experience is that after the popularity of online courses has increased, also the downfalls from the lack of pedagogical planning have become more clear.

We found a nice, simple and clear model for a pedagogical script from Jussila and Kupila (Ajatuksesta toteutukseen pedagoginen käsikirjoitus Pauliina Kupila & Mari Jussila Helsingin yliopisto, opetusteknologiakeskus - PDF Ilmainen lataus (docplayer.fi) and decided to introduce this in our teaching session.

 

The model, like all of the pedagogical script models, starts with 

1. Defining learning outcomes and Course content that leads into Choosing sources and course material 
2. From the students point of view, teacher needs to decide what is the best way for the students to learning, what will be the best working methods and learning tasks
3. Teacher also has to decide what is her role. What are the best teaching methods for the given course content, how to best guide the students and how to assess the learning.
4. Especially in online setting, it is important to acknowledge, that only after the first three parts of the model are clear, it is time to choose the best digipedagogical tools.
5. And throughout the planning, one has to consider the teacher's and students' time management and workload .

 

After we had introduced students into the theory behind the pedagogical script, we offered them a chance to practice the scripting themselves. We chose jamboard-platform for this group activity. Rather than giving students a blank paper, we used a ready template that was modified from beforementioned Kupila&Jussila model. Each student had his/her own page in jamboard and the activity was simply to work out a pedagogical script for a simple learning outsome : How to catch a butterfly? We wanted to use a subject where none of the students were experts (or so we assumed). We gave students 10 minutes to work on the script and the initial feedback was that the activity was well received and enjoyable. Below the scripting result from one of the students.

 

Following the scripting activity, we moved onto the second topic of the day that was understanding the benefits from using the pedagogical script, particularly in classroom, on-the-job learning and online learning environments. We did a brainstorming session with padlet and while the platform itself was easy to use, I had to guide the students with suggestions in this part of the session. In summary we agreed that pedagogical scripting improved learning outcomes in all environments as

• in a classroom setting, with a good planning, teacher can activate students rather than plain lecturing that often results in boredom
•  on-the-job-learning is often stressful for a student and this could be eased if teacher scripted in some work-visits. Also, clear guidelines concerning the on-the-job learning are needed in order to meet the learning outcomes
•  in online environment careful planning seems to be even more important than in classroom setting. Especially the guidance and how this is planned throughout the course is important and can make a huge difference in the learning outcome.

Other topics of the day: Official documents and teaching, Learning theories and planning; Student centered approach and planning

All of teams had a different learning topic to teach and all of the teams also used quite a different approach into teaching. Below a short summary on the subjects and reflection on the teaching sessions:

 

Group one: Official documents and their effect on planning of teaching. This group had decided to dive straight into action and had prepared practical cases for students to tackle. We were all given one case and were asked to familiarize ourselves with the case and also the legislation governing the vocational education. The task was explained only orally and it made me wonder whether a written summary of the task would have been a good addition. It certainly seemed that for some of the students the task was slightly unclear. Furthermore, some students prefer to read text on paper, rather than on screen, so perhaps laws&regs could have been given to students prior to the lesson? Nevertheless, it was a great introduction into the laws and regulations governing the vocational education field and reinforced the idea that teacher must be clear what are the learning outcomes for a given course but also think how the student can demonstrate competence.

Group 2: Learning theories and impact on planning. At the start of the session we had quite a long and detailed introduction into several learning theories. I felt that it would have been beneficial for the learning if there had been more concentration on the differences between the theories. Even though I am familiar with the theories from previous studies, the kahoot-game following the theory session was still quite difficult! Also, the impact on teaching planning was a little vague. What I really enjoyed was the video clip that showed the teacher as a facilitator and student as an active thinker and discusser rather than silent listener. This clip was very thought provoking and I think we ran over time because this generated so much discussion among us students. It was however good to acknowledge that this kind of approach into teaching does not work on all of the subjects and also not with all of the students.

Group 3: Student centered approach and impact of planning. This group had a great first slide in their presentation (moving image!) and immediately got my attention. Also the practical, real life case at the beginning of the session made the topic very clear, even though with the subject matter being mathematics, this might have been difficult for some of the students (and teachers!). Group had gathered a lot of information on this topic on the slides and certainly for me the end results was quite exhausting. However, the point of the topic was clear from the start of the lesson and that is also what I remember following the session. 

What to take onto the next teaching session:

• Double and triple check that all the tools work and have a plan B in case something goes wrong. For some reason the video link did not work in my session (after testing this several time beforehand). But is the link into our video that was prepared with the idea of engaging students into the these of the day. 
  
  
• Timing seemed to work nicely as we had a trial run before so this is good to do again prior to next session.
• Our team work was great. I hope that everybody had a chance to give their opinions and also to contribute on the planning. Despite the time differences we found a slot that fit everybody’s diary and this definitely eased the planning.
• I had some feedback that using slides and explaining the theory was boring.  Given that students were from variety of back grounds, we felt important that everybody was clear on the theoretical aspects before moving onto the practice. We also opened the session by asking students to tell us about their teaching backgrounds and their familiarity with pedagogical script and it was clear that this was not clear to all, at least as a term. We had made a conscious effort of not using too many slides and only using key words in the slides. I have to stand by this decision as my experience is that hearing and seeing is better than just hearing, even if it is a question of few key words. We are obviously different learners but also in a multicultural environment it might be better to have more than one sense engaged in learning.