7. ways of learning

Teaching and Learning

Students teaching themselves and other students reinforces student learning. Our students are amazingly talented, and encouraging them to contribute to the overall course benefits everyone.

Learning Styles

Getting students to think about their learning styles and how they relate to others is important. Even if the quizzes are somewhat accurate, they help students understand that there are several key variations and being sensitive to these makes for better communication.

Students’ English Language Skills

As more of technology enhancement of the course teaching and learning takes place online, there may be few or no on-campus meetings. There is a lot of writing required for a distance learning course. Students’ work is expected to demonstrate college-level research, analysis, writing and paper formatting and will be graded accordingly. Students’ English language skills must be at a level where they can understand the instructions for the activities and assignments.

Prerequisites or Advisories should be for English Writing 100B and Reading 100 (or Language Arts 100), or English as a Second Language 24 and 72 (or English as a Second Language 4). If students do not meet the prerequisites, they will not be successful in a distance learning course. Please consider this carefully.

Students’ contribution to course development

Students are very generous with their time and their knowledge. Asking students to participate in enhancing or updating course materials can yield some great results. Ask them for feedback about assignments. Include assignments that require research to find new resources to update the course. Include optional or extra credit assignments that encourage students to “teach” something they have learned.

You could be the next DeAnza star

The DeAnza Media Center is available to help instructors create video or audio to enhance course material. This may be as simple as recording a weekly reading of student work with comments. Some faculty have developed extensive videos to demonstrate medical procedures and practices to prepare students for actual clinical work.

Learn more…

• Pedagogical affordances of syndication, aggregation, and mash-up of content on the Web
  http://tesl-ej.org/ej41/int.html

• High Tech Center Training Unit of the California Community Colleges
  http://www.htctu.fhda.edu/

• Theory of Multiple Intelligences
  http://www.edutopia.org/teachingmodules/mi/index.php