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Show , Fall 2006 page 19 highest-level Chinese speaker in the corporation. The customer service representative sends an e-mail to the Vice President. The Vice President is upset that the information came to him and directs the e-mail to you and the denounced colleague and asks you to take care of the situation. The denounced colleague is angry that this complaint was seen by the Vice President. What should you do? Several questions can be asked about this case that would spurn critical thinking skills in business students, helping them to specifically plan for and deal with issues of this sort. For example: Where did the initial breakdown occur? How could the supervisor have avoided this situation? What can the supervisor do now to regroup? This model can easily be worked into collaborative and team-based structures in order to get more discussion of issues and solutions. Learner-centered Teaching And finally, learner-centered teaching is a broad model that adheres to the principle that the instructor be the facilitator and the learner steer the learning to incorporate the new information within his or her neuronal constructs. But won't this take the teacher out of the picture and lessen the quality of instruction? Isn't it just the lazy instructor's model of making the students do all the work? On the contrary, the teacher is still an extremely important feature of this learning model. In fact, the amount of structure and planning that go into a successful learner-centered course usually far outweigh its teacher-centered counterpart. The only difference is that the instructor is no longer center stage-she or he becomes the director behind the scenes and the learners play the central parts. MaryEllen Weimer, author of Learner-centered teaching (Jossey-Bass publisher, 2002), specifies five important points that instructors must recognize in order to see the changes that must be made for their course to become learner-centered: 7. The balance of power. Who is in control of the learning process in the classroom, the instructor, the students or the material? 2. The function of content: Does the material allow the students to process the information and construct their own knowledge? 3. The role of the teacher: Does the instructor act as a guide, allowing the students to work with the information and find their own understanding of the PHOTOGRAPH BY ELIZABETH TAYLOR truths of the material? 4. The responsibility for learning: Does the curriculum create independent learners who are able to search out the information and teach themselves about the material? 5. Evaluation purpose and process: Does the evaluation of learning give the students mechanisms to self-evaluate and to find ways to improve their understanding? As these models have shown, the most important aspect of active learning is to give the students this ability to take control of the information and to manipulate it into their own neuronal structures, helping the students' brains to do the work necessary for meaningful learning. More information on active learning activities and how to best implement active learning in the classroom can be found at the Center for Teaching & Learning Excellence (CTLE). Come visit us in the Sill Center, room 136. |
