Blending Pedagogy and Technology for Deep Learning

Technology: a tool, not a pedagogy

• Technology is a tool—like chalkboards, paper and pencils are tools.

• It is not a pedagogy. It cannot replace traditional pedagogy

• Use it to solve problems you experience in your traditional classroom teaching.

• Adapt it to help you achieve your course goals.

Surface learning vs. Deep learning• Surface learning

– Focuses on content without trying to relate it to anything else – Emphasizes rote memorization– Students are aiming simply to avoid failing– Is instructor-centered

• Deep learning– Focuses on underlying meaning of content– draws connections between new/old knowledge and content in

various courses/disciplines– Applies content to ‘real life’– Requires integration and synthesis of content– Is student-centered

Activities to promote Deep Learning

• Ensure students are constantly engaged in the classroom – Use clickers for constant, low-stakes assessment

activities to check student understanding– Use laptops in the classroom for ‘one minute

papers’ or ‘muddiest point’ questions and instead of submitting them individually (in isolation), submit them to a forum in Moodle so other students can comment/help answer the questions

Activities to promote Deep Learning

• Make sure the students can relate what they are learning to previous knowledge or their own life– Use computers/Internet access either in the

classroom or as a homework activity to have the students search for related material or blog about how they feel about/reacted to the new material

Activities to promote Deep Learning

• Create interactive web sites or podcasts – Web sites and podcasts are always available for review– They can have integrated activities/response items– They can contain images that are otherwise difficult for

the students to access outside class– They can contain still images, text, audio, video,

demonstrations captured on a computer with Camtasia or combine all these

– They can include questions or reflection activities for the students to complete, making them more active learners

Activities to promote Deep Learning

• Make the students into active learners by developing experiential, collaborative projects and creating a written or video blog of them working through the project– This works well with:• Scientific experiments / technology and trades

assignments• Service learning experiences• Preparation for any type of major class presentation

Activities to promote Deep Learning

• Use problem-based activities to encourage the students to actively engage with the material– Problem-based activities can be facilitated with a variety of

technologies, including Internet searches, building wikis, blogs or electronic portfolios to record process and results

– Students are given an ‘ill-formed’ problem and guided through solving it by working together and determining what they know already, what questions they need to ask to understand the problem better, researching for the information they need and formulating/presenting their solution

Activities to promote Deep Learning

• Encourage students to collaborate with other students, with professors in other disciplines or professionals who are willing to work with students– This can be greatly facilitated by using

technologies such as Skype, Elluminate and cloud-based services

Results• A forum, which included student reactions to the various

passages and discussion of these reactions• A wiki, which included the passages, simple rephrasings of

the passages, related passages in Anglo lit and discussions of the meanings/significance of the passages

• Podcasts which included visuals of professional staging of the dramas and interactive activities

• Student video blogs of the development of their class project• Student videos of the final productions, which could be

shown to future classes and which the students used for their ‘senior portfolios’

Summary of ideas• Use clickers in the classroom for one type of fast assessment to make sure students are

learning what you are teaching• Use laptops in the classroom to submit ‘one minute papers’ or ‘muddiest point questions’ to

electronic class forums to check for understanding, encourage reflection and encourage discussion/student interaction

• Use laptops in the classroom or Internet access outside the classroom to encourage active self-learning through web quests or for researching ‘problem-based’ assignments

• Create faculty produced web pages or web published videos/podcasts to present materials—this allows repeated student reference, presentation of visual materials that are otherwise difficult for students to see and can include interactive materials for student response

• Create student produced electronic blogs (for reflections/reactions or to record project progress), wikis (to build a database of materials learned in class/during projects) and videos (to record service learning projects, final result of class projects etc).

• Use electronic collaboration tools (Elluminate, Skype, cloud services) to expand the borders of the classroom and encourage students to work together in class groups or with other professors or professionals