Over the course of the week, we have looked at where and how we learn; what aspects of our learning is public and networked. Today, we’ll focus on how we teach. Often, we don’t have as much choice of that as we may wish. If you are a student, you might want to think about what is restricting the way you are taught – as well as your own preferences, remember that in many cases, we have external bodies that may govern, as well as *what* you need to cover, some aspects of *how* it should be taught or assessed.
In much the same way as we got you to think on Day 1 about how you learn, we’d like you to think of the same aspects of your teaching.
Looking at the questions posed at the start of the week, we’ll re-ask them in terms of teaching.
- The spaces that we teach in, both the physical and the virtual world. For example in the lecture theatre, your office, a coffee shop, on the sofa at home in the evenings, on the commute into university, at academic seminars, etc.
- The tools and resources that we use. We may not have choices over some of these. Most will be using My Dundee or Moodle, along side other tools that you may decide to include.
- Where we record and reflect on our teaching. Perhaps using pen and paper, by creating sketch notes or using digital tools and note taking apps to organise and file resources that support our teaching.
- How we share what we’ve learned as a result of the teaching. In team meetings, conversations with colleagues or maybe share our learning through social networks and online forums.
Have a go at drawing out how you feel you are currently teaching; the locations, the tools.
This was a quick image that I created, using a couple of different tools – Mindup to create the mind map, and The NounProject for most of the icons. In my current role as an educational technologist, I’ve moved from the more formal teaching a couple of hundred students in in lecture theatres – to classroom sessions for staff, and more impromptu questions and conversations, over the phone, in peoples offices, in the library cafe …
When you have created this – what overlaps do you see between this and the learning one you created at the start of the week? Are you happy with the differences? [For example, you may be entirely happy to have video purely as a learning tool, and not feel the need to teach using it!]
Share your thoughts in the discussion areas – and, as with Day 1, feel free to share your “Personal Teaching Environment” diagrams with others.
As a side note, while I’m not claiming to have coined the term Personal Teaching Environment – it’s hard to find other cases where it’s used.
There are a great many resources about teaching, and many of them cover incorporating digital approaches into teaching, so rather than providing a list here, we’ll just point you to the NMC’s Horizon reports.
They have been producing these reports for a number of years, looking at where they see Education and technology being in “one year or less”, “two or three years” and “four to five years”. They have reports for K-12, Higher Education, Libraries and Museums, and, as they have reports going back to 2004, it can be interesting to see how accurate (or otherwise) their predictions have been.
We’d also be interested in other reports and research you have found, or perhaps MOOCs you have found useful to learn more about the futures of networked learning and teaching.
