Faculty who have participated in the Southern Miss faculty seminar on writing and speaking over the last few years have expressed an interest in continuing our discussions about teaching online. Here's your spot!
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
The connection between writing/speaking and learning
Do you believe that writing and speaking strengthen the student’s understanding of course material? Do you have examples to explain this?
6 comments:
Makayla
said...
Hi Everyone! I absolutely believe that writing and speaking helps to increase student learning and retention. The best example of this truth for me is my personal experience. Since I started teaching in athletic training, I have learned so much! I definitely knew the material before teaching well enough to be a good practicing clinician, but being a good clinician requires a different level of knowledge. After I started teaching, I began to explore different levels of the material. I started asking myself questions like “why” and “what if,” and then found myself looking for the answers to those questions. Ultimately, I feel that I have a much deeper understanding of the things that I thought I already knew pretty well. Especially in the context of public speaking, I think that students will strive to learn the material more thoroughly in fear that they will harm their image in front of their peers. As a new teacher I try to anticipate questions that the students will ask so that I will be prepared before they ask them. I believe that this same situation will hold true in writing for students if they are required to do a peer review. In short, I am definitely a believer that speaking and writing will increase student knowledge on the given topic. I think that instructors will find this to be true if they incorporate these types of assignments in every class.
Happy Mardi Gras!! YES, I believe that speaking and writing increase student learning of content. I am learning, however, that a big part of this is how the assignment is presented and answering,'WHY is this relevant to me?"
I am concerned that most of the writing I have the students do in my Professional communications class is on ONE topic. So... they get to know that topic well but do they take away the importance of communicating effectively to their audience. I think I could use some essay questions on the exams to get a better feel for what they're learning by asking some very open-ended questions. This class is really broadening my horizons and looking beyond the content to the final product.
I agree with Cindy! Some other suggestions for exposing students to a greater amount of content would be to either have them do peer reviews on their classmates papers, and/or to have them orally present their papers so that everyone will have a little more exposure to each other's topics. I definitely think that I am going to try to incorporate these things into my courses.
Absolutely! I think anytime we can provide students with an opportunity to prepare course materials for different assignments that gives them one more opportunity to mentally cover those materials. Of course, this would also depend on the content of the oral presentation. When I am giving oral presentation assignments that deal with external source material, then the course content is covered indirectly. When I give them a related assignment, they will have to do double duty.
For example, in advanced classes I often have the students prepare an oral presentation on one of the chapters, either individually or as a group. This assignment requires them--theoretically of course--to review the materials, prepare a visual presentation, and then deliver the material. As Makayla pointed out, there is nothing like preparing to teach something to drive the material home.
All that said, I do believe that any writing and speaking our students can do in class makes them better students and more successful, even if the two are not 100% directly related. As the old adage says, practice makes perfect. The more students speak and write the better they will become and the more they will learn.
Hey all! The concept of connnecting writing and oral presantaitons to learning has never be so evident to me since taking this class. I reflect on what I've learned and how we, as humans learn, and most of the time we soak in what we practice. We can't improve on communications (i.e., writing and speaking) unless we pratice these. By honing these language based skills, we are imporving not just writing and speaking, we can improve our everyday language, reading skills, and learning capibilities. However, we need to give feedback to students, and ourselves to foster growth. In Toastmasters one of our most imporant components is providing feedback to peers. How to improve speeches and leadership skills. Great classes.
Such great comments. And I agree that we often lose sight of this. It's easy to get annoyed with university/college/department requirements and to worry about loss of class time (esp. for speaking), but I agree that students struggle with the material in a very different way with oral and written assignments. Good to see support for this work.
6 comments:
Hi Everyone! I absolutely believe that writing and speaking helps to increase student learning and retention. The best example of this truth for me is my personal experience. Since I started teaching in athletic training, I have learned so much! I definitely knew the material before teaching well enough to be a good practicing clinician, but being a good clinician requires a different level of knowledge. After I started teaching, I began to explore different levels of the material. I started asking myself questions like “why” and “what if,” and then found myself looking for the answers to those questions. Ultimately, I feel that I have a much deeper understanding of the things that I thought I already knew pretty well. Especially in the context of public speaking, I think that students will strive to learn the material more thoroughly in fear that they will harm their image in front of their peers. As a new teacher I try to anticipate questions that the students will ask so that I will be prepared before they ask them. I believe that this same situation will hold true in writing for students if they are required to do a peer review. In short, I am definitely a believer that speaking and writing will increase student knowledge on the given topic. I think that instructors will find this to be true if they incorporate these types of assignments in every class.
Happy Mardi Gras!! YES, I believe that speaking and writing increase student learning of content. I am learning, however, that a big part of this is how the assignment is presented and answering,'WHY is this relevant to me?"
I am concerned that most of the writing I have the students do in my Professional communications class is on ONE topic. So... they get to know that topic well but do they take away the importance of communicating effectively to their audience. I think I could use some essay questions on the exams to get a better feel for what they're learning by asking some very open-ended questions. This class is really broadening my horizons and looking beyond the content to the final product.
I agree with Cindy! Some other suggestions for exposing students to a greater amount of content would be to either have them do peer reviews on their classmates papers, and/or to have them orally present their papers so that everyone will have a little more exposure to each other's topics. I definitely think that I am going to try to incorporate these things into my courses.
Absolutely! I think anytime we can provide students with an opportunity to prepare course materials for different assignments that gives them one more opportunity to mentally cover those materials. Of course, this would also depend on the content of the oral presentation. When I am giving oral presentation assignments that deal with external source material, then the course content is covered indirectly. When I give them a related assignment, they will have to do double duty.
For example, in advanced classes I often have the students prepare an oral presentation on one of the chapters, either individually or as a group. This assignment requires them--theoretically of course--to review the materials, prepare a visual presentation, and then deliver the material. As Makayla pointed out, there is nothing like preparing to teach something to drive the material home.
All that said, I do believe that any writing and speaking our students can do in class makes them better students and more successful, even if the two are not 100% directly related. As the old adage says, practice makes perfect. The more students speak and write the better they will become and the more they will learn.
Hey all! The concept of connnecting writing and oral presantaitons to learning has never be so evident to me since taking this class. I reflect on what I've learned and how we, as humans learn, and most of the time we soak in what we practice. We can't improve on communications (i.e., writing and speaking) unless we pratice these. By honing these language based skills, we are imporving not just writing and speaking, we can improve our everyday language, reading skills, and learning capibilities.
However, we need to give feedback to students, and ourselves to foster growth. In Toastmasters one of our most imporant components is providing feedback to peers. How to improve speeches and leadership skills. Great classes.
Such great comments. And I agree that we often lose sight of this. It's easy to get annoyed with university/college/department requirements and to worry about loss of class time (esp. for speaking), but I agree that students struggle with the material in a very different way with oral and written assignments. Good to see support for this work.
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