If you've ever been in school, you've had to suffer through a lecture. Some of them take FOREVER to be over with, and then you don't know if you've really learned anything out of it or not. I remember in particular taking a college biology course with a couple of my close friends during my undergrad. I looked over at the one friend during class one day to see her drawing tally marks in the margins of her notes. I asked her what she was doing. Well, she was making a mark for every time the professor said, "Now if you'll stop and take a look at it." Next class, I did it, and it was around 70-80 times in a 50 minute class. What's the problem here? First off, we teachers can sometimes say certain things too much. Second, why were we so disengaged that we were making tally marks? It was boring sitting there. I perfected writing my name in bubble letters in college because I'd get bored during class. Believe me, I took notes, but there were plenty of doodles too.
As mentioned in our text, lectures do have a place in education, but maybe they should be limited in the amount used in order to teach. I say that, but yet I lecture a lot. That is something that I would really like to change about my own teaching practices. I believe that lectures don't need to be just the teachers talking, but students need to have opportunities to interact as well. Class discussions should become a norm. The teacher still needs to teach new concepts, but let students have a voice as well because sometimes they can explain things better for those that may not understand what the teacher says. Chapters 3 and 4 of Teaching in a Digital Age provide many different teaching methods that can be used in education both inside the classroom and online from apprenticeships to problem-based learning.
I have spent the last couple of days at my region education service center going through some STEM training. We did some problem-based and project-based learning activities. I can see where the term "cognitive overload" comes from. Cognitive overload is one of the things I have always had trouble with trying to eliminate when considering using PBL in the classroom. How are we supposed to use PBL to teach if the students know nothing about the topic to start with? There's too much information that they don't have in order to get started.
As mentioned above, I'd like to include more PBL in the classroom for experiential learning, but math has so many new topics that I've found it difficult to find these types of activities that work like I want them to. I can definitely see how have experiences in the classroom would help deepen the learning. I learned about water filtration yesterday by testing out different materials to filter some nasty water through at least three layers of different material. If you have the resources and the good ideas for situations, students could really learn a lot with hands-on activities. My course will have a little bit of hands-on type learning through Desmos which will allow students to manipulate equations of lines to make certain things happen. It will help teach them about slope and intercepts.
Reference
Bates, T. (2016). Teaching in a digital age: Guidelines for designing teaching and learning. SFU Document Solutions.
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