2008 Woodie Awards
Turn to problem-based learning to meet students' and profs' goals
By: GUEST COLUMNIST
Issue date: 4/17/08 Section: Forum
Last week I talked to a group of students about what it meant for the University to be a learning community. I listened to their ideas of how to continue development towards our vision of being the premier learning community in Ohio and one of the best in the nation.
It struck me how students and faculty, both deeply committed to student learning and to the intellectual progress of all the community's members, often see the classroom learning experience in significantly different ways.
Faculty often want students to master a body of knowledge outlined in the course syllabus while recognizing that in today's world a mass of information is not enough.
Faculty work to help students develop skills and attitudes that contribute to students' intellectual maturation and personal growth and to be ready for a life that will likely flow through a series of careers or perhaps a next stop in graduate school.
What those careers will be, no one, faculty and student alike, can say, so faculty put an emphasis on fundamental knowledge and skills, and learning how to learn, as exemplified in the University's General Education curriculum.
Students, living their
educational experience, see their education from a very
different perspective.
Listening to what the students said, many are preparing to "be" something - a musician or a biologist or a graphic artistic, etc. - that they imagine will begin in earnest upon graduation.
They want to connect their classroom learning to their personal aspirations and particularly their future career. They would like to understand how their courses fit together and how they prepare the student for a personally satisfying and financially enabling career.
Students are often conflicted about teaching methods. Memorization may be easy, but students recognize that this type of learning is transient; much of the content of the course is quickly forgotten after the final exam has been taken.
It struck me how students and faculty, both deeply committed to student learning and to the intellectual progress of all the community's members, often see the classroom learning experience in significantly different ways.
Faculty often want students to master a body of knowledge outlined in the course syllabus while recognizing that in today's world a mass of information is not enough.
Faculty work to help students develop skills and attitudes that contribute to students' intellectual maturation and personal growth and to be ready for a life that will likely flow through a series of careers or perhaps a next stop in graduate school.
What those careers will be, no one, faculty and student alike, can say, so faculty put an emphasis on fundamental knowledge and skills, and learning how to learn, as exemplified in the University's General Education curriculum.
Students, living their
educational experience, see their education from a very
different perspective.
Listening to what the students said, many are preparing to "be" something - a musician or a biologist or a graphic artistic, etc. - that they imagine will begin in earnest upon graduation.
They want to connect their classroom learning to their personal aspirations and particularly their future career. They would like to understand how their courses fit together and how they prepare the student for a personally satisfying and financially enabling career.
Students are often conflicted about teaching methods. Memorization may be easy, but students recognize that this type of learning is transient; much of the content of the course is quickly forgotten after the final exam has been taken.
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