Diversifying Teaching and Learning

Webinar 2

Competence goal 3

You understand the importance of diversifying teaching and learning in higher education pedagogy. 

Main Question

How does the vocational teacher tutor and guide groups (teams)? How does the vocational teacher tutor and guide individuals? What kind of methods can be used and what are common guiding processes? 

Lesson Plan

Keeping in mind the guiding question and the outcomes of the lesson, we decided to:

• Explain the factors effecting the choice of teaching method
• Explore one teaching method in detail which in the present case is Problem Based Learning (PBL)
• Allow the students to choose the methods they want to discuss or know more about (Miro board)

    In case of vocational teaching, as the teaching and learning have become "student-centered", the roles of both teacher and student have changed significantly. Teacher has become a facilitator, whose task is to assist and guide the learning process by using different methods of teaching; while a student is someone who actively participates in the construction of knowledge by collaborating with other people and thinks critically for a better understanding. Thus, in order to make learning possible, a teacher needs to opt for different methods and styles of teaching.

"Teaching methods refer to the techniques used by the teacher. The teaching style instead refers to the way that the teacher expresses himself/herself while teaching. It is essentially based on the teacher’s identity, personality and character. Different teachers may use the same teaching methods to teach the same subject matters, but they may still teach very differently" (Hyppönen & Lindén, 2009).

    When it comes to teaching and guiding in student centered or learning based approach, where the goal is to ensure deep learning of students, the choice of methods and techniques depends on multiple factors. When planning a lesson, a teacher has to take into account the learning outcomes, prior knowledge of students, competency level, needs of individuals or groups and also the working methods. "Working methods are the actions made to organise teaching in order to achieve a higher quality of learning" (ibid, p. 18), for example, contact teaching, group work, individual/personal guidance, independent study or workplace teaching. 

    Here an example from our own session can be quoted from the point of view of how different methods can be used for different purposes to get the desired outcomes. If we talk about us, though we are online now, we had three on-campus days for which Kimmo and Riikka used various teaching methods and planned various activities to bring diversity and clarity to the session.

• Speed dating: Ice breaking activity
• Power point presentation: Explaining Finnish education system and specifically vocational teacher education in Finland.
• Cycling case studies: What competence is and how do you demonstrate it? 
• Brainstorming: Padlet activity
• Group Work: Forming groups by taking into account that every group has someone with teaching experience, someone with technical skills and exchange students are in different group
• Collaborative Learning: Planning a lesson with your group
• Jigsaw groups/Cross over groups: practicing the technique on campus to avoid confusions
• Learning by doing: Exploring Teams, Student email, Peppi, OSSI, Blogs

    A consideration of all these elements by the mentors resulted in us being able to work in groups afterwards, with a clear understanding of what is to be done, when, where and with whom. Also, whom to contact when in trouble and how? where to look for information and so on. 

Pre-Task

    We used a hypothetical scenario where the students from School of Gastronomy and Culinary Arts have got a challenge to prepare a cake for the 15th anniversary of OAMK School of Professional Teacher Education. The idea behind the pre-task was to explore how Problem Based Learning (PBL) can be used as a teaching method to make the students actually focus on different dimensions of a problem. The purpose of the pre task was not to make the students learn to bake a cake but to give the students a problem to focus on and later to think together within a group what things are to be kept in mind while planning for something and looking for solutions to real life problems in collaborative learning. In my case, one student came up with the recipe and wI decided to go with it and focussed more on discussing other dimensions of the matter. 

Image source: Problem-Based Learning - Mallard Creek STEM Academy (mcstemacademy.org)

    The activity challenged the students and allowed them to think critically, helped them to interact, collaborate and work together as a group to come up with ideas, discuss with one another and finally to decide on one final outcome. Brainstorming together to come up with solutions for the problems e.g., what should be the size, flavour, design and colour of the cake but also what else should be taken into account to ensure that the cake is a success. Below is an image of the cake designed by the students in my class and I must say they did a really good job with all the details regarding design, flavours and size of the cake.

Image source: Cake designed by room 4 students during webinar 2

    Reflecting back on the lesson, I felt that although the activity was useful in terms of explaining PBL as a method to incorporate active learning in competence-based education, it would have proved more useful if it was included at the middle or end of the session. Also, the feedback from the students suggested that the language of the pre-task was a bit difficult and caused confusion. So, in the future we would keep that in mind. 

Lesson Plan document: Implemetation and teaching methods (october 5th).docx - Google Docs 

Power point presentation: Session 2 final .pptx - Google Slides 

Miro Board

    Miro was used as an activity where we added different methods of teaching for groups or individuals and asked the students to choose the method which they were curious about or they wanted to discuss, or which they used more often while planning their lessons. The idea was to give students a free hand to choose the method they wanted to discuss or talk about. This resulted in a free flow of ideas and examples and thus discussions as students shared their point of views regarding various methods. Also, talking about which methods are more suitable for which situations (guiding individuals vs guiding groups) provided chance to further explore the possibilities of variations in methods. 

Miro link: webinar 2, Online Whiteboard for Visual Collaboration (miro.com) 

Reflections on the other sessions 

Group 1: How can the vocational/higher ed. classroom teaching methods promote individual learning process and personalized learning paths? What kind of methods can be used?

    Students have different learning styles, and our ways of processing information is different thus different methods are required to address different learning needs. Methods may include, learning by practicing or learning by teaching others, peer learning, real life problem solving, questioning, inquiry and critical thinking. Teachers should not rely on one specific method, but the trick is to mix methods and bring variety. Choice of methods also depends on the field of study for example, teaching language may require different methods as compared to teaching drawing. 

Group 3: What are pedagogical models?​ How can they help you to choose the teaching methods? Choose at least one model that you use in your teaching task! 

    This group provided a Pre-task where participants were supposed to teach how to make a flapping bird origami to someone by choosing whatever resources and then fill a form about which method you used and how long did it take. According to the survey, most of the people used video as a resource and preferred face to face teaching. Pedagogical models are theory-based analyses of how learning and teaching situations progress. A teacher has to be prepared for the unexpected and to be flexible to change according to the situation in terms of what methods to choose and with what outcomes in mind. These models play their role in structuring the learning process into different stages and serve as a framework for planning the teaching. All models take into account the role of learner, their interaction, collaboration and cooperation. What I understood is that learning theories focus on how learners learn, and pedagogical models focus on how to use different teaching methods by focusing on different theories of learning to maximize the learning process. 

Group 4 would be discussed in detail in the next post. 

References:

Hyppönen, O. & Lindén, S. (2009). HANDBOOK FOR TEACHERS – COURSE STRUCTURES, TEACHING METHODS AND ASSESSMENT. Teaching and Learning Development Unit, Helsinki University of Technology.