Fostering Innovative Learning
by Hong Kha
Faculty are often asked to foster innovative
learning. Well, what does that mean, what does it look like, and what are the
desired outcomes? One way to achieve innovative learning is to allow students
to be in control of what's important to them. To do this, the faculty role
should be shifted towards coaching, guiding, and facilitating instead of
providing direct lectures. With this method it becomes challenging for students
to sort out what information is important to the course and when they are
getting too broad, especially in an introductory course. To address this
challenge, I recommend reading the articles "Moving up Bloom’s Taxonomy in an Introductory Course" and "7 Essential Principles of Innovative Learning"
to help students achieve higher order thinking skills. The articles suggest
that it may be important to cut out a lot of the factual details given in an
introductory course. Factual information is often used to memorize and recite
on a test and then easily forgotten after the exam is over. Instead of just
giving facts to learners instructors should replace those lessons with lessons
that connect concepts and transferring knowledge to practical activities.
Articles:
"Moving up Bloom’s Taxonomy in an
Introductory Course": What’s Being Done: http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-and-learning/moving-up-blooms-taxonomy-in-an-introductory-course-whats-being-done/
"7 Essential Principles of Innovative
Learning": http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/02/7-essential-principles-of-innovative-learning/#more-26755
