CTC Reflection - NDSU - North Dakota State University



CTC ReflectionI first started with the completion of the college teaching certificate (CTC) by thinking that it was certainly important to be prepared to teach in higher education. It has happened to me many times that an educator was an excellent researcher but not necessarily a great instructor. I wanted to avoid that situation and serve my future students as best as I could. My experience during my coursework has been interesting and had led me to be open minded. I learned new techniques and technologies as well and was able to apply them in the classroom. I have learned about new models of education, and I have been lucky to be teammate in a graduate student teaching group. Our learning research group has been able to produce numerous publications. Perhaps most interesting, we learned how to shape our current models to best fit the students of the future.During my CTC I completed the following courses:COMM 702. This class gave me a head start on which education models exist, how to make lesson plans, and the value of feedback. We learned about Fink’s taxonomy of learning and why active learning is so important.STEM 840. This class taught me the various technologies that are being used currently to enhance learning experience, the pros and cons of using educational technologies, and I was able to start developing a custom online based learning management system.ECE 787. In this class I was able to apply the concepts that I learned from previous classes into real life context. We taught a blended classroom with a custom MOOC. We were able to host students from several locations both face-to-face and online. We implemented this successfully and developed several projects that presented high impact deliverables such us patents, conference papers, posters, and business pitches. The application of this learning approach had overall success among students. We asked students the following question: “How would you describe the class to a peer?” Students had to select from a set of words (shown in the following graph). It is clear to see that this class required a lot of time, but was also satisfying and beneficial according to students.We used different technologies in the class, and we are in the process of publishing some of the findings from those experiences (for more information please refer to the Bibliography section).ApplicationI was able to apply backward design (learned from COMM 702) to development of global learning objectives of the class.ObjectivesAssessment examples (not limited to)Activities examples (not limited to)Understand basic concepts of Cardiovascular Engineering (principles of engineering, biology, human physiology, chemistry, calculus, mathematics and statistics)Cumulative Quizzes/Midterm/FinalClass presentation (evaluated by teacher and peers)Completion of UDEMY class…Bi-weekly concept mapClass discussions Students (once per 2 weeks) presentations …Apply cardiovascular engineering concepts to solve real world problemsFinal evaluation of innovationImpact of deliverables created…FOA based learning…Professional skill developmentEvaluation of peersTeam presentation…Team group project…To care about others and to care about the field IndirectIndirectIn addition, I lined up the activities and assessments that we wanted to follow in the class.That being said we offer our students the freedom of discovery of new knowledge. We try to encourage students to shift from knowledge consumers to knowledge creators. This was one of the reasons we could not be too detailed in our syllabi. If we would have done so we would have caged the spirit of freedom that some students seek. This balance was hard to accomplish and may need more practice.Students were able to create their own learning objectives; self-direction is one of the key aspects of engagement and intrinsic motivation. Some of the teaching technologies available were not able to provide us with the functionality that we needed to monitor the students’ learning objectives. Because of that we created a new learning management platform from scratch called MOOCIBL. MOOCIBL is online based and students were required to register individually on the platform. The system allowed students to upload custom learning objectives that they updated during the semester.In addition to this, we used some of the techniques that I learned from STEM 840: both Flipgrid and Slack were used effectively with some practice. I learned that technology introductions need time and patience. Even though we live in the era of technology some students still have issues when familiarizing with new tech tools. Students considered some of the platform easy to use and had a positive experience overall.(Q3) Slack’s ease of use? (n = 24)(Q4) Slack’s impact on course? (n = 24)We were able to publish five research papers from this class in a recent international conference (2019) hosted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Additionally, we have another five publications planned in 2020 targeting the annual general meeting of American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) further discussing our experiences in this class. ConclusionsResearch education is a key component to better understanding how learning can improve. In my opinion, it is paramount to provide evidence when dealing with a new technique. That is why we provided MOOCIBL (learning management system platform) to be able to log students’ behavior and test how certain techniques would behave under these classroom conditions. All of this data was obtained with the approval if the NDSU IRB board.One of the conclusions that we observed from this class is that this class is not for everybody. We observed that some students thrive in this innovation model, but some others struggle and pass by. We need to study ways to allocate different learning paths.I certainly have several things to improve on as a teacher. I have the mindset that the improvement process is never finished and that I should take it upon myself to be deliverable and respectful to students’ expectations. One of the lessons learned from this semester is that there is a very fragile balance between being fair to all students but also being understanding of any situation that may arise.In summary, I consider myself prepared and excited to tackle future educational challenges. ................
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