Creating Effective Learning Environments
Summary: An effective learning environment is one in which students are engaged and achieving clear objectives. Thus, developing strength in this competency involves learning how to keep students actively learning and participating, and much of this is assisted by having clear objectives, for both the instructor and the students.
Below is a lesson plan I developed and used in PHM 480 Neurobiology of Disease. As you can see, the objectives, or what students should be able to do after this lesson, are clearly laid out at the beginning of the lesson. There are several activities that require class participation along the way (see slide 3), short formative assessments to make sure they are following along (see slides 11, 30, 32, 34), and a group activity with assessment at the end of the lesson (slides 37-38).
Reflection: My experience with student writing in this course is that their research papers tend to be disorganized, with poorly written sentence structure, and there have been a few instances of unintentional plagiarism, where credit was given, but ideas were not adequately put into their own words. I added this lesson to the course schedule because students were not receiving direction on what we expected from their writing assignments.
This lesson plan includes several instances of informal class participation, which works well in such a small class, as well as a longer group exercise to put together all the aspects of learning that they learned about. Thus, I am able to tell whether the students are following the objectives, and I am able to keep them engaged with the various activities. Not only is this an improvement because this lecture and guidance was not given to students before (in previous semesters of this course), but I think it is an improvement over lectures I have seen in other classes because it has more examples and places for activities and student participation. This can be a very dry topic, and if you already have heard this before it can be very boring. But even if students have heard a similar lecture, they didn’t have the same activities to go with it, and thus students can practice what they have learned and stay engaged.
Below is a lesson plan I developed and used in PHM 480 Neurobiology of Disease. As you can see, the objectives, or what students should be able to do after this lesson, are clearly laid out at the beginning of the lesson. There are several activities that require class participation along the way (see slide 3), short formative assessments to make sure they are following along (see slides 11, 30, 32, 34), and a group activity with assessment at the end of the lesson (slides 37-38).
Reflection: My experience with student writing in this course is that their research papers tend to be disorganized, with poorly written sentence structure, and there have been a few instances of unintentional plagiarism, where credit was given, but ideas were not adequately put into their own words. I added this lesson to the course schedule because students were not receiving direction on what we expected from their writing assignments.
This lesson plan includes several instances of informal class participation, which works well in such a small class, as well as a longer group exercise to put together all the aspects of learning that they learned about. Thus, I am able to tell whether the students are following the objectives, and I am able to keep them engaged with the various activities. Not only is this an improvement because this lecture and guidance was not given to students before (in previous semesters of this course), but I think it is an improvement over lectures I have seen in other classes because it has more examples and places for activities and student participation. This can be a very dry topic, and if you already have heard this before it can be very boring. But even if students have heard a similar lecture, they didn’t have the same activities to go with it, and thus students can practice what they have learned and stay engaged.