A blog by Adam W. Christman

Tag: incentivized learning

  • Kinesthetic Learning and the Forgotten Learners

    We Know Better

                Teaching is more than standing at the front of a room and talking. Every teacher knows this, intellectually, but how many do something about it? How many of us engage with kinesthetic learning week to week, or even any kind of consistent basis? We’ve all read the books on learning styles. We’ve all heard the admonishments against neglecting kinesthetic learning. Kinesthetic learning is a valid and necessary method for adults as well as children. LeFever sums up the problem nicely, “Movement in a class setting is great if you happen to be in preschool or in the very early elementary classes. But as classes begin to get more and more traditional, these realistic, practical, matter-of-fact students may be lost.”[1]

    Practical Tips for Biblical Studies Courses

                Baptists, and I am one, consider ourselves “people of the Book.” Those of us who teach the Bible to adults become very focused on literary techniques and verbal-based elements. Our teaching reflects this focus, as our primary resources is a book, rather than rocks in geology or chemicals in a chemistry class. If we are lazy, this is the only area from which we draw teaching techniques, thus leaving kinesthetic learning by the wayside. In order to encourage you towards incorporating kinesthetic learning in Biblical studies courses, I have compiled the following, which is like an annotated bibliography, but it consists of examples applicable to Biblical studies.

    Have your learners create an in-class drama or video presentation on the life of a biblical figure discussed in your class. Do your learners often have trouble understanding exactly how the Davidic monarchy fell apart? A dramatic video presenting the dissolution of the monarchy might go a long way in helping them put together who did what to whom and why.

    Divide up the history of your entire course so that each learner is assigned one piece (whether that’s the length of a single king’s reign, or a century, etc.) and has to create a detailed visual timeline of that period. For example, one learner creates a timeline for the life of David up until the murder of Uriah and abduction of Bathsheba while another creates a timeline for the life of David from the Uriah/Bathsheba episode until David’s death. When your students turn in their timelines, display them on the walls of your classroom such that they can look at the whole timeline, from beginning to end.

    Do you find it difficult to lecture on the Tabernacle or Temple and their rituals? Re-create one or both of these structures in the classroom. One way to do so is to simply tape off the room or another space such that you can walk from point to point while your students watch or walk with you. You get to show them exactly what is going on, and you get to make the subject more immediately relevant. Another way is to bring materials for the class to work together to build a model to scale.

    Here is an idea you can use with any subject. Have your learners create a quiz on the day’s subject. Have them model it after the way you typically write your own quizzes. Then, have them offer their questions aloud and have class discussion over them.

    Create a sign-up list for a “Visual Aid Assistant” with one opening per class session. Set up in the room early, connecting a laptop to the internet and projector. When that session’s “VAA” arrives, he or she is responsible for looking up your lecture topic, characters, books, places, tools, weapons, etc., on Google or Flickr and sliding that picture from the laptop over to the projector as a kind of running visual aid commentary.

    As I wrote about on previous posts, utilize gaming in your classroom to break up the lecture and give your students something to do. Have them rearrange the chairs around tables, have them get up and sit in a new place, then set up the game and let them have at it. Games should probably last up to 45 minutes, at the most.

    Be creative! Don’t rely on monotony, and don’t neglect kinesthetic learning. Do Google searches for creative/kinesthetic learning methods. Your classes will be better for it!

     

    [1] Marlene D. LeFever, Learning Styles (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook Publishing, 1995), 58.

  • Fun in the Classroom: How Dare You

    Some Problems

                You may not have noticed, but excellent teaching is hard work. In case that obvious statement needs clarification: adult learners get bored when you drone on simply lecturing for 3 hours a week. Even adult learners are limited to 25 minute attention spans before you lose them.[1] Lecture-only tendencies fail other learning styles. Lecture-only techniques typically require the learner to create his own motivation. It is like offering a spoonful of rice to a starving man. Sure, the rice is healthy, but with only this much to offer, his starvation continues. Utilizing games in the classroom is one way educators can vary their approach, reach more learning styles, and motivate learners. Herodotus wrote a history of the Greeks that recorded a certain period of famine and the populace’s response.

    “For some time the Lydians bore the affliction patiently, but finding that it did not pass away, they set to work to devise remedies for the evil. Various expedients were discovered by various persons; dice, and knuckle-bones, and ball, and all such games were invented… The plan adopted against the famine was to engage in games one day so entirely as not to feel any craving for food, and the next day to eat and abstain from games. In this way they passed eighteen years.”[2]

    So, during a time of literal famine, the general populace took to games to improve their lives. Educators can and should utilize games in teaching in order to reach more learners with better quality teaching.

    But What is the Value of Games in Education?

                Google phrases like “games for personal and social change,” “positive impact games,” “social reality games,” “serious games,” or “leveraging the play of the planet.” Visit websites like Game For Change, or Serious Games Interactive. No, go ahead. I can wait.

    The men and women working on these sites, programs, and initiatives are on the leading edge of utilizing gaming for education. Granted, the majority of what you will find in these searches are video games, and you should know that there is nothing wrong with that.

    Don’t be afraid. You don’t need to become a visual artist or programmer to use gaming in your classroom. Teachers have used games for millennia, and not just to educate children. Jane McGonigal rightly asserts that games will “satisfy our hunger to be challenged and rewarded, to be creative and successful, to be social and part of something larger than ourselves.”[3] You can use traditional classroom games that have been around for decades, board games, card games, simulation games, video games — the sky is the limit.

    Games empower the learners. They learn skills, they engage with the material, and – with some work – you can tie many game elements to your teaching material. With this increased investment, the learners will care more about your subject, which will fuel further learning.

    Examples for the Classroom

                Consider using a roleplaying game. Marlene D. LeFever gives a good, easy system for a game like this called “Guidance.”[4] In addition, more popular roleplaying systems are available, including Dungeons & Dragons,[5] Pathfinder, and Star Wars: Edge of the Empire. Roleplaying games can be carefully crafted to interact with specific material in your class, whether it is a psychology, sociology, counseling class, and more. It allows the learner to step into different shoes and gain new perspective on your topic.

    Consider developing your own. I, myself, have begun work on a simulation/strategy game that teaches the socio-economic context of the Roman Empire. Consider what you want to teach, the values of the best games (see McGonigal, above), and how you might go about doing that. Start building rules and test it until it’s where you want it to be!

    Finally, I suggest visiting your local game store to ask if they have anything that relates to your topic. In addition, consider searching BoardGameGeek.com for games related to your topic.

     

    [1] Freddy Cardoza, class lecture, “Teaching Adults,” Spring 2014.

    [2] George Rawlinson, trans., with Henry Rawlinson and J. G. WIlkinson, The History of Herodotus: A New English Version (New York: D. Appleton, 1861), 181-82. (http://archive.org/stream/historyofherodot01herouoft#page/182/mode/2up, accessed 4/26/2014.)

    [3] Jane McGonigal, Reality is Broken (New York: Penguin Press, 2011), 10.

    [4] Marlene D. LeFever, Creative Teaching Methods, Revised Edition (Colorado Springs: NexGen, 2004), 142-66. This classic book has several other examples worth examining, too. See also Robert Heinich, Michael Molenda, and James D. Russell, Instructional Media, 2nd Edition (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1985), 304-25.

    [5] If you’re wondering, no, the Devil did not create this game. Maybe another blog post for another time…

  • Incentivized Learning: Beyond the Grade

    Elizabeth Barkley succinctly asserts the following as almost a passing comment, “significant learning starts with the learner’s active engagement with a problem.”[1] Maybe you, the educator reading this blog entry, are the absolute best lecturer in the history of mankind. Maybe your paper assignments have the best written instructions since the IKEA assembly instructions guy got started. Maybe your students paid for a full seat in your class, but they only need the edge! Or, like me, you are one of the rest of us, educators looking to create engagement with your material in ways that will motivate them and stay with them when the semester is over.

    What I Mean by “Incentivized Learning”

                I do not propose merely a new way to think about teaching to all learning styles. Rather, I use the term “incentivized learning” to refer to methods employed by the educator to motivate learners to engage with specific material, whether that is one assignment, a part of a lecture, a module, or an entire course. Granted, you might think the incentive for learning the material is simply in the final grade. It’s nice to get an A, after all! But there is more to learning than a letter on a piece of paper, and that comes through dynamic learning techniques that engage with the learner in a way that motivates them and stays with them.

    Incentivized Learning is Valuable to Both Child and Adult Learners

                Teachers who focus on children have been utilizing incentivized learning for years beyond count. My 4 year old daughter attends an excellent preschool. Her teachers have a point-based system (using star stickers) to add new points for good behaviors or other learning. When the child has reached a certain number of stars, she can pick a prize out of The Prize Box. I’ve seen multiple children pull such an item from their backpacks at the end of the day to show their mommies or daddies, and they have such smiles on their faces! Not only are these children learning good behaviors such as cooperation, leading, and responsibility, they also have concretized incentives they can point to and say, for example, “I got this out of helping my friend calm down after she fell and hurt herself.”

    Adults, of course, are not always impressed by star stickers or used toys. The path of incentivized learning for adult learners seems daunting. “What could I use to incentivize this material without treating them like children?” I admit, it will be difficult to determine what works and what does not. But anything worth doing is usually difficult. I suggest looking to resources such as Barkley’s Collaborative Learning Techniques, Hin’s online article,[2] Svinicki and McKeachie’s McKeachie’s Teaching Tips,[3] or LeFever’s Creative Teaching Methods.[4]

    An Example of Incentivized Learning

                There are a variety of methods with which to incentivize learning. You may already use one or more. But part of aiming for excellence in teaching is to increase one’s repertoire, to put more tools in the tool belt. Ask around your faculty or with others who teach adult learners to see what variety of methods they use to motivate the learners to take to the material beyond threat of a bad grade. I suggest here one of many you should consider adapting to your own classes.

    If your students have trouble with analysis, or they need practice with analysis before they begin work on their major project for your class, consider Structured Problem Solving.[5] In theological education, you could use SPS as an opportunity for groups of students to analyze, e.g., a biblical passage. You provide them a problem and the series of steps to follow to try and solve it. At the end, they can present their solution (incentive: a chart or powerpoint they can use to teach someone else about this issue), debate their solutions with other groups (incentive: winning a debate), and receive positive feedback on the strengths of their assignment (incentive: increased emotional investment in the course).

    In my next blog, I dive deeper into another example of incentivized learning: fun and games in the classroom. Can they be used for education? Does it have to be “Monopoly”? Come back next week for more.

     

    [1] Elizabeth F. Barkley, K. Patricia Cross, and Claire Howell Major, Collaborative Learning Techniques, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005.

    [2] Brian Lee Chin Hin, “Effect of Incentivized Online Activities On E-Learning,” Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 28, edited by Halil I. Yalin, et al (2011), 211-16.

    [3] Marilla Svinicki and Wilbert J. McKeachie, eds., McKeachie’s Teaching Tips, 13th edition, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2011. See esp. chapters 14, 15, and 19-21.

    [4] Marlene D. LeFever, Creative Teaching Methods, Revised Edition, Colorado Springs: NexGen, 2004.

    [5] The name is borrowed from Barkley, et al, p. 188-92. See this reference for examples within two different disciplines of the same technique.