What Does the Actual Learning Look Like?

College and university education requires a lot of learning and practice from the students in order to acquire acceptable to top grades in their majors. Teachers might easily complete all the course’s syllabus within the term before the finals, Cheap Essay 247 ,but the real concern is:

How to ensure that the students are acquiring quality learning?

Teachers need to know if the students have grasped the topic or concepts learned in the class, otherwise, the confusion and lack of comprehension is only going to accumulate and worsen the matter for the students even further.

Let’s discuss how teachers can fill the gap of learning and ensure that their students obtain the required comprehension against all odds.

Know your students

The foremost tip that goes without saying, but teachers should know their students as closely as possible. Take time to build rapport, display a genuine interest in what they have to say, and most important, show concern that authentic learning is valuable for them. Explain how learning will help them build their self-confidence and esteem and progress them not only through their academic tenure, but also in personal life.

Teacher can try and maintain a student file for each course they teach. The file will include pictures, seating plans, target data, past assessment details, and special education needs (SEN) minutiae.

You can use the document to mark the students’ progress over time and attach the additional data provided by parents, pastoral personnel or the students themselves.

The teacher can also acquire the past data from previous teachers and writing submissions to understand how far each student in the class has headed. Furthermore, you can share your collected data and analysis with the parents to affirm the authenticity of the students’ activities.

Get your starting point off to a great start

How many times, prior to the beginning of the class, have you seen blank faces staring up at you?

Understandably, at college and university level, students are expected to come to class prepared by reviewing the last lecture or over viewing the new topic to be taught. But it is also true that not every student is at the same learning capacity and wavelength and might not be equipped with the required prerequisite due to absentees, complexity of previous topics, difficulty in aligning with the teacher’s instructional strategy, etc.

From the teacher’s perspective, pitching the lesson and setting the right tone plays a vital role in getting off to a similar start in the class.

The point is, you need to discern the most appropriate starting point through a quick review, questionnaires, mini-quizzes, presenting concept maps, asking conceptual questions, knowledge grids, discussing contextual situations, etc.

What does the actual learning look like?

If you are to see whether students are learning adequately in the class or not, apparently, the easiest consideration is to inspect the general observations of knowledge, understanding, attitude, skills, etc.

It is extremely important for teachers to understand that just like them, each student in the class possesses his/her own learning style, observation capability, understanding, and other traits that define their own understanding.

Students explain a topic or concept in their own words, ask questions, try to make associations, justify their decisions, inquire each other, recreate information, reflect at a conscious level, provide analogies and metaphors, etc. demonstrating their comprehensive learning style, knowledge acceptance and retention ability to the teacher.

This is what teachers should keep close tabs on to understand the students’ learning tendency at a subconscious level and the factor that influences their overall comprehension.

Demonstrating progress

To help students progress, and display progress, it is imperative for the students to know what they have aimed for—something that is uncompressed at college level given they will be heading off to a completely different career path from the decision taken today.

The grading and success criteria of your course and various projects associated should be clearly shared with the class, it could be a target passing marks or any other epitome.

A great way is using AfL (Assessment for Learning) strategies with the objective to compare performance with the set targets. For example, converting a quiz score to an assessment grade or RAG (red, amber, green) code which will be monitored against the specification criteria by students. Putting it simply, rather than replying by ‘here’, students can reply with a score for the register.

This can be done through lecture-by-lecture basis and save ample time. In other words, the teacher is actually demonstrating progress of the students and carefully examining the pattern along the way.