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5. Try to make lesson more fun, e.g., make use of crossword puzzles, games
etc
6. When a students needs help don't just give them the answer rather get them
to follow through their own logic and see if they can figure it out for
themselves. The former may be construed as, “I'll give you the answer as
your not smart enough to work it out for yourself”. Use hints, prompts and
questions to scaffold knowledge rather than simply giving it to them. This
encourages active learning rather than passive learning. Student will feel
better with themselves and more in control and anchored because they feel
that they have learnt something meaningful rather than simply presented
with an answer lacking in any meaning.
11. The teacher cannot force knowledge onto students as such knowledge is
meaningless to the student (passive learning); learning must come from
within the student by building upon their own knowledge and experiences
(active learning) and the role of teacher as facilitator of this type of
learning. Handing control over the learning process to students also has the
benefit of reducing time spent on student management issues.
Bibliography
Oblinger, D.G. & Oblinger, J.L. Educating the Net Generation, (2005), viewed 7
September 2007, http://www.educause.edu/educatingthenetgen
Experiences
I have tried to implement many of the above principles into my own teaching and
have felt that my students have benefited from them.
It's not always easy though as, for example, giving the time to scaffold a student's
learning is not always easy given the pressure of other students begging for your
attention. I guess that giving the answer to a student's question is a quick way to
move to the next student but I realize now that this is not a good thing.
Also, now, being in the later stages of the programming course that I am delivering,
instead of elaborating on a pre-written piece of code to illustrate a solution to a pre-
defined problem, I ask my students for a problem of interest to them to solve and
then try to solve it together as a class. It also puts the teacher in a position where the
teacher has to expose his/her thinking processes unaided by a pre-prepared solution
as thus making the learning experience more real rather than artificially sanitized
which Y-generation generally dislike. This makes students feel more in control.