Mentors - Part 2

I have been chewing on what mentoring means to me for the last few days, trying to massage my thoughts into some intelligible form. While I still struggle with validation at times, what I desire from a mentor is different. I want their suggestions on how to handle differing situations, recommended avenues for development, challenging and stretching, sometimes correction and sometimes just a nod and a smile. The one component of apprenticeship I crave the most is the opportunity to observe my mentors performing in their vocation. I enjoy watching these experts doing the things that make them the experts in their field like talking with customers, sharing their ideas in a meeting, hiring, firing, and all the grit of leadership and management that comes in-between. This is absolutely critical for me in learning how to be successful in business. For me, having the opportunity to observe my mentors modeling the various components of whatever vocation they are experienced in, and which I aspire to, is an indispensable component of passing on knowledge.

Collaborative Learning

When institutions of higher learning open up and embrace collaborative learning techniques, they have a chance of surviving and thriving in our networked, global economy. With current technology, it is now possible to embrace some of the new collaboration models that will help facilitate a change in the relationship between students and instructors in the learning process. In the industrial model of student mass production, the instructor is considered the broadcaster. Meaning, the person that is responsible for the transmission of information in a one-way, linear fashion from transmitter (instructor) to receiver (student). For years, broadcast learning has been an appropriate way of gaining new information for a previous economy and generation; however, it is increasingly failing to meet the needs for a new generation of students who are now entering the global knowledge economy. Educators who use varying approaches of collaborative learning often tend to think of themselves less as an expert in transmitting knowledge and information to students, and more as an expert in design of intellectual experiences for students. Collaborative learning techniques allow a structure that creates more student participation and much more learning occurs when this happens. In addition to increased learning, mutual exploration, collective meaning making, and problem solving it creates a better learning outcome and understanding of the material in general.

What are your thoughts on collaborative learning?

Single Canvas Teaching

Have you heard the phrase, “Death by PowerPoint?” Imagine being able to use a presentation tool based on the idea of a single “canvas” rather than a sequence of multiple slides. This concept allows you to link to and reference work of leading scholars in the field while sharing this presentation online, thus allowing students the ability to explore links that are embedded. As an example, we can place an image of a form or computer screen shot at the center of the working area and label the distinctions about it. Additionally, an instructor will be able to put explanations and web links further out on the canvas. This organizational approach allows the form or computer screen shot to serve as the central point of the presentation and helps clarify how additional information is related to it. This application enables presenters the ability to zoom in or out on each explanation as needed and to follow links to online demonstrations of how to fill out the form or interact with the screen shot. Additionally, the canvas can be divided into different regions and as part of a team teaching concept; each instructor can place their comments, images, videos, and links in their respective areas. This tool can allow a team to develop a smooth and efficient presentation and the nonsequential nature of the tool, results in a richer experience for students by allowing the discussion to guide the presentation in unplanned directions.

Building a Global Leadership Brand, Technology - CNBC.com

Building a Global Leadership Brand, Technology - CNBC.com

This is a great episode of Executive Vision about how top executives in technology guide their companies in a world where innovation is a key to their survival.

Problem Solving – A Teachable Skill

The goal of all instruction is to develop skills, knowledge, and abilities that transfer to tasks that a student can understand. However, we must take care when we teach students "how to think.” We should not teach students "what to think" or "what to do" in every instance because this emphasis is on procedural knowledge and not about problem solving.

Many of today’s textbooks show problem solving as a linear process and present problem solving as a series of steps, which leads to an emphasis on only getting the correct answer. In order to develop good problem solving abilities, students need to experience the frustration and excitement of struggling with and overcoming obstacles while solving a problem. Overcoming these obstacles provides students with the confidence they will need in order to tackle these types of problems that will occur in their journey through life.

Traditional teaching approaches involving rote learning and teacher-centered instruction often do not meet the learning needs of students who may be active learners because instruction is most effective when it is student-centered. When students memorize rules, they may be learning something, but they are not developing a good foundation in a given subject because the student is not seeing how things work or how things are related to each other. The goals of problem solving are to improve the student’s willingness to try problems, provide awareness of strategies, explaining how to approach problems in a systematic way, and demonstrating that problems can be solved in multiple ways.

The best approach to teaching problem solving is to use content related to real-world problem solving experiences because this helps motivate students and sparks their interest in solving real-world problems. By providing this type of framework, educators are able to create opportunities for students to make discoveries that allow them to make concepts more concrete and that will aid them for the rest of their lives.